The Dirt Road Taken

The Dirt Road Taken

painted after a woods walk behind my home, June 15, 2025, 12" x 9" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$400

No King, verso recto

No King, verso

No King, recto

 

Art, 23.5" x 39.5" (w x h), verso, recto, colored duct tape on 1" foam core board, waterproof, lightweight, June 13, 2024, gallery display, hand held, Main Street, Kennebunk, Maine, 12:00-1:00 pm, June 14, 2025.

Storm High Wave Sea

Storm High Wave Sea

painted May 12, 2025, 14" x 11" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Prismacolor waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$750

Sea Edge Scene

Sea Edge Scene

 

painted May 11, 2025, 10" x 8" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Prismacolor waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed
$300

Sea Edge Seen

Sea Edge Seen

painted May 11, 2025, 5" x 7" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$200

May Model David Studies

May Model David Study 1
At our drawing group May 9, 2025,
12" x 9" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke

Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected
for light fastness and permanence, and graphite on
140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $400

May Model David Study 2
At our drawing group May 9, 2025,
8" x 10" (w x h), watercolors and ink
on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $300

May Model David Study 3
At our drawing group May 9, 2025,
5 x 7" (w x h), watercolors and ink
on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $150

May Model David Study 4
At our drawing group May 9, 2025,
5 x 7" (w x h), watercolors and ink
on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white watercolor paper,
framed, $150

The Art of Kay WalkingStick Color and Form

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The Art of Kay WalkingStick
Nude Color and Form 1971-1973
Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
and the artist's collection

1
Two Women II
Kay WalkingStick (1935- ), American / Cherokee
Acrylic on canvas, 44" x 42" (w x h), 1973
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

This painting's eye-popping hues and lack of volumetric detail create playful confusion between the figures and the background. She describes this painting as a joyful expression of female self-determination and sensuality. Produced amid the women's movement and the sexual revolution of the 1970s, it offers a response to the long history of male artists depicting the female nude.

"One's entire personhood is represented in art and I am who I am -- a biracial woman. I'm a Cherokee, I was raised in a White culture, and both are in everything I do, whether it's landscape or figures or abstraction. It is always there because I'm there." - Kay WalkingStick, 2023

Wiki, edited
Kay WalkingStick (1935- ) is a Native American landscape artist and a member of the Cherokee Nation. Her art is in the collections of many universities and museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Israel Museum, the National Museum of Canada, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

2
April Contemplating May
Kay WalkingStick (1935- ), American / Cherokee
Acrylic on canvas, 50" x 50" (w x h), 1972
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Source: Wiki edited
Kay WalkingStick liked to color and draw from as a child. She holds a BFA from Beaver College (1959), now Arcadia University, Cheltenham Township, PA. She received a Danforth Foundation Graduate Fellowship for Women and got her MFA Pratt Institute (1971), New York, NY. She is an author and was a professor in the art department at Cornell University, where she taught painting and drawing. Kay WalkingStick is a painter who addresses interrelated themes of Native history, feminism, spirituality, cultural memory, embodiment, and land.

3
Fantasy for a January Day
Kay WalkingStick (1935- ), American / Cherokee
Acrylic on canvas, 56" x 50" (w x h), 1971
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

Source: Wiki Edited
Kay WalkingStick has been accepted into many artist residency programs which gave her time away from teaching duties to paint. WalkingStick has won many awards and in 1995 was included in H.W. Janson's History of Art, a standard textbook used by university art departments. Ms. WalkingStick is an Honorary Vice President of the National Association of Women Artists, Inc.

4
Me and My Neon Box
Kay WalkingStick (1935- ), American / Cherokee
Acrylic on canvas, 60" x 54" (w x h), 1971
Collection of Kay WalkingStick

Smithsonian Museum Exhibition Label
WalkingStick brings to mind casual sexuality in this grouping of nude bodies and the suggestive title. In fact, three self-portraits populate this painting. She painted both the figures and the spaces between them with vibrant color so that the background shapes become an active part of the composition.

Heritage Source: Wiki Edited and Gabriella Shypula, American Women's History Initiative Writer and Editor:
Kay WalkingStick was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1935, the daughter of Simon Ralph WalkingStick and Emma McKaig WalkingStick. Kay's mother, Emma, was of Scottish-Irish heritage. Kay's father, Ralph, was a member of the Cherokee Nation, writing and speaking the Cherokee language. Ralph, born in the Cherokee Nation capital of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, attended Dartmouth College.

Kay's parents had four other children. They raised their young family while Ralph WalkingStick worked in the Oklahoma oil fields as a geologist. He became an alcoholic. While pregnant with Kay, her mother left Oklahoma with their children and moved to Syracuse, New York. Kay WalkingStick grew up in Syracuse without having experienced the cultural heritage of her Cherokee ancestors. Her siblings, who'd spent some of their childhood in Oklahoma, had a better understanding of their father's Cherokee traditions. Her mother told her "Indian stories" and talked about her handsome father. The family was proud to be Native American.

"One's entire personhood is represented in art and I am who I am -- a biracial woman. I'm a Cherokee, I was raised in a White culture, and both are in everything I do, whether it's landscape or figures or abstraction. It is always there because I'm there." - Kay WalkingStick, 2023

Libby in May Studies

Libby in May Study 1

painted May 23, 2025, 5" x 7" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed. 
$150

Libby in May Study 2
painted May 23, 2025, 5" x 7" (w x h), $150

Libby in May Study 3
painted May 23, 2025, 7" x 5" (w x h), $150

Libby in May Study 4
painted May 23, 2025, 5" x 7" (w x h), $150

Abstract Nudes Visual Essay

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Abstract Nudes Visual Essay
Go Figure
Abstract Nudes Based in Reality

1
Orange Gesture 7
Heidi Lanino (1990- ) American
Oil, charcoal, oil stick, on paper, 23 x 31" (w x h), 2022

Source: Various
Heidi Lanino Bilezikian (1990- ), born in New York, was raised on the south shore of Long Island. She received a full-tuition merit scholarship to Pratt Institute where she earned her BFA in Fine Arts. She works in charcoal, oil and acrylic on paper, canvas, and also clay. Her studio is in Tuxedo Park, NY. Lanino's work has been exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions including Flatiron Prow Art Space, New York, NY; A.I.R Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, NJ; Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY; Chris Davidson Gallery Newburgh, NY; Gibbs Museum, Charleston, SC; Mindy Ross Gallery, SUNY Orange, Newburgh, NY; Albert Wisner Library Sculpture Park, Warwick, NY, and The Other Art Fair, Brooklyn, NY. Her website is HERE. Her Instagram site is HERE.

2
Nude
Hannah Alpha, Canadian
Acrylic and graphite on mylar, 9" x 11" (w x h)
$160, sold

Source: Various
Hannah Alpha, born in Egypt, is a Canadian artist based in Montreal. She's a McGill alumnus. She uses a minimalist painting style. She's taught drawing and painting at the Saidye Bronfman Center for the Arts in Montreal for fifteen years. Hannah is an active member of the Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Quebec (RAAV) and of Atelier Circulaire. Hannah is represented by Art Interiors gallery in Toronto, Canada and Atelier Circulaire in Montreal. Her work is in private and public collections including the Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa), the Canadian Museum of Civilization (Hull), the Artotheque of the Gabrielle-Roy library (Quebec City), Loto-Quebec (Montreal), Sony Music (Toronto), the Royal Bank (Montreal), Chateau Champlain (Montreal), Sanofi Aventis (Laval), Collart Collection (Montreal) and the Hyatt Regency Hotel (Jeddah & Riyadh). Hannah Alpha's website is HERE.

3
Derriere Le Miroir Figure Study
Henri Matisse (1869-1954), French
Lithograph, 11" x 15" (w x h), 1952
$1,500 USD, American Fine Art Inc., Scottsdale, AZ

Source: Wiki edited
When ill health in his final years prevented him from painting, Matisse created an important body of work in the medium of cut paper collage. Although he was known for his color, this lithograph was issued in Paris by Maeght Editeur in 1952, when he was 82-years-old, two years before Matisse's death in 1954.

4
Untitled - Seated Female with Broad Shoulders
Morris Kantor (1896-1974), Russian-born American
Charcoal on paper, 19" x 25" (w x h), circa 1916-1918
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC
Gift of Mrs. Morris Kantor

Source: Wiki edited
Although Morris Kantor (1896-1974) is best known for his realistic paintings, over the course of his life he also spent time working in Cubism and Futurism, and produced a number of abstract works. Kantor was an instructor at the Cooper Union and also at the Art Students League of New York in the 1940s. He taught many pupils who later became famous artists in their own right, such as Knox Martin, Robert Rauschenberg, Sigmund Abeles and Susan Weil. He married fellow artist Martha Ryther (1896-1981). In addition to his downtown Manhattan studio adjacent to Union Square, he also maintained a studio on Cape Cod in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Like many American artists, in the 1920s he also spent time working in Paris. In the 1940s some of his summers were spent in Monhegan, Maine. His work is on display in many museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Whitney Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and Hirshhorn Museum.

5
Pink Nude
Milton Avery (1885-1965), American
Oil on canvas board, 20" x 24" (w x h), 1963
Christie's New York 2010 auction sold $80,500 USD

Source: Wiki edited
Avery's work is seminal to American abstract painting, while his work is clearly representational, it focuses on color relations and is not concerned with creating the illusion of depth as most conventional Western painting since the Renaissance has. Avery was often thought of as an American Matisse, especially because of his colorful and innovative landscape paintings. His poetic, bold and creative use of drawing and color set him apart from more conventional painting of his era. Early in his career, his work was considered too radical for being too abstract.

Chuck Mowing the Lawn

Chuck Mowing the Lawn

at my home in Shapleigh, Maine, painted May 27, 2025, 8" x 10" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed
$300

Friday Evening Departs

Friday Evening Departs

painted from Heaven Swamp Park along Ocean Drive in Kennebunkport, Maine near the Bushes homes on May 16, 2025, 7" x 5" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$150

The Art of Orange and Purple Essay

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The Art of Orange and Purple/Violet

Together - Visual Essay

This color combination is a lesser used combination
by most artists, yet those who use it use it effectively.

1
As I Drove You Stretched
(Painted Sand SF #1P, Orange Sky)
Jennifer Guidi (1972- ), American
Sand, acrylic, and oil on linen, 232" x 76" (w x h), 2017
David Kordansky Gallery, Los angels, CA and New York, NY

Source: Wiki, edited
Jennifer Guidi (1972- ) enrolled at Boston University, where she studied painting and printmaking. She primarily painted portraits, both of herself and of friends. After receiving her BFA in 1994, Guidi earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998. In 2001 she relocated to Los Angeles.

In 2005 Guidi was making representational paintings of landscapes, plants, and insects. During a 2012 trip to Marrakesh, she became fascinated by the rich patterning of Moroccan rugs, specifically the intricate stitching found on their rarely seen verso sides. She then began to paint from photographs of these woven surfaces, ultimately producing a series of abstract oil and sand paintings titled Field Paintings, a shift from representation to abstraction, as well as the introduction of sand into her work. In 2017, Guidi presented her first solo museum exhibition in Genoa, Italy, large-scale sand and acrylic paintings, which were painted in the seven colors of the light spectrum and occupied the frescoed interior walls of the neoclassical Italian villa. Guidi's most recent paintings feature mandala-like compositions.

Jennifer Guidi's paintings are in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Marciano Art Foundation, and the Rubell Family Collection.

2
Spring Series #1
Richard Mayhew (1924-2024), American
Watercolor, 15" x 11" (w x h), 1997
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA

Source: Wiki, edited
Richard Mayhew (1924-2024) was an American landscape painter, illustrator, and arts educator, of Native and African American descent. His abstract, brightly colored landscapes are informed by his experiences as an African American/Native American and his interest in Jazz and the performing arts. He lived and worked in Soquel and Santa Cruz, California. For 14 years he taught at Pennsylvania State University, starting in 1977 and retiring in 1991. He taught art and/or interdisciplinary thinking at other schools around the United States, including Brooklyn Museum Art School (1963), Pratt Institute (1963), Art Students League of New York (1965), Smith College (1969), Hunter College (1971), California State University, East Bay (1974), San Jose State University (1975), Sonoma State University (1976), University of California, Santa Cruz (1992), and others.

Mayhew was a founding member of Spiral, a black painters' group in the 1960s New York, formed in 1963, after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, as a way for artists to discuss their experiences in the Civil Rights movement. His work is featured in various permanent collections including: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, De Young (museum), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Smithsonian Institution, among others. Mayhew died in 2024 at the age of 100 at his home in Soquel, California.

3
Le Parlement, coucher de soleil /
Houses of Parliament, sunset
Houses of Parliament series
Claude Monet (1840-1926), French
Oil on canvas, 36" x 32" (w x h), 1904
Kunsthaus Zurich art museum, Zurich, Switzerland

Source:  Wiki, edited
"I find London lovelier to paint each day."-Claude Monet. The Houses of Parliament series of 19 know paintings consists of views of the Palace of Westminster, home of the British Parliament. He began the first of these paintings on February 13, 1900. All of the series' paintings share the same viewpoint from Monet's window or a terrace at St Thomas' Hospital overlooking the Thames and are the same size, 36" x 32" (w x h), painted during different times of the day and weather conditions. By the time of the Houses of Parliament series, Monet had abandoned his earlier practice of completing a painting on the spot in front of the motif. He carried on refining the images back home in Giverny, France, and sent to London for photographs to help in this. This caused some adverse reaction, but Monet's reply was that his means of creating a work was his own business and it was up to the viewer to judge the final result. In 2004 one of these sold for $20,100,000 USD

4
Cabbagetown Winter
Zsolt Nagy (1937- ) Hungarian/Canadian
Oil on wood board, 8" x 10" (w x h),
Sold by Levis Fine Art Auctions, Appraisals & Art
Storage, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, May 16, 2020
Auction, $211 CAD ($154 USD)
Private Collection, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Source: Levis Gallery, Calgary
Zsolt Nagy is a Hungarian artist who was born in 1937. He painted this downtown Toronto scene of Cabbage town houses in the winter.

5
Orange Landscape with Building on River
Donald Hamilton Fraser RA (1929-2009), British
Oil on canvas, 30" x 20" (w x h), 1957
Sotheby's London 2020 auction sold, 3,528 GBP ($4,800 USD)

Source: Wiki. edited
Donald Hamilton Fraser RA (1929-2009), was a British artist noted for his abstract landscape paintings. Fraser's painting style was characterized in the way he layered thick bright paint with a palette knife to produce a collage-like effect. The landscapes were still clearly identifiable while nonetheless forming abstract fields of color. Fraser was elected a fellow at the Royal College of Art in 1970, becoming an Honorary Fellow in 1984. In 1983 Fraser designed four commemorative stamps for England. He said, "An artist doesn't really choose what sort of pictures he paints. He paints what is there inside him. It is a sort of imperative."

6
My Country - (KUDAR14217)
Kudditji-Kngwarreye (1938-2017), Australian (native Aboriginal)
Acrylic on linen, 20" x 9" (w x h)
Price: $120,000 AUD ($78,000 USD)
Kate Owen Gallery, contemporary Aboriginal art
Rozelle, NSW, Australia

Source: Wiki, edited
Kudditji-Kngwarreye, (1938-2017), also known as "Goob", was an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory. While the early body of this work was admired by a few, not well received at the time, today, Kngwarreye's works have a national and international following. Like his skin sister Emily, he was one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of contemporary indigenous Australian art. In 2006, Kudditji was named one of the top 50 most collectible artists in Australia by Art Collector magazine. Like many of the desert artists, he mastered the use of acrylic paint on canvas. His use of color combined with simple shapes tell the stories of one of his inherited ancestral totems - the Emu Ancestors.

7
Burns Golden
Emily Mason (1932-2019), American
Oil on canvas, 45" x 60" (w x h), 2007
Private Collection

Source: Wiki and Emily Mason/Alice Trumbull Mason website, edited
Born and raised in New York City, Emily Mason's art education began in the studio with her mother Alice Trumbull Mason, a founding member of the American Abstract Artists. Emily poured and blotted paint on primed canvases. In 1956, Mason was awarded a Fulbright grant to study in Italy. Before moving there, she met fellow painter Wolf Kahn, who later joined her in Venice. They married on March 2, 1957, at the municipal building near the Rialto Bridge, witnessed by strangers and friends. In late 1958, the couple returned to New York, where Mason their first daughter Cecily was born in 1959. In 1963, the family returned to Italy. Their second daughter Melany was born in Rome in 1964. In 1968, the Wolf and Emily bought a farm in Brattleboro, Vermont, where she's spend her summers painting. Emily explained: "It is important to balance city life with experiencing nature. Winter in the city is the time for the fermentation of ideas. Summer is my time to carry them out."

8
The Purple Dress
William Glackens (1870-1938), American
Oil on canvas, 30" x 26" (w x h), 1908-1910
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC
Gift of Ann and Tom Cousins

Source: Wiki, edited
William James Glackens (1870-1938) was an American realist painter and one of the founders of the Ashcan School, which rejected the formal boundaries of artistic beauty laid down by the conservative National Academy of Design. He is also known for his work in helping Albert C. Barnes to acquire the European paintings that form the nucleus of the famed Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which includes 71 works of his art. His dark-hued, vibrantly painted street scenes and depictions of daily life in pre-WW I New York and Paris first established his reputation as a major artist. His later work was brighter in tone and showed the strong influence of Renoir. During much of his career as a painter, Glackens also worked as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines in Philadelphia and New York City. The largest collection of Glackens' art has been housed since 2001 at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, where an entire wing is dedicated to his work; the museum holds approximately 500 Glackens paintings in its permanent collection.

Earth Spinning to Tonight

Earth Spinning to Tonight

painted from Heaven Swamp Park along Ocean Drive in Kennebunkport, Maine near the Bushes homes on May 16, 2025, 10" x 8" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$300

Seas the Splash

Seas the Splash

during a March/April Maine Nor'easter with strong winds at Cape Neddick by Nubble Island, York, Maine, painted March 25, 2025, 14" x 11" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$400

The reference photo I took to suggest my painting.
Go figure. What do you see? Go figure.

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Seas the Splash
by Bruce McMillan © 2025

Grab the flying foam
with your mind's eyes,
seize the day, bring home
this wet white prize,
if you can, quick -- gone.
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In the photo of the sea splash do the see
the figure reaching forward to catch
the splash...

Look closely...

And then back to the original...

See? Seize the Splash? Go figure.

Seas the Splash Art Essay

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Seas the Splash

See surf crashing and splashing in these eight notable paintings as small as 4" x 5" to as large as 34" x 50" (h x w).

1
Monhegan Breaker
Abraham J. Bogdanove (1886-1946), American,
(Born Russian, moved to US at 14-years-old in 1900)
Oil on Masonite, 24" x 20" (w x h), 1942
Monhegan Museum of Art & History, Monhegan Island, ME

Source: Wiki edited
Bogdanove first visited Maine in 1915, summering at Mount Desert Island, and in 1918 he visited Monhegan Island, purchasing a house there in 1920. Thereafter he visited Monhegan every year until his death in 1946, becoming an established presence on the island and producing a series of landscapes and seascapes that would constitute the largest part of his painting, his interest in the powerful dramatic effects of weather on the ocean and land, rather than geographically specific depictions. Bogdanove said in an interview in 1936 of his work on Monhegan, he described it as "rugged, colorful, and forceful. There are a number of reasons why I prefer Monhegan to all other places on the Atlantic coast... The cliffs are so bold and precipitous and the studies offered by the island shore so inexhaustible. The climate suits me. Perhaps because it is more like that of Russia, where my ancestors lived."

2
Cannibal Shore
N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), American
Oil on canvas, 47" x 30" (w x h), circa 1936
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME

Source: Wiki and Brandywine bio notes edited
N.C. Wyeth, who was both a painter and an illustrator, understood the difference, and said in 1908, "Painting and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other." N.C spent summers from 1920 to 1945 on the Maine coast producing notable paintings, not illustrations.

3
Stormy Seascape
John Appleton Brown, (1844-1902), American
Pastel on brown paperboard, 18" x 14" (w x h), circa 1880s
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA

Source: Wiki edited
John Appleton Brown (1844-1902) was an American landscape painter working largely in pastels and oils. For many years he worked and showed in Boston, summering in his native northeastern Massachusetts and painting his best-known landscapes there. Poetry inspired Appleton Brown's pictures, so too did his art inspire poetry. Will Amos Reed's book of verse Through Broken Reeds contains the poem "On Seeing a Picture by J. Appleton Brown." It begins, "How deep in nature's lore must artists dip / To form such lights and shadows with a brush's tip!" His works are now housed in such institutions as the Harvard University art museums, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

4
Northeaster
Winslow Homer (1836-1910), American
Oil on canvas, 50" x 34" (w x h), 1895, reworked 1901
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Source: Wiki edited
Winslow Homer's late seascapes are especially valued for their dramatic and forceful expression of nature's powers, and for their beauty and intensity. In his last decade, 1900-1910, he at times followed the advice he had given a student artist in 1907: "Leave rocks for your old age -- they're easy." Homer died in 1910 at the age of 74 in his Prouts Neck, Maine studio.

5
Crashing Surf at White Head, Monhegan
Sears Gallagher (1869-1955), American
Watercolor on paper, 20" x 14" (w x h)
2022 Auction sold: $1,500
Grogan and Company, Boston, MA

Source: Wiki edited
Sears Gallagher (1869-1955) was an American artist proficient in drawing, etching, watercolor and oil painting. His work consisted largely of landscapes, seascapes, and city-scapes depicting his native Boston and northern New England. In 1892, Gallagher made a summer trip to Monhegan Island. Monhegan, which Gallagher visited regularly for the next 40 years and where he bought a house in 1904. Monhegan was a frequent subject of his painting, its rocky shore and bold cliffs of Monhegan appear in his paintings. His summer visits to Monhegan were often followed by fishing and sketching trips in the fall to the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

6
Rocks, Waves and Figures
Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924), American
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 16" x 11" (w x h), circa 1902-1904
The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

Source: Barnes Foundation notes edited
As waves crash around them, several gaily dressed women recline on rocks next to the ocean. Prendergast, whose influences ranged from the crowded spectacles of medieval mosaics to the emergent art of his day, was considered a pioneer of American modernism. In this painting he experimented with the bold color palette of Edouard Manet as well as the dramatic silhouettes -- seen especially in the white, frothing waves -- of Winslow Homer.

7
Crashing Waves, Ogunquit
Leon Kroll (1884-1974), American
Oil on panel, 5" x 4" (w x h), 1915
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME
Bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, 1997

Source: Wiki edited
Leon Kroll (1884-1974) was an American painter and lithographer. A figurative artist described by Life magazine as "the dean of U.S. nude painters", see a collection of his nudes in this Google selection HERE. He was also a landscape painter and also produced an exceptional body of still life compositions. In 1911 and 1912, he showed in the group exhibition of The Independents initiated by Robert Henri at the MacDowell Club in New York. "It was a self chosen group: you had to be elected by the other ten. Hopper was in it and Speicher, John Sloan as well as Henri, Glackens and Luks - It was a very good group of the best artists" said Kroll.

8
Monhegan Island
Robert Henri (1865-1929), American
Oil on oak panel, 10" x 8" (w x h), unframed, 1903
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME

Source: Wiki edited
From 1915 to 1927, Henri was a popular and influential teacher at the Art Students League of New York. "He gave his students, not a style (though some imitated him), but an attitude, an approach, [to art]." The significance and often formative influence of Henri as a teacher and mentor is estimable. He also was instrumental in promoting women to be artists. Henri's philosophical and practical musings were collected by former pupil Margery Ryerson and published as The Art Spirit (1923), a book that remained in print for decades. Henri's other students include George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, Lillian Cotton, Amy Londoner, John Sloan, Minerva Teichert, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. In 1929 at 64-years-old , the year he died, Robert Henri was named one of the top three living American artists by the Arts Council of New York.

Happy Friday Tulips Posing

Happy Friday Tulips Posing

Bouquet painted Saturday May 17, 2025, 12" x 9" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper.
$400

Sea Scenes Blues Greens Visual Essay

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Sea Scenes Seen in
Blues and Greens
Visual Essay
By Bruce McMillan and
noted American, Dutch, French,
Norwegian, and Ukrainian/Russian artists.

Storm Wave Sea
Bruce McMillan (1947- ), American
Watercolor and ink on paper, 14" x 11" (w x h), 2025
off Cape Neddick by Nubble Island, York, Maine.
$750

1
Wave on Rock
John Marin (1870-1953), American
Oil on canvas, 30" x 23" (w x h), 1937
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Source: Whitney Museum notes edited
Wave on Rock exemplifies John Marin's expressive painterly technique as well as his devotion to nature as subject matter. Inspired by the rugged marine grandeur of Maine, where he began spending his summers in 1914, his brush strokes emulate the choppy sea and crashing of foaming waves. Their improvisational character suggests the quick recording of a moment. Marin the artist always insisted on the realist foundations of his work. "The sea I paint may not be the sea but it is not an abstraction."

2
Rocks and Swirling Water
Edward Hopper (1882-1967), American
Oil on paperboard, 13" x 10" (w x h), circa 1916-1919
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Source: Original and Wiki
Edward Hopper's seascapes depict strong light and fair weather. He showed little interest in snow or rain scenes, or in seasonal color changes. He painted the majority of his pure seascapes between 1916 and 1919 on Monhegan Island, and likely the one above. Hopper was first drawn to Maine's art colonies at Ogunquit and Monhegan Island. His paintings have appeared on five US Postage Stamps, two of them Maine coastal scenes in Ogunquit. His oil painting Sea at Ogunquit, 1914, which also has that blue/green sea, appeared in March 2020 on a US Stamp representing the 200th year of Maine becoming the 23rd state on March 15, 1820. See that art at the Whitney Museum HERE.

3
Waves
Edvard Munch (1863-1944), Norwegian
Oil on canvas, 38" x 45" (w x h), 1908

Source: Museum Barberini, Potsdam, Germany notes edited
A breakdown in 1908 forced Edvard Munch to give up heavy drinking. Painting in Germany that year he plunged into a different approach with his seascapes in Warnemünde, a seaside resort in Rostock on the Baltic Sea. Waves is a dive into the wildness of the sea. Munch and the viewer flounder, barely distinguishing above from below. Munch was interested in the abstraction inherent in nature, capturing the patterns and rhythms created by the waves movement.

4
Sea Garden, Little Duck Island
William Kienbusch (1914-1980), American
Oil on canvas, 74" x 52" (w x h), 1960
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Source: Smithsonian edited
A magna cum laude graduate of Princeton, William Kienbusch studied at the Art Students League, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, the Academy Colarossi, and with Abraham Rattner in Paris. He didn't find his true identity as an artist until he spent the summers of 1940 and 1941 in Stonington, Maine. Best known for semi-abstract landscapes, Kienbusch spent summers photographing and sketching the pine trees, buoys, and shacks of the Maine coast, then during the winter months, while teaching at the Brooklyn Museum School, translated his summer's work into geometrically formulated landscapes.

5
Blue Wave Maine
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), American
Oil on canvas, 27" x 20" (w x h), 1926
Private collection

Source: Original and Boston Globe
Long Sands Beach is a gentle three-mile curve in York, Maine. Likely, its vastness, the open sea unbound from Maine's craggy coastline, pummeled by waves and made famous years before by the state's resident artist-hermit, Winslow Homer, attracted her. On Long Sands for four summers in the 1920s, O'Keeffe could live and work where the rocky shore softened and fell flat along the water, unbroken for miles. Here, there was only sand, sea, and sky. It was her 1920s summer painting stays that were the precursor to 1930s sands of New Mexico and her iconic paintings.

6
Calm sea
Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900), Russian, Ukrainian
Oil on canvas, 38" x 26" (w x h), 1898
Aivazovsky National Art Gallery, Feodosiya, Ukraine

Source: Wiki edited
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) was a Russian painter considered one of the greatest masters of marine art. The vast majority of his works depict the sea. He was born into an Armenian family in the Black Sea port of Feodosia in Crimea and was mostly based there. Aivazovsky had close ties with the military and political elite of the Russian Empire. Sponsored by the state, he was well-regarded during his lifetime. The saying "worthy of Aivazovsky's brush", popularized by Anton Chekhov, was used in Russia for describing something lovely. He was also popular outside the Russian Empire, holding numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and the US. Aivazovsky's house in Feodosia, where he had founded an art museum in 1880, is open to this day as the Aivazovsky National Art Gallery. It remains a central attraction in the city and holds the world's largest collection (417) of Aivazovsky paintings.

7
Waves Breaking
Claude Monet (1840-1926), French
Oil on canvas, 32" x 24" (w x h), 1881
Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,
San Francisco, CA

Source: Original based on various readings
In the 1880s Claude Monet focused on the elemental aspect of nature. This was painted on the northwest coast of France in Normandy as Monet faced out toward the sea, using quick, textural strokes evoking the churning motion of water and frothy crests of the waves.

8
Zeegezicht bij Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer /
Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch
Oil on canvas, 225" x 20" (w x h), 1888
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Source: Wiki edited
Van Gogh moved to the southern French coastal city of Arles in 1888. He was 33-year-old and it was only two years before his death. When he visited Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in June. Among the things he painted there including his noted bedroom painting, he painted boats on the sea, like the one above, and the village. He gave art lessons to Paul-Eugène Milliet, a 2nd Lieutenant at the French army's 3rd Zouave Regiment, which had quarters in Arles. In return Milliet took a roll of paintings by Van Gogh to Paris, when in mid August he was passing the French capital on his way to the North, where Milliet spent his holidays. On his return to Arles, at the end of September 1888, Milliet handed over a batch of Ukiyo-e woodcuts and other prints selected by Vincent's brother Theo from their collection. In the days that followed Vincent executed a portrait of him, The Lover (Portrait of Lieutenant Milliet), seen at the Kroller Muller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands HERE.