Street scene from Damariscotta

Main Street in Damariscotta, oil on canvas, 8X10

Yesterday I had less than two hours to paint with my student Loren in Damariscotta before I took off for Castine. I love the gaps on the water side of Maine Main Streets, with harbors glimpsed behind them. The buildings themselves are venerable and full of character, and the gaps speak of transition to a sparkling, clearer, brighter future.

Two quiet hours with a friend was in itself a nice transition from my concerns back in Rochester into the busy brushwork we will all be doing at Castine Plein Air for the next three days. If you’re ever in the mid-coast region, come by and see this lovely small city. Plan to take time for a self-guided walking tour of historic sites; Castine has an amazingly rich and varied history.

Me, painting. That was fun!

Castine is off the beaten track, so the tourists trundling up US 1 never see it. It has almost an otherworldly quality because of this. This morning at 7:30 AM, we painters will stand in the village green and have our painting boards stamped. It remains to be seen how we capture that quality.

If you come to Castine this weekend, stop by the Castine Historical Society and pick up a copy of their new self-guided  walking tour map. I immediately marked mine up with potential painting sites. (Photo credit, Castine Historical Society.)

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Censored. Me. Really.

Shuttered. Closed down. Censored. Moi? Really?

My duo show with Stu Chait, Intersections of Form, Color, Time and Space was closed on July 18 by RIT-NTID’s Dyer Gallery because the nude figure paintings might be offensive to young campus visitors. It seems like just yesterday that I was saying issues of censorship didn’t raise their ugly heads here in Rochester.

At our first meeting with the gallery, I specifically asked whether nude figure paintings would be a problem. I pointed out that the primary work dealt with difficult themes of how women are marginalized in the 21st century. I am a feminist, and my figure work deals with things like religious submission, bondage, slavery, prostitution, obesity, exploitation, etc.

The Laborer Resting, 36X48, oil on canvas. Available.

These paintings were reviewed, accepted and hung by the gallery with no problems. The opening was well-attended, and there were children present. (For that matter, my son regularly schleps paintings for me, and his biggest complaint is that he’d rather be using his computer.) The show was featured in RIT’s University News  and mentionedin City newspaper. It was not until administrators saw the work that it was deemed unacceptable.

The cynic in me thinks that if I painted coy, sexy Odalisques there would have been no objection to the show. Young people are exposed to sexually-charged but non-intellectual images every day; in fact, this is part of the problem I am painting about.

Meanwhile, kids who go to malls are exposed to images like this on an everyday basis. And this really is obscene, because it uses sex to sell clothing.

If difficult issues of women’s rights can’t be examined in a college gallery, where can they be examined?

I have occasionally pulled individual pieces that were too challenging. Last month I had a show at AVIV Café and Gallery at Bethel Church on East Avenue. The director pulled one work because its depiction of starving Africa frightened children. But since he left the bulk of the work intact, this was no problem.

Aviva Sleeping, 36X24, challenges the notion that an obese woman cannot be a beautiful one.

Of course, I’m in Maine, so Stu Chait and Sandy Quang had to deal with the work of pulling, wrapping and moving around 60 large paintings. And visitors to the show will find the gallery empty. What a pity.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Off the grid in midcoast Maine

Lichens on the well head at my new home. One lowers the bucket to get water. How cool is that?

I arrived at my temporary home in mid-coast Maine at mid-day yesterday. Despite ample warning to charge my toys, I managed to run my cell phone, my laptop, and my Kindle down to nothing, which is why this post is late.

I’m staying in a 12X16 cabin owned by dedicated off-the-gridders. It’s set back in the woods, and it has a living area, windows with screens, a dry sink, a wood stove, a propane stove and a sleeping loft. I have a plastic bucket for my human waste, and any other garbage must be packed out, which is a strong impetus to not buy lots of packaged goods.

My beautiful bike, waiting for me to use it while teaching in Belfast.

As a city dweller, I notice first that it’s shockingly quiet and shockingly dark at night. But the beauty of modern America is that even in the deep woods, we have 4G, so I was able to check Facebook before going to sleep.

The amenities I find primitive would have been considered luxurious by our pioneer ancestors, desperate to get a roof over their heads before winter. They would be considered luxurious by the standards of many of the world’s poor.

The powder room.

I plan to reflect a bit on this during the weeks I’m here, but that will have to wait a bit. I leave tomorrow for Castine, ME, where I’m participating in Castine Plein Air. I’ll be staying with a friend who not only has hot water, she has a guest room with a bath. Whoo hoo!

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

My paint list

With the palette I outline below, you can get anywhere you need to go on the color wheel. 

I’ve been using RGH paints for several years. I like them because they’re relatively inexpensive, they have a high pigment load, and they don’t add driers. In addition, they’re made in a small workshop in Colonie, NY.

On Friday I stopped at RGH to talk to them about finalizing a paint list for my students.

Paints are often sold with poetic names like “Naples Yellow” that mean nothing. The real pigment by that name, antimony yellow, is toxic. Alizarin crimson and Indian yellow are both fugitive (meaning they fade). When people buy paints using those old romantic names, they are in fact buying a mixture of pigments that approximate the handling and color of the original pigments.

Colors like cerulean are very expensive, so manufacturers make mixes that approximate them, which are labeled as "hues". But mixes of any kind give you less value and flexibility than buying the straight colors and learning to mix yourself.

Even when manufacturers use the same pigments there can be wide variations in color in the finished product, depending on the pigment load, how finely the pigment is ground, what oil is used for the binder, etc.

I carried my palette box into RGH’s shop and Roger and I spent an hour comparing pigments. This is the palette I am now recommending to all my students, or to anyone else who wants to paint like me:

Burnt sienna
Cadmium orange
Cadmium yellow light
Indian yellow transparent
Ivory black
Mars yellow deep
Prussian blue
Quinacridone magenta
Raw sienna
Titanium white
Ultramarine blue

For all colors except Titanium white, a 37 ml tube is sufficient. For Titanium white a 150 ml tube is necessary. Order them here.

I buy my paints in cans and put them in a plastic pill box but for most painters tubes are fine.

Note that this palette contains neither a red nor a green. I’ve concluded that neither is necessary on the everyday palette. If I were to add them, I’d add chromium oxide green (the color of summer foliage in the northeast) and naphthol red, which approximates cadmium red but doesn’t dry out as fast (or cost as much).

If you want to learn more about pigments, the best source of information is the Handprint website. Although designed for watercolor, its information is true across all media.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

But enough about me...

Photographer Iván Ramos was at the opening of my show, “God+Man” at Roberts Wesleyan’s Davison Gallery in April. Yesterday he sent me a slew of photos from the event. Sit back and enjoy.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Courtesy of Iván Ramos.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.