East Point Tidal Pools

East Point Tidal Pools

at the Maine Audubon East Point Sanctuary at Biddeford Pool, Biddeford, Maine, painted plein air August 20, 2022, 7.5" x 17.5" (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.
Benefit Maine Audubon 2022 Brush with Nature Plein Air Event and Art Auction - the event HERE

East Point plein air setup with an incoming tide on Saturday August 20, 2022

The view east looking out to sea from the point at East Point

Sea Scene Off Sand Beach

Sea Scene Off Sand Beach

The view at low tide, Sand Beach, in Stonington, Maine, painted plein air August 4, 2022, 17.5" x 13.25" (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.
$700

Watercolor Gallery Sand Beach

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Watercolor Gallery Same View
Sand Beach, Stonington 1919-2015

These early 1900s watercolors, all documented as painted in Stonington, are likely Sand Beach, based on the views in the paintings, the ledges on the right side of the beach, that Sand Beach is the largest of the barely any sand beaches on the rocky coast in Stonington, and that John Marin ate at the Inn across from Sand Beach.

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Sand Beach Shore
Jill Hoy (1954- ), American
Watercolor on paper, 30" x 23" (w x h), 2015
$2,000

Jill Hoy, B.F.A. University of California at Santa Cruz and attended the New York Academy of Art in New York City, lives in Stonington, Maine, Somerville, Massachusetts, and New York City. Because she's been a regular resident of the Deer Isle area since 1965, much of her work documents places and time here. The artist's website is HERE.

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The Green Sea - Movement - Stonington, Maine
John Marin (1870-1953), American
Watercolor with wiping and charcoal on textured paper,
19" x 16" (w x h), 1921
Art Institute of Chicago

John Marin ate at the Inn facing Sand Beach in Stonington, the same building, the only house facing the beach, where our art group stayed to paint a few years ago.

In the summers John Marin painted in Stonington he wrote to Alfred Stieglitz in New York.

1921: This Stonington is a cussed place, but if someone were to tell me I couldn't come back here next year I'd be mad clear through. How do you account for that? Well, every place has its cussedness. And you would have to get its special cussedness all over.
1922: Stonington is about the same as ever, always at first disappointing. Then that wears away and you begin to like it all over again... While I work Mrs. Marin picks blueberries and gets the meals. It's all work up here.
1928: "I would be home, at home, in this place, these places my homes, all together my home. My loves, my home. If I am able to snare a bit of this in what I do, that's it."

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The Sea, Maine
John Marin (1870-1953), American
Watercolor and charcoal on paper, 20" x 16" (w x h), 1921
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Museum notes:
In establishing his modernist style, John Marin frequently turned to the untamed landscape for his subjects, especially the landscape of Maine. The New Yorker visited Maine every year, spending the summer of 1921 in Stonington, a picturesque fishing village on the southern shore of Deer Isle, one of the many islands along Maine's coast. The Sea, Maine is a plein-air interpretation of the island's rugged shoreline of granite outcroppings and windswept pine and spruce. In this dynamic meeting of land and sea, Marin united abstract and representational impulses, using gestural strokes, bold colors, and delicate washes to denote nature's essential forms. His line and brushwork have an urgent, improvisational quality, conveying the rhythm and motion of wind and surf.

John Marin and his family summered in Stonington at the same time as William and Marguerite Zorach and their family. They were friends and socialized.

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Stonington, Maine
William Zorach (1887-1966), Lithuanian-American
Watercolor on paper, 15" x 12" (w x h), 1919

William Zorach was a Lithuanian-born American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer. He won the Logan Medal of the arts. He is notable for being at the forefront of American Artists embracing cubism, as well as for his sculpture. He's the husband of Marguerite Thompson Zorach and father of Dahlov Ipcar, both artists in their own right. I was lucky enough to meet fellow children's boom author, Dahlov Ipcar. She was two years old when her father painted this watercolor in 1919.

Sunset House Sun Light

Sunset House Sun Light

scene seen from Greenhead in evening light at Stonington, Maine painted plein air on August 3, 2022, 14" x 11" (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.
$800

Beyond Sand Beach Study 1

Beyond Sand Beach Study 1

The first study of the view at low tide from the Sand Beach woods in Stonington, Maine on August 4, 2022, painted August 10-11, 2022, 17.5" x 13.25" (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.
$700

Beyond Sand Beach Study 2

Beyond Sand Beach Study 2

The view at low tide from the Sand Beach woods in Stonington, Maine on August 4, 2022, painted August 12-14, 2022, 17.5" x 13.25" (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.
$700

Beyond Sand Beach Study 3

Beyond Sand Beach Study 3

The view at low tide from the Sand Beach woods in Stonington, Maine on August 4, 2022, painted August 13-15, 2022, 14" x 11" (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.
$770

Kennbunk River Club Art Show 2022

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Kennebunk River Club Art Show
Evening Photo Essay
Preview Reception, August 13, 2022

The Kennebunk River Club's 65th Art Show and Sale was full of fine art, both buildings, enriching to behold. The best part was seeing good friends from our figure drawing group. We haven't painted in person since the start of the pandemic. So fine to see Annie Hidell, Elizabeth Kelley, Brad Maushart, and Russell Whitten. -Bruce

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(top center)
One to Cape Porpoise Pier
Bruce McMillan
Watercolor on paper, $350 SOLD

With Annie Hidell (left), a fabulous artist from our long-time pre-Covid fabulous figure painting group who wrote after this event, "Great to see you last night! ... Was so nice to be out and see so many, almost overwhelming! Joy!" Annie expressed how all of our group's artists felt.

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Keeper's Green
Berri Kramer
Acrylic on canvas, $2,100

Best in Show: Strong, spare and clean. A precise and concise use of planes, form, color and light to create a moment in space. Bold simplicity and execution. A beautiful and elegant example of less becoming so  much more.

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Rocks Must See
Elizabeth Kelley
Acrylic on raw canvas, $1,600

With the artist in profile, Elizabeth Kelley, so good to see and chat with another fabulous artist from our long-time pre-Covid fabulous figure painting group. Brad is an early morning ocean swimmer, so his photo-art with surfers was so Brad.

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Attack
Brad Maushart
Digital photograph

Patron's Prize: "Manipulated image with a beautiful painterly treatment. Love the use of the strong diagonal composition to tell the story and invite us into the image, A bold and striking image of people and nature captured on a great Maine day which has produced a very subtle interplay of muted color and bold shapes."
Another fabulous artist from our painting group, who'd I'd visited in his gallery the other day. We all miss our drawing group.

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Last Year's Model
Jenny Brillhart
Oil, $2,100

Whoa, big surprise to see my Blue Hill artist friend Jenny's art here with not too many artists from far away. I'd stayed in Jenny's Stonington cottage the previous week on a watercolor painting trip and had seen her art in Rockland, Maine on my drive back south, after visiting with her brother and his family and her children's book author Mom.

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April Fools Day
Russell Whitten
Watercolor, $1,200

Russell was present with his smile, as well as Annie's smile too. Annie and her husband were perhaps the handsomest pair there.

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Cluster
Anne Burnett Hidell
Acrylic, $3,200

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Also at the show, a permanent installation:
Yacht Club Window View at Low Tide

Row Boat Boat

Row Boat Boat

in sunset light at the harbor seen from Greenhead in Stonington, Maine, painted plein air August 3, 2022, 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

Friday Night Art Walk Familiarity

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Friday Night Art Walk Familiarity

For the First Friday Art Walk in Rockland Maine, August 5, 2022, Main Street is closed to traffic. I stroll by the Strand movie theater with its 1950s marquee where I'd seen fine artist Connie Hayes give an illustrated talk only a few years ago, and many years ago in the early 1970s I'd come off McGee Island, where I was the caretaker, for the evening to see The Sting.

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In the Farnsworth Museum I'm moved by the fabulous and extensive exhibition up for the rest of this year of my friend, Ashley Bryan. There are photos of his home and I am transported back to my visits, going over his books. I still have all of his eloquent handwritten letters. And to see his joyous paintings makes my heart soar. The exhibit truly captures the positive essence of Ashley, and I can hear his voice. See the Museum posting of this HERE.

In the next room I view Andrew Wyeth works, tempura and watercolors. About fifteen years ago I happened upon Andrew in this room, just the two of us, and we chatted about Walt Anderson, his lifelong Port Clyde friend and model, and my friend on the dock every time came ashore from McGee Island. Walt always checked on and commented on my son Brett's height since the last time we'd come ashore. And here's Walt showing up in a painting again.

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Family Picnic
Andrew Wyeth, (1917-2009) American
Watercolor on paper, 1939
Farnsworth Museum Rockland, Maine

At Little Caldwell Island in Port Clyde, left to right, Carolyn Wyeth, Ann Wyeth McCoy, Betsy James (his future wife), N.C. Wyeth, and Walt Anderson.

Boating to and from McGee Island, I used to pass by Little Caldwell in the distance. It was the 1970s and sometimes I see Andrew in the distance on an island painting.

Looking back at his early years painting in Maine, Andrew Wyeth recalled, "I did as many as six watercolors a day and might get one or two that came off." I identify with Wyeth's approach to watercolors.

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Study for Bear Island
Fairfield Porter, (1907-1975) American
Oil on canvas

I've always admired Fairfield Porter's art. This one reminds me of my island life in Maine. I recall looking at the paintings that Porter did in Stonington, Maine, where I'd come from this morning. And researching where he'd painted there, and painting from the same or nearby location.

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Stonington (top left 20" x 18" w x h)
Emily Lansingh Muir, (1904-2002) American
Stone mosaic, 148" x 28" (w x h), circa 1960
See the full panel HERE

I always stop and enjoy Emily's 12' long mosaic mural made from beach stones she'd found on Deer Isle. We'd met so many years ago when I was working in Public Television and we'd interviewed her in her home about the many homes he'd designed on Deer Isle, fascinating artist. This morning I'd walked by her husband William's sculpture at the Stonington Public Dock of a granite stone cutter. Emily's mosaic pleasures me every time.

From the Museum I walk by a storefront that used to be the hardware store where I got McGee Island supplies as the caretaker. The counter was at the far back of the store. I recall my five-year-old son, Brett, running back, excited that he'd seen some birds that he'd never seen before. He wanted me to come before they left. Living on the island he could identify Bald Eagles, Ospreys, chickadees and so many more. When I caught up to him outside the door, I beheld his new found species, pigeons.

I stopped by Dowling Walsh Gallery, where I came upon work by the artist, whose Stonington cottage I'd spent the last two nights in. I'd just spent the last two days painting and visiting with her brother and his family, and her mom, my children's book author friend, all summering in Stonington. I recall contemplating the wrap-around cloth for the bathroom sink in Jenny's cottage this morning, it was a pattern of irregular large dots. And then I saw this and smiled.

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Dotted Shade, 6/1, 5:36 am
Jenny Brillhart, (1972- ) American
Oil on panel, 14" x 20" (w x h), $3,700
Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, Maine

And I also smiled when my eyes feasted on another of her reality based abstract art that include son Malcolm's basketball. See more of Jenny's art and perhaps Malcolm's basketball at the Dowling Walsh Gallery HERE. I have a painting of Jenny's in my home, a gift.

On to the next gallery, Caldbeck Gallery, and who do I find there for his opening, David Dewey. I've taken three of David's workshops in years past. And it was great to see David recovered from his bicycle accident and take in his "recovery" watercolors from the past two years. I have paintings by David in my home, as well as paintings I've done of him during his class.

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Bruce McMillan, left and David Dewey, right, and between them...
Chickawaukie from Beech Hill
Watercolor on paper, 22" x 5" (w x h), 2020
From the Sketchbook - Watercolors (2020-2022
David Dewey, American
Caldbeck Gallery, Rockland, Maine
See this one and the exhibit's watercolors HERE

In the next part of the gallery I was treated to another smile from 95-year-old Lois Dodd, whose work I've admired for years.

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Untitled (Two Nudes, One Sawing)
Lois Dodd, (1927- ) American
Oil on panel, 16" x 11" (w x h), 2003
Working Women and By the River
Caldbeck Gallery, Rockland Maine
See the paintings HERE.

Heading to the Center for Contemporary Art in Maine I discovered yet another Lois Dodd painting, one that took me back to the Maine woods.

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Sunlight on Spruce at Noon
Lois Dodd, (1927- ) American
Oil on Linen, 1974
Center for Contemporary Art in Maine, Rockland, Maine

As I continued on with my drive home, and thinking about the art and people connections of this day, I'm reminded that... I'm having a fortunate life.

At the Edge of Fog

At the Edge of Fog

by the woods at Sand Beach in Stonington, Maine, plein air on August 4, 2022 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

When Fog Floated In

When Fog Floated In

by the woods at Sand Beach in Stonington, Maine, plein air on August 4, 2022 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

Watercolor Artists Paint Fog

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Watercolor Artists Paint Fog
Visual Essay

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Approaching Fog
John Marin (1870-1953) American
Watercolor with blotting, wiping and traces
of scraping, and with brush and black ink,
graphite, fabricated charcoal, and
touches of opaque watercolor
on paper, 20" x 15" (w x h), 1952
The Art Institute of Chicago

In 1921 John Marin wrote from Stonington, Maine to his friend and dealer, Alfred Stieglitz in New York: "Glad I am to be away from all the hurly burly I have left behind for a time... Glad to walk down to the shore and jump in the boat... Once in a while to paint a picture with none to butt in with another word. To take out my colors with none to say, You should have said pigments." (The Selected Writings of John Marin. Edited by Dorothy Norman (Pellegrini and Cudahy, NY, 1949).

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Morning Fog
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) American
Watercolor on paper, 16" x 12" (w x h), 1974
Sold at a 2014 Sothebys London auction
Private collection

Many of Fairfield Porter's paintings are set in or around their family summer house on Great Spruce Head Island, Maine and his family home in Southampton, New York. Although a realist in subject matter, Porter not only admired and championed the abstract work of his friend Willem de Kooning, but was drawn to the inherent abstraction found in nature. Porter said, "When I paint, I think that what would satisfy me is to express what Bonnard said Renoir told him: 'Make everything more beautiful.' "

Morning Fog was exhibited at the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY, Retrospective, December 15, 1974 to April 27, 1975

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Study of a Castle by a Lake
Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A., (1775-1851) English
Watercolor on paper, 9" x 7" (w x h), circa 1824

During the 1820s Turner became increasingly interested in optics and color theory. His new found understanding of color was most probably inspired by his trip to Italy in 1819-20. There, the light had the effect of liberating his palette enabling him to achieve a finer luminosity in watercolor. He drew loose preparatory sketches and pure studies in color. These studies were rapidly executed with much was left to chance. Thin translucent layers of color would be applied to wet paper and once this had dried further washes would often be added. This technique enabled him to preserve the purity and luminosity of his work, and to paint at a rapid rate.

Turner left behind more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolors, and 30,000 works on paper. He was championed by the leading English art critic John Ruskin from 1840, and is today regarded as having elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivaling history painting. In 1841, Turner rowed a boat on the Thames so he could not be counted as present at any property in that year's census. He lived in squalor and poor health from 1845, and died in London in 1851 aged 76, yet Turner is buried in Saint Paul's Cathedral, London.

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Red Cloud VI
Donald Holden (1931-2017) American
Watercolor on paper, 11" x 7", (w x h), 1989
Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.

Donald Holden studied at the Art Students League of New York in 1947, got his BA at Columbia University in 1951 and his MA at Ohio State University in 1952. In 1986 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the Maine College of Art. He held positions as director of public relations at Philadelphia College of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Holden is the author of Whistler's Landscapes and Seascapes (1950). At age 56 he became a full-time artist. His luminous watercolors and minimalist drawings are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Butler Institute of American Art, among others. In 2004 Donald Holden Watercolors (128 pages) was published by Richard Boyle, on amazon HERE.

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Foggy Morning, No. 2
Charles Reiffel (1862-1942) American
Watercolor and gouache on paper, 13" x 9" (w x h), circa 1895
San Diego Museum of Art

Charles Reiffel was an American lithographer and post-Impressionist painter Born in Indiana, he became one of California's known painters. He was. initially a lithographer, and in 1912 at age 50-years-old he took up painting. He was self-taught, and he painted en plein air as a post-impressionist. Reiffel first moved to the art colony in Silvermine, Connecticut, where he was the president of the Silvermine Artists' Guild. He later moved to San Diego. He was the subject of a retrospective at the San Diego Museum of Art and the San Diego History Center in 2013.

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Landscape with Deer in Morning Haze (Fog)
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) American
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 21" x 15" (w x h),
circa 1902
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum,
New York, NY, this art at the museum since 1913

Largely self-taught, Winslow Homer, an oil painter, also worked extensively in watercolor primarily chronicling his working vacations. Born in Boston he found his way to his family property development in Prouts Neck, Maine, his Prouts Neck studio, a National Historic Landmark, is now owned by the Portland Museum of Art.

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Inland Fog
Anne Seelbach (1944- ) American
Watercolor on paper, 15" x 11" (w x h), 1993

Anne Seelbach received a BA from NYU and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. She has taught at the University of Rhode Island, Northeastern University (Boston), Emerson College (Boston), The Newark Museum (New Jersey), the Parrish Art Museum (Water Mill, NY), and the Victor D'Amico Institute of Art (Amagansett, NY). Seelbach lives and works in on Long Island in North Haven, NY. Her website is HERE.

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Fog above Lake Garda at San Vigilio
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) American
Watercolor on paper, 20" x 13" (w x h), 1913

From the beginning, Sargent's work was characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. Art historians generally ignored society artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century.

When the Sunlight Danced

When the Sunlight Danced

at the top of Mount Agamenticus at the 2nd Annual Mount Agamenticus Plein Air Paint Out in York, Maine painted plein air July 30, 2022, 20" 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, $500

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Painting Shadows in Shadow
Visual Essay

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I had so much fun with this. After setting up on this hot day in tree shadows, a strong cool breeze blowing atop the mountain, I was ready to paint the trees before me. But I was mesmerized by the shadows dancing on my paper from the blowing branches above me. And so I went with it...

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They danced and danced.

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So while the sun shined through the blowing branches, I panted the dance of the trees.

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And so my view was not in front of me, but cascading down from above, and I had a blast painting "When the Sunlight Danced".

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Meanwhile, Justine Springer was painting Mt. Agamenticus North Face in acrylic beside me for the 2nd Annual Mount Agamenticus Plein Air Paint Out. Her web site is HERE. Note the color of her rocks and the color in them in the photo above. I spy a lovely pink. Meanwhile, beyond these trees, down  below us and looking up at them from the other side was another painter.

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Caren Klein was painting the same trees from the other side, Big "A" with water soluble oils. what I found intriguing was how these two artist painting the same trees and rocks independent of each other, both used lovely pinks in the rocks, which was their view of these gray rocks. And as my grandson once said, "It's a painting; you can do anything." And they chose the same anythings. Caren Klein's website is HERE.

Art is so satisfying.

Pointing Up to Fairweather Clouds

Pointing Up
to Fairweather Clouds

at the top of Mount Agamenticus at the 2nd Annual Mount Agamenticus Plein Air Paint Out in York, Maine painted plein air July 30, 2022, 15" x 12" (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, $450, for sale at the York Art Association, 394 York Street, York Harbor, ME 03911 their web site HERE through August 2022

There were our 16 paintings in a line amidst the members art at the York (Maine) Art Association, mine on the left at the start of the line. The painting on the right, All the Way to the Sea, by Allison Donohue, her website is HERE.

At the reception... my painting is at the center of this photo. The mother and son in the foreground are First Place Winner Allison Donohue and her son.