Plein Air Painting in Acadia

Every chance I get I go painting. It's kind of like fishing. Sometimes I catch a good one and other times I have to throw it back (paint over it).

The colors on the coast of Maine are different than the Pacific NW. More subdued, weathered. The mountains are worn and rounded. Because of feldspar, Pink suffuses the granite, making the sand beaches a warm color, vermillion mixed with yellow ochre. The skies are horizon to horizon without any great mountain range for the sun to hide behind. Pink clouds in a Cerulean sky over a steel grey ocean. Long lines of horizon, islands and headlands.

The lack of wildlife is curious. I've seen only whitetail deer, heard an owl and see the scat of raccoons. Why there are no birds, not even a sparrow is beyond me. Of course there are ravens and seagulls, some terns and I've seen a turkey vulture but as much as I am outside there is a perplexing lack of wildlife.

I'm coming to terms with maritime scenery. I visited galleries in Nw Harbor and was enormously impressed with the quality and quantity of work. What seems to be the significant difference between the NW and here on the east coast of Maine is both the amount of artists there are working here and the sufistication of the patronage. Of course this is the domain of 'old east coast money', so it would go to follow that the market would develop accordingly.

I was greatly inspired by an artist named Farandon who lived from 1880's to 1964. He painted the coast of Maine. His style is representational in the vein of Edward Hopper but less urbane. He blocks in areas of color letting the underpainting become lines, less expressive brushwork, empasizing composition. I'm developing my spectrum of values better, creating new darks mixing french ultramarine blue with umber mixed and either alizarin for warm darks or hooker's green for cooler darks. I have achieved some progress with the temperature of colors which means I think I have resolved values sufficiently although it is always a struggle to coordinate them into a cohesive composition, something that is difficult to pull off in the short time one has, plein air painting.

Plein air painting is a performance. It is like a jazz player's spontaneous interpretation of the moment when a familiar tune is improvised but is recorded and becomes an artifact of time. I am reluctant to develop my plein air efforts because I feel they need to be a record of that moment. It is difficult to not modify that moment. I think it removes the plein air authenticity and changes the painting into a 'studio' piece. The challenge is to focus on the moment yet visualize a finished product executed in such a fashion to not only memorialize the moment but for the effort to look finished and complete, like a haiku or a chinese character that has meaning yet is a visual symbol of substance. It is difficult to leave the piece alone and frustrating to not 'get it right' in one sitting.

I have a couple pieces in a local gallery in Seal Harbor and hope to have more. It is good to have my work accepted and on display.

Daily Grind but fun!

As I was saying befor I was so rudely interrupted by the rain, we get up early, feed the horses, pick the poop up in the paddocks, wash the horses, wash their shoulders with alcohol to make sure they are clean and not sore, go eat our breakfast, harness for the first run at 9 and don't end until 8 or 9 at night when we have dinner. It makes for a long day.I've been driving Rex and Cracker. Rex is pretty high strung but is doing OK since I put a buck strap on him to even him up with Cracker and now Cracker has to work instead of letting Rex do all the work which makes Cracker kind of grumpy. I also drove a team of blacks, Tom and Jerry. They were incredibly slow and you had to stay on them to get them around the mountain in time for the next load. There are a number of routes but mine has been 3 trips around Day mountain per day and a sunset trip that goes to the top of the mountain as well as around the mountain which is a 4 mile trip. We all drive to the top of the mountain for the sunset trip because it is so popular. Altogether 6 teamsters make around 20 trips total.

We have 10 teams so none of the horses has to work all day. We rotate horses to keep them in shape and rest any horse that looks like it needs to rest.Some of the guys have brought their own teams but most of the horses are company horses. They work from May to October. Jim brings 3 of his own horses to keep them in shape for the pulling matches. He's a serious puller and does well. Tehre are alot of pulling contests in Maine so he's gone every weekend to play at the fairs. They are pretty serious about pulling around here and pay as much as $50,000 for a single pulling horse. All glory too! No purse at all!

Seal Harbor, ME

Just down from the Wildwood stables is everything I need in the little community of Seal Harbor. Gallery, restaurant and all kinds of things to paint from boats to ocean, to islands in the sunset.

The town is really small but the best part is tourist pass it by. It's got a post office, gas station and a fine restaurant all lined up right next to each other. I introduced myself to the owner of the Centerpiece Gallery and Antiques, Penny Chau. She's a long time resident and has known the folks at the stables for quite a time. I left a couple paintings with her and hope to get a couple more before the season is over. I paint every chance I get and have done 10 or so plein air pieces and quite a few water colors. I'm getting used to the colors as well as painting boats and the ocean. The light seems to be softer, more diffuse. Not as much as Wisconsin where the humidity was so high but still a lot of moisture in the air. Sunrise and sunset seem to last a long time as the sun comes up over the ocean and this is the first place in the U.S. to get morning sun. Without any Cascade curtain or Rockies, the sunset is spectacular.

The work is pretty steady. We get up at 5 a.m. and bring the teams to the stables to get their morning oats. They get about 35 lbs of feed a day. Ooops its raining and I'm sittin outside so I'll sign off.

Wildwood Stables and Mr. Rockefeller's Roads

We finally made it to Wildwood stables after 4100 miles from Keller, WA. It's a great setup with 6 Acadia Sociables, acouple of 20 passenger trolleys and 10 teams to go around. They put me to work as soon as I got here. I did the obligatory ride with each of the teamsters to hear their speal and the next day was handed the lines of a team and off I went with a load of carriage riders, pointing out the highlights of the ride and a general line of BS that would have given a farmer with hip waders fits. It's been five days of 16 hours a day of driving horses, feeding horses and shoveling road apples and I love it. The guys are great and the boss is a prince.

It's all about Rockefeller's Roads. I load up a gaggle of tourists and begin my spiel. "Hi, I'm Gregg and I came 4100 miles for the priveledge of driving horses on Mr. Rockefeller's Roads and I want to welcome you to my time machine as we take a trip back in time to a simpler and perhaps gentler time when life went at the break neck speed of 3 miles an hour. The speed a horse walks. We're going to have the opportunity to see how roads were built by muscle power and how ingeneous our great grandad had to be to forge a way through the wilderness." I say as I cluck to the team to step up and off we go hauling anywhere from 12 to 22 passengers on an Acadia Sociable or Trolley for an 1 hour, 2 hour or, if you're really into it, a charter tour of wherever you want to go on the 57 miles of hand built roads John D. Rockefeller built in 1914, so he could drive horse in the wilderness he loved so much. Quite a hobby for a guy whose papa started Standard Oil, now Exxon Mobil. Some kind of justice in that I'd say.

I'll be sharing more of the trip but for now I best hit the hay as the day starts at 4:30 a.m. and doesn't end untill the last horse is put to bed at 9 or 10 at night. TALLY HO!

Door County to Onieda, American Tourism at its finest

"See the USA from your Chevrolet". Remember that tune? That's us. We're so quick we only point at the sites as they roll by. "See Lena, der it is. Get back in da car." Actually, we did stop at Niagra Falls enough for me to do a watercolor sketch and take a gazillion pictures. Niagra has been a tourist carnival since the first Jesuit priest fell on his knees an shouted "Hallelua", "I can see the honeymoon capital of the world." Boy was he right. Like 'Old Faithfull' a case of loving something to death.

There used to be eagles nesting, osprey fishing and bear snagging fish but all that is gone. Lunar Island, situated in the falls, used to have a 'moonbow' but it went away due to the urban lights. Bolts have been drilled into the face of the falls to hold the soft limestone from eroding, otherwise the falls would move upriver as it has over the millenia. Talk about moving real estate. The Hilton at Niagra and all the other honeymoon suites would be out of business.

Curiously, there is a lot of electrictiy produced here. They can make a million megawatts of power but they only do so at night to allow some/half, of the water to spill over the falls during the day for the tourists. What with all the demand for power and brownouts here in the east, I can feature where there may be a time in the future when they won't be able to afford the luxury of spilling water for tourists.

We passed miles and miles of coal plants along the Great Lakes. Coal for steel and coal for electricity. Pretty dirty. Funky too. Makes me wonder how the fishery is holding up. We met a couple fishermen that went out almost daily and caught their limit of Brown trout and Salmon. That was impressive. 5 to 25 lb'ers! So it must be OK?

One of the things that has impressed Betts and I is the amount of rural America. We think of the east as an urban landscape but that is hardly so as there are miles and miles of farms tucked away in the country. I was going to say hills but I have yet to see one for the last 2000 miles. The highest thing around are the bridges. As an ex-Ironworker I have been impressed with some of the bridges we've crossed coming through the Great Lakes. Hundreds of feet in the air and miles long they are impressive. But Gawd! this is flat country. We're definitely westerners. We've got mts., and valleys, rivers and canyons in our blood. I'm glad to have traveled the flat lands so I can appreciate the west better.

This quick sketch shows 'Horseshoe Falls' from the U.S side looking at the many storied hotels of Niagra Falls, C.A. Water from Lake Erie, dashes down cataracts falling 187' over the falls. Horseshoe Falls is 2200' wide. Altogether, Horseshoe, Bridal Veil and American Falls is almost a mile wide. A great mist from the falls drenches everything for miles including the tourists.

Door County Dairy Farms

Oh well, didn't get into the Penninsula Art School show this year. I'll try again next year. Can't imagine a better way than to paint my way across America. This trip will pave the way and I'll know where the spots I want to paint are. Maybe take a little extra time upfront so I can get more painting done. Get back to Door County and paint some of the farms before they disappear to developers.

After the reception at PAS. Betts and I went out to Bleys Tavern and got to know the locals. Met Tony Palezsh (don't think I got that right). Tony was born and raised here on one of the dairy farms. He operates an excavation business. I learned all about installing septic systems. Great stuff, sounds like they have as many or more regulations here as we do out west. Curious thing out here is that the Penninsula has very little topsoil and alot of sand stone base rock so quite a few septic systems have to be 'heap leach' systems.

The tavern was something out of a Walt Whitman poem, one room, pool table and juke box at the crossroads, with a baseball field in a corn patch stretching to the horizon. Could have been right out of the movie, Field of Dreams. Folks still suck cigarettes inside the tavern. Wonder how long that will hold out. Washington passed a law you can't smoke in public buildings or private establishments and smokers can't be nearer than 25' from the entrance of a building.

Drinks were incredibly cheap. 1$ beer on tap and $3 shots. Been a long time since I had a Pabst Blue Ribbon. Needless to say, Tony and I got to talking about personal stuff. He was an orphan raised by a Penninsula farm family. "Got to tinkin' dat I might just well write da Catlic sisters down Green Bay, ta see if de ol dame would have me. Turns out I went from da youngest to the oldest of de fambly." says Tony drawing off a filtered camel. Now he's got brothers and sisters. "Days plumbers too. Must be in de blood. Go figure." Bout that time, pool cues start clattering on the floor and the big Swede bartender, about 289 lbs of nice guy yells cross the counter, "Don't mind ye hevin some good time but ye better keep dem sticks at attention ya yayhoos." He's got a T shirt says he's a volunteer fireman. We share with him that the fire alarm went off the other night in our room and he says, " O det right, heard about dat, must have been over to Hanks place. I just rolled over when I got the call and went back to sleep. Figured it was jest one of dem dam new alarms. Dey go off from the humidity all the time. " I could tell he was a bit perturbed by these faulty systems. Gotta say though, I'd welcome a volunteer outfit like his what with the big shoulders and his friendly red cheeked mug he could pack a whole family out of a burning building, no problem.t

It was about sundown and the full moon was coming up across the corn fields. Took about 100 pictures with my digital picture machine. Drove around taking snaps of some of the best looking farms I've ever seen. Land O' Lakes farms. Serious milkers. Tidy as a pin. I'm impressed with the crops they grow on this thin soil. Gotta be some hardy souls. Dairy is about the hardest most dedicated work on the planet and these folks have been doing it for generations. Hope they can hold out. What with the developers paying big bucks for the land and most farms gobbled up by corporate interests I imagine the lifestyle is in jepordy like so many other natural resourced based lifestyles. Tony has a nephew that's going organic, hoping that nich market can keep the lifestyle going.

Penninsula Art School Paintout, Fish Cr., WI

The Penninsula Art School Paintout was a great success. Over $60,000 of pleinair paintings were sold at the Gala Reception. 36 artists spent the week painting in and around Fish Creek, WI which is a resort location of the tip of WI above Green Bay on Lake Michigan. This picture shows the auction of the featured artists that did the quick draw. Everyone was alloted 2 hrs to do a painting in the area. The public enjoyed watching and asking questions as the artists worked. The paintings were then auctioned. I believe an average of $800 per painting was made and atleast 15 paintings were sold. All together the PAS did well. I congratulate the volunteers that did a fine job putting on a stellar show for the artists and public.


I didn't get into the "Featured Artists" show but will try to jury in next year. I may get in this year if the quick draw painting I did, merits an award. The jury will decide who, from those that participated in the quick draw will warrant an invitation into the show next year. I've got my fingers crossed but I'm not too happy with the painting I did. Oh well, I gave it a shot and will try to jury in next year.
I did this painting yesterday. I also met the owners Dennis and Mary Bley. They had just purchased a Belgian mare and Dennis was seeing how she went. I noticed them working and stopped to visit and had a long talk about horses, horse logging and farming. Like most places logging and farming is disappearing in this area as it gets developed by tourism. Since S. Dakota It has been intriguing to compare the farms back east to those back home. Not very many

farmers out west do silage whereas out east everyone does it hence the fields and fields of corn and soybeans.
Many of the artists complain of all the green but I have been finding the colors delightful. Everything seems to be suffused with Cerulean .

The adventure to Maine continues.........

Time out for pictures of the grandkids. This little impadoodle is my grandson. Must be Kaiden but I can't really tell as the twins are identical to me. Couple of real Jokers. As you can see they're well taken care of. The adventure continues. We got to the Pennensula in N. Wisconsin and checked into our adobe only to wake up at 2a.m. to the annoying sound of a fire alarm in our room. Long story short, the humidity set of the fire alarm. Good way to meet the locals even if it is the local fire department.

Museum Adventures

My first opportunity on the trip was to stop at the Wild Bill Cody Museum to see a mural by John Clymer. Never did find the Clymer but enjoyed the collection of western art. I was especially glad to find Remington's plein air work, studies done on location in the west, far better than the studio work he did. The Plein air work of an artist is an opportunity to see the artist at work. How he interpreted the moment. The skill with which he applied the knowledge of technique he has, bereft of message ,yet containing the essence of the artist's character.


Stopping in Waterton, SD, to see my grandkids, I discovered the local art hero, Terry Redlin. WOW! Gotta be impressed with the level of commercial success an artist can have. A temple to Redlin's art, there is the Redlin Art Center, a 30,000 sq' marble mansion housing Redlin's paintings and prints, as well everything imaginable you can print his work on, from shower curtains to coffe mugs. It is easy for me to dislike the work of Terry Redlin. It suffers from what I call the 'log cabin syndrome', where an artist finds success at a particular thing, then never moves beyond that success. I do appreciate what he does say, in-as-much-as he opened my eyes to the horizontal light of the prairie. His drawings are exceptional, again, raw, spontaneous studies of the world around him in which his eye, technique and personality shine through.

Part of what has been so fun about this trip is discovering the art that lies hidden in the bowels of america. I had no idea what was to be found in Minneapolis, MN. Google found the Minneapolis Art Institute for me and an exhibit of Nordic work from 1700 to 1900. What else would you expect from the land of the Lutherens? Sponsor? Sons of Norway! Go figure! An exceptional show taking me from the classic style of Romantics in the vein of Bierstadt, heavy glazes and detailed brushwork to that of Edvard Muench, a.k.a. 'The Scream'. Here is a sample of an exceptional masterwork, probably 5'x8', by Carl Larson, may be the most reknown of the Scandanavian artists. Evidently this big painting was done outside on location. As you can see, you have to be one dedicated S.O.B. to paint in the land of the North. If you look closely he is wearing a pair of shaggy boots that would make a pair of Sorrel's look lightweight. This painting was shown at the Paris Salon. I'll bet is was the only snow scene in the show.
One of the things I have come to understand is my attachment to Realism. I have come to learn that Realism is a very relative term. Artists are shackled to the muse and that muse is nature, from which we derive our knowledge, whether that knowledge leads us down the path of abstraction or a literal interpretation of what we see. What is important is to be engaged and devoted to the process. To be the filter by which nature flows through the brush to the canvas, work that becomes frozen in time to be discovered by future aspirants. It reminds me quite a bit of the fossil footprints I saw in the desert of the Badlands or Borlund's Mt. Rushmore. That effort sure should be around for a while!

Wildlife of Wyoming