Stóri Dímon in Markarfljót

Art of Grandfather and Grandson with poem

Stóri Dímon in Markarfljót Study 3

in Iceland on September 1, 2022, painted September 25, 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 - Private Collection

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Stóri Dímon in Markarfljót Monochrome
(Grandson) Finn McMillan (Oct 8, 2002 - ), American-Swiss
Watercolor on paper, 7" x 5" (w x h)
Private Collection

Full Color as Monochrome

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Finn's desire was to paint this in black and white as a watercolor. I showed him how to paint this as in black and white, while using full color, and he did. He used Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine together to paint warm blacks and Paynes Gray Bluish and Quinacridone Purple to paint cool blacks, which are subtly seen in the art.

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Finn walking by Stóri Dímon on the flat black river valley before painting.

Photo of Stóri Dímon in the wide Markarfljót river valley on September 1, 2022.

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Colors Still There
by Bruce McMillan

On a wide, flat plain
of stone black lava,
a peak withstood

a glacial till stream
through time, to stand tall
in sun, all good.

We discover it
again, again, with
the likelihood

that painters could sketch
and paint this icon,
as many would,

generations of
painters, in colors
they understood.

All text, photos and art © 2022 Bruce McMillan

Hurricane Earl Surfs Marginal Way

Hurricane Earl
Surfs Marginal Way

painted at the Perkins Cove Plein Air Event, in Ogunquit, Maine on September 10, 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

The morning plein air setup

High Tide Perkins Cove

High Tide Perkins Cove

Painted at the Perkins Cove Plein Air Event, in Ogunquit, Maine on September 10, 2022 14" x 11" (w x h), watercolor and ink on rough watercolor paper, framed, $500 USD for sale at my art blog, theartofbruce.blogspot.com

Bruce McMillan, sketching and painting by a bush on the south side of Perkins Cove during the 2nd Annual Perkins Cove, Ogunquit, Maine Plein Air Event on Saturday September 10, 2022, photo by the event's photographer.

The scene that day while painting.

Watercolor Artists...Red...Essay

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Watercolor Artists

Approach Red Buildings
Visual Essay

featuring watercolors of
Richard Sargent, Georgina Klitgaard,
Edward Hopper, Charles Demuth,
Thomas Hart Benton, and
William Traylor

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Red House
Richard Sargent (1911-1978) American
Watercolor on paper, 10" x 14" (w x h)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.

Richard Sargent, born in Moline, Illinois in 1911, received his art education at the Corcoran School of Art and the Philips Memorial Gallery in Washington, D.C. He also worked with Ben Shahn. Sargent painted many cover paintings for The Saturday Evening Post. His illustration works are feature good humor and insight into human frailties. He also illustrated for Fortune, Woman’s Day, American Magazine, Photoplay, and Collier’s magazine. He was a member of the Society of Illustrators in New York, and for many years, lived and painted in Spain.

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Ice House, Nantucket
Georgina Klitgaard (1889/1893-1977) American
Watercolor, graphite and charcoal on paper, 20" x 14" (w x h), 1930
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Georgina Klitgaard (born Berrian), an American artist, was known for panoramic landscape paintings of scenic New York from a bird's-eye view perspective. Her work was reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, on April 14, 1929, and in The Art Digest, on November 1, 1929. She painted three murals in United States Post Offices during the Great Depression. She graduated from Barnard College, and also studied art at the National Academy of Design.

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Cobb's Barns and Distant Houses
Edward Hopper (1882-1967) American
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 30" x 22" (w x h), 1931
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Edward Hopper was renting Burly Cobb's house when this was painted during the Depression. It's in South Truro, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Hopper sold 30 paintings in 1931, including 13 watercolors. The following year he participated in the first Whitney Annual, and he continued to exhibit in every annual at the museum for the rest of his life. In 1933, the Museum of Modern Art gave Hopper his first large-scale retrospective.

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Houses with Red
Charles Demuth (1883-1935) American
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 14" x 10" (w x h), 1917
The MET Art Museum, New York, New York

Charles Demuth (1883-1935) was one of the leading artists during the American Modernism era. He was distinguished for intimate watercolors and cubic architectural paintings. Demuth studied art at Académie Julian in Paris, where he was welcomed into the avant-garde art scene and met other American Cubism artists like Marsden Hartley. He illustrated plays and novels such as Émile Zola's Nana. Demuth later employed a cubist technique by painting industrial factories with complex structural planes, leading him to becoming a pioneer for the Precisionist movement.

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House in Cubist Landscape
Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) American
Watercolor and charcoal on paper, mounted on board,
8" x 12" (w x h), circa 1915-1920
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

Thomas Hart Benton was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His work is strongly associated with the Midwestern United States, the region in which he was born and which he called home for most of his life. He also studied in Paris, lived in New York City for more than 20 years and painted scores of works there. He summered for 50 years on Martha's Vineyard.

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Man in Blue House with Rooster
Bill Traylor (1853-1949) American
Opaque watercolor and graphite pencil on board,
12" x 16" (w x h), circa 1939-42
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

William Traylor was an African-American self-taught artist from Lowndes County, Alabama. Born into slavery in 1853, Traylor spent the majority of his life after emancipation as a sharecropper. It was only after 1939, following his move to Montgomery, Alabama, that Traylor began to draw. At the age of 85, he took up a pencil and a scrap of cardboard to document his recollections and observations. From 1939 to 1942, while working on the sidewalks of Montgomery, he produced nearly 1,500 pieces of art.  Traylor now holds a central position in the fields of self-taught-artists and modern art.

Morning Tide Marginal Way

Morning Tide Marginal Way

with the rising sun over surf from Hurricane Earl, painted at the Perkins Cove Plein Air Event, on September 10, 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.
$500

Hazy warm morning on Marginal Way, Ogunquit, Maine for painting at the 2nd Annual Perkins Cove Plein Air Painting Event

The plein air setup

Sea and Sun 6 Artists Essay

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Watercolor Sea and Sun
by Six Artists Essay
Fairfield Porter, Joseph Mallord William Turner,
Violet Oakley, Martin Mower, John Marin,
and Wendy Klemperer

How watercolor artists
paint a body of water and sun
while looking directly into the sun
during sunrise.

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Sunrise
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) American
Watercolor and graphite on paper,
22" x 30" (w x h), circa 1974-1975

From Hirschl and Adler Gallery:
Fairfield Porter did his best work during the last fifteen years of his life. His style loosened somewhat, and he incorporated more abstract forms and colors and recorded a freer and more immediate impression of his subjects. In his lifelong pursuit of realistic, non-abstract subjects, however, Porter was far ahead of his time, particularly in painting portraits of his family and friends, a genre that wasn't taken seriously by the art world until years later.

Sunrise is one of three studies done in preparation for Porter's color lithograph Sunrise. It's an impressionistic view of the sea and sky taken from the beach near Porter's Southampton home.

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Sunrise: Whiting Fishing at Margate
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) English
Watercolor on paper, 20" x 15" (w x h), 1822
Tate Museum, London, UK

Tate catalogue (edited):
"Although described by Finberg as a sunset, this atmospheric color of the sun low over the sea has been tentatively linked by Eric Shanes to the 1822 watercolor Sunrise, Whiting Fishing at Margate (private collection). The sun in the finished composition is noticeably off-center to the left, clear of the cliffs occupying the right-hand half of the horizon, and Turner seems to be experimenting with a variation in asymmetrical placement."

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Study of Sun and its Reflection on Lake George
Violet Oakley (1874-1961)-American
Watercolor on paper
Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Gift of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2015

From Woodmere Art Museum (edited):
Violet Oakley (1874-1961), during the American Renaissance, a period of cultural renewal at the turn of the twentieth century, was the most renowned woman in the cultural life of the country, achieving international fame when she was commissioned to create a monumental series of murals in the new Pennsylvania State Capitol. The Philadelphia Public Ledger asserted that "the history of art in America probably records no greater distinction awarded to a woman than the selection of Miss Oakley to perform so important a work."

At a time when women artists usually concentrated on domestic themes, a prominent art critic observed that... "[Oakley's] vision of life moved outward in ever-widening circles, embracing the striving of all men and women..."

Oakley, a role model for aspiring female professionals for two decades before women won the right to vote, supported higher education for women by designing works of art for Bryn Mawr College, Vassar College, and Sarah Lawrence College. She was the second woman appointed to the faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In her later years she fashioned a role for herself as an activist promoting gender and racial equality, international government, and world peace. She drew portraits of the delegates to the League of Nations and the United Nations. Admired as a public intellectual as well as an artist, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in Literature from Delaware College in 1918, and an honorary doctorate in Law from Drexel University in 1948.

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Sun Spots (Stonington, Maine)
John Marin (1870-1953) American
Watercolor and charcoal on paper, 20" x 17" (w x h), 1920
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

From John Marin Part 1, A Stylistic Analysis by Sheldon Reich, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1970 (edited):
John Marin spent the summer of 1920 in Stonington... The motif of the sun had always obsessed Marin... [The sun spots] are like a the after-image caused by staring into too long into a brilliant sun... Stylistically, the most significant factors in Sun Spots are a clarity and simplicity of composition... Sun Spots... a Maine landscape, is a relatively abstract statement by Marin.

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Nahant Shore /
Seascape, Mahomet Shore (Massachusetts)
Martin Mower (1870-1960) American
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 7" x 5" (w x h), circa 1896
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA

Martin Mower, born in Lynn Massachusetts, painted in oil and watercolor and pastel. He sketched drawings, as well as worked in stained glass and photography. He was a friend of Isabella Stewart Gardner, who included nine Martin Mower paintings and drawings in her Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Also included in the ISG displays is some of their correspondence from 1923 with a mention of Martin's wife. "Dearest Mrs. Gardner, Evelyn and I are immeasurably cheered and delighted by the gift from you..." Martin and his wife, Evelyn Mower, lived at 6 Craigie Circle, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died at 90-years-old in Vancouver, British, Columbia, Canada.

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The Ship, Seascape #4
Wendy Klemperer (1958- ) American
Watercolor on paper, 2019

Wendy Klemperer earned a bachelor's in biochemistry at Harvard before moving to NYC to pursue art full time, earning a B.F.A. in sculpture at Pratt Institute in 1983. She's an accomplished metal sculptor.

In 2019, she was an artist at sea with a scientific research team at the University of New Hampshire. Her three-week artist residency at sea led to pencil sketches of the crew members highlighting the collaborative nature of scientific research, and her watercolors of the sea and ocean life celebrated the scientific and experiential rewards of conducting environmental research outdoors. Her watercolors from her time aboard the ship were displayed at the UNH Museum of Art.

Wendy Klemperer was born in 1958 in Boston, and raised in Cambridge and Watertown. She explored her passion for animals and nature during summers spent at her grandmother's country house in New Hampshire. Her sculptures are exhibited across the United States. While doing this essay I realized I've driven by a sculpture of hers on the way to Maine Audubon, and osprey and nest on Martin's Point Bridge in Falmouth, Maine. Wendy Klemperer lives in Brooklyn, NY and Nelson, NH.

Wendy Klemperer's website is HERE.

Path to the East Point Sea

Path to the East Point Sea

at Maine Audubon's East Point Sanctuary in Biddeford Pool, Maine, painted plein air August 16, 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, value $150, painting donated to the 2022 Brush with Nature: Plein Air Event and Art Auction 2022

The East Point of Tidal Pool Seaweed

The East Point
of Tidal Pool Seaweed

at Maine Audubon's East Point Sanctuary in Biddeford Pool, Maine, painted plein air August 20, 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, value $150, painting donated to the 2022 Brush with Nature: Plein Air Event and Art Auction 2022

Goldenrod East Point

Goldenrod East Point

at Maine Audubon's East Point Sanctuary in Biddeford Pool, Maine, painted plein air August 20, 2022, 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, value $150, painting donated to the 2022 Brush with Nature: Plein Air Event and Art Auction 2022

Thingvellir Wishing Pool

Thingvellir Wishing Pool /
Þingvellir Peningagjá

at the National Park in Iceland, Thingvellir, on August 28, 2022, painted August 31 / Sept 1, 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

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