Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Baula in the Clouds

Baula in the Clouds
seen from the ring road driving north in Iceland
on July 26, 2016, sketched on July 27, 2016
10" x 7", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
#3 graphite on 140 lb. Lanaquarelle hot press
100% rag acid free watercolor paper
framed, $170 + $9.35 sales tax + $15.65 S&H = $195.00

Saturday, July 23, 2016

Colors Seated




Colors Seated
Adirondack chairs on the lawn at the Lyme Academy
College of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, Connecticut
on July 21, 2016 , sketched on July 22, 2016
7" x 5", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $100 + $5.50 sales tax + $9.50 shipping = $115.00


Colors Seated...
(An Ode to David Dewey)
by Bruce McMillan

...in the sun,
dull, not one, 

basking in
hues within, 

organic,
botanic, 

flowers to
catch the dew, 

water's touch
not too much 

till art's done
seated fun.

Text and photo and art
above © 2016 Bruce McMillan

Dewey Art Video
David Dewey, Professor Emeritus
at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts,
a College of the University of New Haven, gave
a fabulous 47 minute talk on November 5, 2015 about his
watercolor art. You may watch the video online
at the college web site HERE or
directly on You Tube HERE.
David's web site is HERE.
David's 2012 figures exhibition at Lyme HERE.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Here Today - Jericho Plein Air Festival

Here Today
along the road at the Jericho Plein Air Festival
Common chicory (Cichorium intybus) in Jericho, Vermont
sketched plein air on July 16, 2016
10" x 8", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press fine grain 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
$200 at the Emile A. Gruppe Gallery, Jericho, Vermont HERE

If not sold during the show, it's available here
 framed, $220 + $12.10 sales tax + $17.90 S&H = $250.00


Here Today Study I
along the road at the Jericho Plein Air Festival
Common chicory (Cichorium intybus) in Jericho, Vermont
sketched plein air on July 16, 2016
8" x 8", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press fine grain 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $100 + $5.50 sales tax + $9.50 shipping = $115.00


Here Today Study II
along the road at the Jericho Plein Air Festival
Common chicory (Cichorium intybus) in Jericho, Vermont
sketched plein air on July 16, 2016
8" x 8", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press fine grain 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $100 + $5.50 sales tax + $9.50 shipping = $115.00


Sixth Annual
Jericho Plein Air Festival

in Jericho, Vermont
Exhibition July 17th through August 7th, 2016
at the Emile A. Gruppe Gallery
Web site HERE


1
After some quick morning
showers it was a great day to paint
in Jericho, Vermont. While Ruth was drawn
to the edge of a hay field, I was drawn to
the delicate blue chicory flowers that open
during the day, interested
in focusing on one.


2
So I did two studies before doing the final painting for the show.

  3
Double duty day: It was an umbrella and then a parasol.

4
The next day, all of the over sixty-five
participants paintings were hung
for the opening reception, a great time.

5
Mine is for sale, $200, bottom center.
 
6
Ruth's is on sale too, (top right), $200,
Sun comes for Hay, 8" x 8",
and is posted in detail with more photos of the day
on Ruth's web site HERE

7
Fabulous event, great painters, and wonderful hosts,
mixed in with the weather made for a
grand plein air day.

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Dark Harbor Dock

Dark Harbor Dock
at Dark Harbor, Grand Manan Island, NB, Canada
sketched plein air on July 6, 2016
7" x 5", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $100 + $5.50 sales tax + $9.50 shipping = $115.00

Friday, July 15, 2016

White Head Dock Traps...


White Head Dock
Traps Ready
on Whitehead Island off , Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada,
sketched plein air on July 5, 2016
12" x 9", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 300 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press fine grain 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $170 + $9.35 sales tax + $15.65 S&H = $195.00

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Pettes Cove Geology

Pettes Cove Geology
near North Head, Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada,
sketched plein air on July 9, 2016
7" x 5", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
hot press 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $100 + $5.50 sales tax + $9.50 shipping = $115.00


 

My painting set up...
 


The scene, Swallowtail Lighthouse top left,
note the unusual white rock on the right
Photos by Ruth


 Pettes Cove Overcast Study
near North Head, Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada,
sketched plein air on July 9, 2016
6" x 6", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $100 + $5.50 sales tax + $9.50 shipping = $115.00
Grand Manan Rock Cliff Art
 
1
The Road across the Island,
east to west, to Dark Harbor
The Geology
"From Dark Harbor a single massive flow formed cliffs up to 100 meters high along much of the western shoreline. As it slowly cooled in a huge lava lake, vertical columns formed from bottom to top. The basalt columns, well developed, appear to be continuous, not interrupted by flow boundaries or horizontal segregations."

2
Art happens.
 
3
Human expression...
 
4
...flowers and...
 
5
...the joy of art can't be contained by youth.

Grand Swallowtail Lighthouse


Grand Swallowtail
Lighthouse Sketch II
at North Head, Grand Manan, NB Canada
sketched plein air on July 9, 2016
12" x 9", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press fine grain 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $170 + $9.35 sales tax + $15.65 S&H = $195.00


Grand Swallowtail
Lighthouse Sketch I
at North Head, Grand Manan, NB Canada
sketched plein air on July 9, 2016
12" x 9", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
hot press 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $100 + $5.50 sales tax + $9.50 shipping = $115.00


 
My painting setup at North Head,
Grand Manan, NB Canada looking east
to Swallowtail Lighthouse on an overcast
rainy day, July 7, 2016

Swallowtail Lighthouse Art
from the 1800s to 2016

1
Swallowtail Lighthouse,
Grand Manan

Robert Pilot, (1898-1967)
Newfoundland and Quebec, Canada

Oil on canvas, 24" x 18"
The Sobey Art Foundation, Halifax
"Robert Pilot was born in St. John's, Newfoundland, in 1898. At the age of 12 he moved to Montréal with his mother, on the occasion of her marriage to renowned artist Maurice Cullen. It was due to his step-father's influence that young Robert's interest in art began to grow. In his teenage years he would often help Cullen in his studio. They took frequent sketching trips in the surrounding countryside. Soon Pilot moved on to study under William Brymner, at the Art Association of Montréal School of Fine Arts, and then to Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie Julian in 1920. By the time he returned home two years later his paintings had been exhibited in the Parisian Salon. Although his work was included in their first exhibition, Robert Pilot was one of three artists who declined to join the Group of Seven upon its formation in 1920. He loved painting images of Canada and its people, but did not share the Group's adoration of its savage wilderness. Pilot painted Québec's snow-covered vistas and habitant farmers for the majority of his artistic life. He travelled extensively through France, Italy, Spain, Morocco, and England but never made his home outside of Québec. He served Canada in both World Wars and was promoted to officer during the Italian Campaign of WWII. Besides J.W. Morrice and his step-father, Pilot most admired the life and work of French artist, Camille Pissarro. He was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1934 and served as its President from 1952-54. By 1943 Pilot had started to teach art at the Montréal Art Association School of Fine Arts. He continued to be an integral part of the city's art scene until his death in 1967."

2
Swallowtail Light, Grand Manan, 1876
Samuel W. Griggs (1827-1898), US
Oil on canvas, 24" x 14"
"Samuel W. Griggs was listed as an architect in the Boston City directory from 1848 to 1852 and as an artist from 1854 until his death. The competency of his work strongly suggests that he had professional training, and it is believed that he studied under Bierstadt before Bierstadt was well know. Griggs's earliest datable painting of a White Mountain scene is 1858. That year he exhibited three paintings, one of which was a White Mountain view (View on the Pemigewasset River), in an exhibition coordinated by Albert Bierstadt and held in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He also exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum from 1855 to 1863 as well as the Boston Art Club at various times. At the time of his death he was living at 63 Studio Building in Boston."
        "Because of the proximity of Boston to the White Mountains, artists from Boston were the predominate visitors to capture White Mountain views. Beginning with Benjamin Champney in 1838, and continuing through the 19th century, his friends and fellow artists traveled to the mountains. In 1854 these artists, including Francis Seth Frost (1825-1902), Alfred T. Ordway (1821-1897), Samuel Lancaster Gerry (1813-1891), and Samuel W. Griggs (1827-1898), were the founding members of the Boston Art Club, which for many years became a venue to view White Mountain paintings."


3
Swallowtail Light House, Grand Manan
Samuel Peter Rolt Triscott (1847-1925), UK / US
Oil, 23.5" x 17.5", 1890
"Samuel Peter Rolt Triscott was a marine painter, photographer, and teacher. He was born in England where he studied both civil engineering and painting. While in London, he studied under Philip Mitchell and at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolors. He came to the United States in 1871 and settled in Boston. A specialist in watercolors, he became an influential teacher in this medium. He was a member of the Boston Art Club and the Boston Society of Watercolor Painters.
        During the 1880s and 1890s he exhibited paintings of a wide variety of New England subjects. He exhibited at the Boston Art Club (1880-1905), the American Watercolor Society (1898), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1892-1893), the Brooklyn Art Association (1881-1882), and the Art Institute of Chicago (1889-1902).
        His last known address was Monhegan, ME where he settled in the 1890s. Triscott and William Claus made extensive use of artistic photography on Monhegan, providing the illustrations for A. G. Pettigill's article, Monhegan: Historical and Picturesque in New England Magazine, September, 1989. For the next two decades, Triscott commercially promoted and sold his photographs of the cliffs and surf of Monhegan.


4
Swallowtail Lighthouse
Milton J. Burns (1853-1953), US
Oil, on display at the U.S. Coast Guard Museum 
in New London, Connecticut

5
Swallowtail from Pettes Cove
Ruth Kaldor, US (1951- )
140 lb. cold pressed acid free watercolor paper
10" x 7", July 9, 2016
The Artist's Web site HERE

Saturday, July 9, 2016

That Green Grand Manan...


That Green
Grand Manan Ledge
off South Head, seen looking down from the 300' (91 m) cliffs
of South Head Light on Grand Manan Island, NB, Canada
painted plein air on July 4, 2016
7" x 5", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $100 + $5.50 sales tax + $9.50 shipping = $115.00




That ledge is way, way down there. 
 My plein air set up, way up,
300' high on a point with the sea
on three sides.


South Head,
Grand Manan Island
Art of the 1800s

1
At the South Head,
Grand Manan

Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837-1908)
Oil on canvas

"Alfred Thompson Bricher, born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was a painter associated with White Mountain (NH) art and the Hudson River School. By the 1980s, more than seventy years after he died, he began to be credited as one of the nineteenth century's greatest maritime painters. A self-taught luminist, he explored the effects of light and how it reflected, refracted, and absorbed on landscapes and seascapes.
    In 1868 he moved to New York City, and soon afterward he began using watercolors in preference to oils. In 1873 he was chosen for membership in the American Watercolor Society. In the 1870s, he primarily did maritime theme paintings, with attention to watercolor paintings of landscape, marine, and coast-wise scenery. He often spent summers in Grand Manan, where he produced such notable works as Morning at Grand Manan (1878) seen HERE."


2
Grand Manan Island,
Bay of Fundy

Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900)
Oil on canvas, 1852

"Born in Hartford in 1826, he was the privileged son of Joseph Church, a jeweler and banker of Hartford, who interceded with Connecticut scion and collector Daniel Wadsworth to persuade the landscape painter Thomas Cole to accept his son as a pupil. Church became an American landscape painter, a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, and perhaps best known for painting large panoramic landscapes, often depicting mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets, but also sometimes depicting dramatic natural phenomena that he saw during his travels to the Arctic and Central and South America, before this run-on sentence. Church's paintings put an emphasis on light and a romantic respect for natural detail. In his later years, Church painted classical Mediterranean and Middle Eastern scenes and cityscapes. The artist's house and grounds remain today one of the exceptional historic sites in the New York State park system." About
Church HERE

3
Rocks and Moss off
Grand Manan Island, Canada

Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900)
Oil on canvas, 1851-52
See more of Church's art HERE

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Whitehead Island Harbor...


Whitehead Island Harbor
Docked
in the fog, lobster traps ready on 
Whitehead Island, New Brunswick, Canada
at the ferry dock to nearby Grand Manan
sketched plein air on June 5, 2016
7" x 5", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $100 + $5.50 sales tax + $9.50 shipping = $115.00

Monday, July 4, 2016

Looking East from Castalia Marsh


Looking East
from Castalia Marsh
on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada
sketched plein air on July 4, 2016
7" x 5", Winsor & Newton and Holbein watercolors, and
Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $100 + $5.50 sales tax + $9.50 shipping = $115.00