The View from Watson’s Farm, Jamestown, RI

Random Musing No. 1

The human eye has a range of 120°, mostly peripheral vision, compared to the camera’s typical 200° or more. That is why the figures sometimes seem distorted at the edges of a photograph. We make up for this seeming deficit by moving our focus (in movements called “saccades”) around a scene to build up a gestalt awareness of its appearance.

A painting, curated by human intelligence, is superior in every respect to a photograph, except for how long it takes to make it. If cameras took three hours to create the exact same image as they do now in a split second, there would be no question as to which medium people would choose when they needed an image recorded.

Maine Paintings

Back from my daughter’s wedding in Maine! One of the benefits of being a helpless male is that during the preparations for important events like this you are actually in the way and so are encouraged to take off and do your own thing. My wife insisted I go off and do these paintings! I know better than to ignore a direct order from my wife.

This is a painting of Ripley Creek, at a little bend in the road in Tenants Harbor.

It’s directly opposite my wife’s favorite view, which I painted in 1998:

The second, done the day after the wedding, is a view of the Camden Hills from Rte 133.

I love the Camden Hills and my original intention, when my wife suggested I bring my paints, was to redo one of the views I had painted more than 20 years ago, in 1996 and 1997.  I was very disappointed to find that the views I had painted years earlier were now marred by new construction and ticky tacky, but I did manage to find this almost untrammeled view.

Here are the 1996/1997 paintings:

https://www.facebook.com/ipaintwhatisee/

Eighty Dollars Worth of Art Supplies

 

There it is.I was at the art store the other day to buy turpentine. THEY WERE OUT OF TURPENTINE. This was not Michael’s, this was Jerry’s Art-a-Rama, a reputable supply chain. The guy apologized to me and said someone had been in a few days earlier and cleaned them out; he then tried to sell me Gamsol. Out of forlorn hope I asked him about Flake White and he had some extremely overpriced small tubes which I didn’t buy (this just came in the mail). That got me started on the subject of metallic pigments and their relative toxicity. I said why worry about lead when cadmium and chrome are just as bad and he wordlessly pointed at a sign hung above the paint section: Winsor Newton is phasing cadmium colors and replacing them with Azo pigments.

It’s all the fault of the fucking namby-pamby Europeans. Stop trying to make my hobby safe! Are you going to restrict welders to using sparklers? Can sculptors now only work in styrofoam? And the same message to artists who are wrapped up in safety issues: if you feel obliged to wear a respirator and rubber gloves to paint in oils, DON’T PAINT IN OILS. MY access to potentially hazardous materials does not affect YOUR ability to avoid them. Stop trying to police my materials!

Grr.

Plein Air Season!

Just getting started on outdoor painting. Here are a few new ones.

 

 

Wendy’s

Mystic

Pawtucket Falls

Siberian Iris

Motif No. 2 to the N minus 1 (Solar Farm, Foxborough)

September – Part 1

Thought I’d put this in now and, hopefully, remember to update it at the end of the month. That’s Hull, a lovely little town on an island in Boston Harbor, a view of the Neponset River in Foxborough, and yesterday’s painting, a meadow in Mendon, MA.

Hull, Oils

Duckweed, Oils

Mendon, Oils

August

OK, the first painting is a still life I painted in grad school 30-odd years ago. I was showing it to someone on Facebook. The Dighton painting is a result of a little game I like to play, “Ask the Local.” I stopped a pedestrian and asked her where I should paint and she sent me to this beauty spot on the Berkley line. Westport is on the Massachusetts south shore, Third Beach is in Newport, and Squantum Point is in Boston 1000 yards from the big painted oil tank on 93. The airport is in the distance and I couldn’t resist including one of the jets that flew directly overhead at a disconcertingly low altitude regularly.

The Still Life That Dare Not Speak Its Name, Oils

Dighton, Oils

Westport, Oils

Third Beach

Squantum Point, Oils

July

Landscape season in full bloom! A painting of my wife’s garden, a nameless pond near Purgatory Chasm in Sutton, one last gasp of Kate’s portrait session, which closed for the summer, my third visit to Slater Mill, and some additional exploration of Naragansett Bay in Rhode lsland.

Summer Garden, Oils

Sutton, Oils

Grinnell’s Beach

Teddy’s Beach

Pawtucket River at Slater Mill III, Oils

Portrait and Hands Study, Oils

June

More portraits from Kate’s portrait session, my second visit to Slater Mill, and a quick jaunt to Hingham, MA.

Lola, Oils

Steve, Oils

Pawtucket River at Slater Mill II, Oils

Hingham, Oils

May

Another portrait done over an imprimatura. The nude was a little bit of goofing around, just because I didn’t want to end up with a tiny drawing of the standing figure in a pose that was, to be honest, not all that interesting.

After I painted Eugene, who looked like an Italian barber in his striped shirt and pomaded hair, I thought to myself, “He looks awfully familiar and when I checked I had done another portrait of him a few years ago, the exact same view except back then he had a scruffy beard and man bun.

I’ve been driving back and forth from Massachusetts to Connecticut on Route 95 for nearly 30 years and must have driven past the sign for Slater Mill a hundred times. I finally decided to check it out and, rockin’ views! You’ll see in the June posting that I went back there a couple of times, and there are still paintings I want to do there.

Eugene, Oils

Pawtucket River at Slater Mill I, Oils

Life Drawing