Ledge Sea / Mountain Sky

Ledge Sea / Mountain Sky

coastal ledge at the
East Point Audubon Sanctuary
in Biddeford Pool, Biddeford, Maine
painted plein air on May 24, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $150

Huge Oak in Spring

Huge Oak in Spring

in the back fields behind
my home in Shapleigh, Maine
painted plein air May 27, 2021
12" x 9" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $500

The plein air set up...

The Sky Arrived

The Sky Arrived

in the back fields behind
my home in Shapleigh, Maine
painted plein air May 27, 2021
18" x 14" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $900

The plein air set up...

I was honored to not only be juried into Maine Audubon's 2021 Brush with Nature plein air event, but beyond words when they selected one of my paintings submitted, this one, to promote the upcoming plein air event, painting Sept 9-12, 2021.

 

East Point Edge Tiding

East Point Tiding

at the East Point Audubon Sanctuary
in Biddeford Pool, Biddeford, Maine
painted plein air on May 24, 2021
8" x 10" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Prismacolor waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

Ledge to the See

Ledge to the See

at the East Point Audubon Sanctuary
in Biddeford Pool, Biddeford, Maine
painted plein air on May 24, 2021
22" x 16" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $950

The plein air set up...
on a windy, windy day.
No plein air shade umbrella on this day...
See more about this Maine Audubon site HERE

Seaside Wild Spring Shrub

Seaside Wild Spring Shrub

at the East Point Audubon Sanctuary
in Biddeford Pool, Biddeford, Maine
painted plein air on May 24, 2021
18" x 14" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press
rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $700

Wood Island Light
is in the top right distance...
See more about this Maine Audubon site HERE

 

Seven Quaker Ladies Study

Seven Quaker Ladies Study

Quaker ladies, also called Bluets, (Houstonia caerulea) growing in my yard on May 18, 2021,  painted May 21, 2021 7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper.
$150

Stand Out Stand Outs

Stand Out Stand Outs

Quaker Ladies Study 4 -
Quaker ladies, also called Bluets, (Houstonia caerulea)
growing in my yard on May 18, 2021,  painted May 21, 2021
5" x 7" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $150

Quaker Ladies Study 2

Quaker Ladies Study 2

Quaker ladies, also called Bluets, (Houstonia caerulea)
growing in my yard on May 18, 2021,  painted May 21, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $150

Quaker Ladies Study 1

Quaker Ladies Study 1

Quaker ladies, also called Bluets, (Houstonia caerulea)
growing in my yard on May 18, 2021,  painted May 21, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $150

A Bluets Flower Gallery

A Bluets Flower Gallery

It's extremely rare to find a painting of Quaker Ladies (Houstonia caerulea) in a museum. Perhaps, because they're so small and delicate, they've not been the subjects of artists other than botanical artists. They're a perennial species native to eastern Canada and the eastern United States, whose flowers are also called Azure Bluets, Little Blues, and Little Innocents.

Note: Though these paintings below show Bluets as blue flowers, they are often almost white with a hint of blue.

1
Houstonia Caerulea
Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708-1770), German
From a book which was a lithograph impression
Book source: Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, US

Georg Dionysius Ehret was a botanist and entomologist known for his botanical illustrations. His original art illustrations have sold for more than $43,000 USD. Ehret's originals may be found at the Natural History Museum in London, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Royal Society, London, the Lindley Library at the Royal Horticultural Society, the Victoria and Albert Museum, at the University Library of Erlangen, the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden, and the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The genus Ehretia (with about 50 species) was named in his honor. Read more about Ehret on Wiki HERE.

2
Quaker Lady (Houstonia caerulea)
Unknown Artist
Commercial color lithograph, 1.5" x 2.75" (w x h), 1890
from the Flowers series cards (i.e., "baseball cards")
for Old Judge Cigarettes issued by Goodwin & Company
Printer: George S. Harris & Sons (American, Philadelphia)
See all 50 flower cards in the MET collection HERE.

3
29 cent Bluets Stamp
Karen Mallory, American
Lithograph ink on paper
United States Postal Service
Issued July 24, 1992

Fifty colorful, blooming native plants dotted the philatelic landscape with the 29-cent Wildflowers commemorative stamps issued July 24, 1992, in Columbus, Ohio, host city for the AmeriFlora '92 International Floral and Garden Exposition. Fifty wildflowers for 50 states, though no state identification in this bouquet, the stamps were issued in panes of fifty different designs. Designed by Karen Mallary of Anacortes, Washington, the stamps were produced by Ashton-Potter America, Inc., in the offset lithography process.

4
Bluet
Artist Unknown
Art published in Wildflowers of Canada,
The Montreal Star, 1895

5
Bluets Pattern
Torey Wahlstrom, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Watercolor on paper
The artist has exhibited at North Carolina Botanical Garden,
Blowing Rock Art Museum, Spartanburg Art Museum,
and North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
The artist's website is HERE.

6
Quakerladies (Houstonia caerulea)
Mary Vaux Walcott (1860-1940), American
Watercolor on paper, 7" x 10" (w x h), April 24, 1917
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of the artist

Smithsonian notes:
Also known as Mary Morris Vaux, Mary Morris Walcott, Mary Morris Vaux Walcott, and Mrs. Charles Doolittle Walcott, she was born in Philadelphia and died in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada. She painted in Washington, D.C. and British Columbia, Canada.

Mary Morris Vaux received a set of watercolor paints at age eight and began experimenting with painting flowers. After her mother's death when Mary was nineteen, she assumed the responsibility of looking after her two younger brothers and her father. The family spent summers in the Canadian Rockies, where Mary and her brothers studied mineralogy and recorded the flow of glaciers in drawings and photographs. After 1887, Mary returned to western Canada almost every summer with her brothers and became an active mountain climber, outdoorswoman, and photographer. One summer a botanist asked her to paint a rare blooming arnica; her success in recording the flower encouraged her to concentrate on botanical illustration. For many years Mary Vaux explored difficult terrain in the Canadian Rockies, looking for important flowering species to paint.
In 1913 she met Charles Doolittle Walcott, then secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, when he was conducting geological research. They were married a year later. Beginning the following summer, the couple spent from three to four months each season in the Canadian Rockies, where Dr. Walcott continued his geological and paleontological studies. During these summers Mary Vaux Walcott painted hundreds of watercolor studies of native flowers.

At the urging of botanists and wildflower enthusiasts, a selection of four hundred of her illustrations was published in 1925 by the Smithsonian Institution in a five-volume edition titled North American Wild Flowers. In 1935 she contributed the illustrations to the volume North American Pitcher Plants, also published by the Smithsonian.

7
Bluets
Kate Anderson, central Massachusetts
Acrylic, May 4, 2021
"Sketched some of the tiniest flowers
I could find." -Kate Anderson
The artist's web site is HERE.

8
Houstonia caerulea
Jennifer Steen Booher, Bar Harbor, Maine
Photograph, 18" x 22", 2020
Uprooted series, one of thirteen works
$300 USD

Jennifer Booher is an artist and photographer living in Bar Harbor, Maine. She received a BA in Art History and Asian Studies at Vassar College in 1989, and a master's degree in Landscape, and is a UMVA (Union of Maine Visual Artists) member. The artist's website is HERE.

 

Now and Soon

Now and Soon

Flowering Quince (Chaenomeles × superba) in my yard at
Shapleigh, Maine on May 1, 2021 painted May 8, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

Behind Narcissus

Behind Narcissus

the back of a Narcissus blooming flower
on May 1, 2021, painted May 9, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $150

Forsythia by Fine Artists Gallery

Forsythia by Fine Artists Gallery

1
Forsythia and Pear in Bloom
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975), American
Oil on canvas, 29" x 38" (w x h), 1968
Smithsonian American Art Museum

The building visible beyond the foliage is Porter's home in Southampton, New York, which was the setting for many of his paintings.

2
Forsythia, April
Lois Dodd (1927- ), American
Oil on Masonite, 13" x 10" (w x h), 2007
Alexandre Gallery, New York

3
Forsythia
Alex Katz (1927- ), American
Oil on canvas, 48" x 78" (w x h), 1997
Christie's 2004 auction sold: $89,625 USD

4
Spring Interior
Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), American
Oil on canvas, 25" x 30" (w x h), 1927
Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Boston MFA Notes:
"Sheeler settled with his wife, Katharine, in the rural community of South Salem, New York in 1926, furnishing his new home, a bungalow-like building, with early American antiques that he'd been collecting since the mid-1910s. Shortly thereafter, he began work on three large still life compositions, one in tempera and two in oil, all of which develop an innovative formula of still lifes situated within a domestic setting, a theme he had introduced in his painting Interior (1926, Whitney Museum of American Art). The mood of these pictures is cheerful; one can imagine they reflect Sheeler's feelings of optimism and well-being. The arrangement of forms seems conventional and the objects depicted are familiar and ordinary: forsythia, and Sheeler's often-used candle stand and a glass mug. The architectural features in the background are undoubtedly those of Sheeler's house in South Salem.

Spring Interior was first shown at an exhibition in Charlestown, New Hampshire, in late August 1927. Juliana Force, the energetic manager of New York's Whitney Studio Club, had rented Maxstoke, a huge house in Charlestown, as a summer residence for the members of the Club. Sheeler spent several weeks there, as did Edward Hopper and others. The culmination of the summer's activities was a group exhibition in the drawing rooms of Maxstoke. There Spring Interior attracted the attention of Juliana Force, who subsequently acquired it for the newly established Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1954 the Whitney exchanged it, and several other works, with the Downtown Gallery for Architectural Cadences. William H. Lane bought Spring Interior from the Downtown Gallery in 1954 for his foundation's collection of American modernism and donated it to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as part of his large gift in 1990."

5
Delphinium/Forsythia
Stanley Bielen (1957- ), Polish born American
Oil on paper mounted on board, 5" x 7" (w x h), 2017
$1,500 USD
Somerville Manning Gallery, Wilmington, Philadelphia,
and in historic Breck's Mill on the Brandywine River

Stanley Bielen was born in Poland. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. He exhibits nationally and is represented in public and private collections, including the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. He lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Bridgton, Maine.

6
Barn and Forsythia III
Wolf Kahn, (1927-2020), German born American
Lithograph in colors on wove paper
108 total edition includes 18 artist's proofs
38" x 28" (w x h), 2003
published by: Lincoln Center
for the Performing Arts, Inc., New York

7
Three Chimneys
Carol Douglas, American
Oil on canvas board, 11" x 14" (w x h)
The artist's blog is HERE.

Carol Douglas paints and teaches in Rockport, Maine. She's taught workshops in Maine, New Mexico, and New York, her work exhibited in galleries across the United States. She studied at the Art Students League of New York. She's painted in the wilds of Canada, Alaska, Scotland, Australia, and Argentina. And Carol's also a painter friend.

8
Marsha and Forsythia
Kurt Solmssen (1958- ), American
Oil on linen, 68" x 68" (w x h), 2020
$26,000 USD
The artist's website is HERE.

Kurt Solmssen is a Washington State painter with art in the collections of the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, the Bakersfield Museum of Art and the Tacoma Art Museum. He studied art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, B.F.A. 1986, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, Certificate 1982, and through a William Emlen Cresson Traveling Scholarship 1983.

Forsythia Full

Forsythia Full

growing in my yard in Shapleigh, Maine
on April 20, 2021, painted May 8, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

Uplifting Forsythia Study 1

Uplifting Forsythia Study 1

growing in my yard in Shapleigh, Maine
on April 20, 2021, painted May 5, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

Uplifting Forsythia

Uplifting Forsythia

growing in my yard in Shapleigh, Maine
on April 20, 2021, painted May 2, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $150

A Late Afternoon Rockbound Cove

A Late Afternoon
Rockbound Cove

along Marginal Way at Ogunquit, Maine
on April 24, 2021, painted April 27, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Prismacolor waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Arches cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300