along Marginal Way at Ogunquit, Maine on April 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. Arches cold press rough 100%
cotton watercolor paper
unframed, $900
at Ogunquit, Maine, painted plein air on April 24, 2021
17" 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, $700
at Ogunquit, Maine, painted plein air on April 24, 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
at Ogunquit, Maine, painted plein air on April 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.
$250
at the public dock off the Cape Porpoise Pier
in Cape Porpoise, Kennebunkport, Maine,
painted April 23, 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
at the public dock off the Cape Porpoise Pier
in Cape Porpoise, Kennebunkport, Maine,
painted April 22, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and
Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and
permanence, wax resist and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $150
in Cape Porpoise Harbor, Kennebunkport, Maine
painted plein air April 10, 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. Arches cold press rough 100% cotton
watercolor paper, framed, $950
in Cape Porpoise Harbor, Kennebunkport, Maine
painted plein air April 10, 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 SOLD
A yellow tulip in a pot
on my deck in Shapleigh, Maine
on April 3, 2021, painted April 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
tulips in a pot on my deck in Shapleigh, Maine
on April 3, 2021, painted April 8, 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
in a pot on my deck in Shapleigh, Maine on April 3, 2021, painted April 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
Donated to the Springvale Public Library Spring 2024 Fundraising Auction
in a pot on my deck in Shapleigh, Maine
on April 3, 2021, painted April 8, 2021
7" x 5" (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, $150
this spring outside my kitchen window on March 29, 2021, painted April 7, 2021
12" x 9" (w x h), using 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.
$400
in Cape Porpoise Harbor, Kennebunkport, Maine,
on March 30, 2021, painted April 3, 2021
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, $600
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"Nice drawing," wrote Carol Douglas.
"I kept it loose. Then, continued drawing with my watercolor brush."
in the highlands of Iceland, painted March 27, 2021
30" x 22" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and graphite on 300 lb. Fabriano Artistico
cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $1,000, unframed $850
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Strange but True Fact:
Volcanic Herðubreið, the sixth tallest mountain in Iceland, at 5,518 feet / 1,682 meters high, is taller than the tallest mountain in Maine, Mount Katahdin at 5,269 feet / 1,606 meters. Katahdin would only be the ninth tallest mountain in Iceland.
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Stages of this Art
To get intense color after fully wetting the area to be painted, I squeeze watercolor right from the tube and get out my largest brushes to play.
I do this in other areas, too.
Then, once dry, I paint using my palette and regular brushes, mostly a 1" flat.
And then a few touches of defining color.
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Herðubreið in Icelandic Art
apples on snow behind my home
on February 11, 2021, painted March 17, 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
in the highlands of Iceland, painted March 21, 2021
30" x 22" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 300 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $1,000, unframed $850
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
From a Volcano
by Bruce McMillan
High on an island
desert, a mountain, wide as
shoulders, Herðubreið.
all text and photos copyright 2021, Bruce McMillan
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Bruce, the artist,
showing the scale of this watercolor.
painted March 18, 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
Orange and White
Four Mineolas on snow
behind my home in Shapleigh, Maine
on February 11, 2021, painted March 16, 2021
10" x 8" (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, $300
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Orange and White Theme
The artists are, in alphabetical order, John White Alexander, Helen Frankenthaler, Marsden Hartley, Mitchell Jamieson, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Egon Schiele, and Maurice Utrillo.
Sotheby's notes edited:
This portrait of a child sleeping with its sharp pencil lines, the densely painted deep orange, and the handling of watercolor are an example of the artist's ability to juxtapose delicate washes of watercolor with bolder opaque accents of gouache, and of course his trademark pencil contours. The elevated viewpoint is a typical Schiele motif, one which adds to the sense of dislocation in the spaces his figures inhabit. Intriguing is the ambiguity of the relationship of this figure to her surroundings, leaving it to the viewer to interpret the work as they choose.
Helen Frankenthaler:
"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it--well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that--there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute."
Philadelphia Museum label:
John White Alexander was celebrated for his gracious paintings of women in domestic interiors characterized by long, fluid lines and luminous color. The Gossip illustrates several influences derived from French Impressionism, including filtered light, active brushwork, and a bright palette. The artist's wife later remembered that Alexander was "especially interested in getting away from the usual studies of light," noting that the studio in which The Gossip was painted "was built to provide every need of lighting and cross lighting."
Wiki edited:
Morris Louis Bernstein, known professionally as Morris Louis, was an American painter. During the 1950s he became one of the earliest exponents of Color Field painting. While living in Washington, D.C., Louis, along with Kenneth Noland and other Washington painters, formed an art movement that is known today as the Washington Color School.
All of the Color Field artists were concerned with the classic problems of pictorial space and the flatness of the picture plane. In 1953, Louis and Noland visited Helen Frankenthaler's New York studio, where they saw and were greatly impressed by her stain paintings. Upon their return to Washington, Louis and Noland together experimented with various techniques of paint application. Louis characteristically applied extremely diluted, thinned paint to an unprimed, unstretched canvas, allowing it to flow over the inclined surface. The importance of Frankenthaler's example in Louis's development of this technique has been noted. Louis reported that he thought of Frankenthaler as the bridge between Jackson Pollock and the possible. However, even more so than Frankenthaler, Louis eliminated the brush gesture, although his flat, thin pigment is at times modulated in billowing and subtle tones.
Wiki notes, edited:
Maurice Utrillo, born Maurice Valadon, whose mother was noted French artist Suzanne Valadon, the first female painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Born when she was eighteen, beginning her role as an artist's model, she never revealed who was the father. Born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of Montmartre who was actually born there. Utrillo specialized in cityscapes.
With no training beyond what his mother taught him, he drew and painted what he saw in Montmartre. After 1910 his work attracted critical attention, and by 1920 he was internationally acclaimed. In 1928, the French government awarded him the Cross of the Légion d'honneur.
An anecdote told by Diego Rivera concerning Utrillo's paternity: "After Maurice was born to Suzanne Valadon, she went to Renoir, for whom she had modeled nine months previously. Renoir looked at the baby and said, 'He can't be mine, the color is terrible!' Next, she went to Degas, for whom she had also modeled. He said, 'He can't be mine; the form is terrible!' At a cafe, Valadon saw an artist she knew named Miguel Utrillo, to whom she spilled her woes. The man told her to call the baby Utrillo: 'I would be glad to put my name to the work of either Renoir or Degas!'"
Smithsonian notes:
This untitled piece is a "proto-circle," one of Kenneth Noland's first circle paintings in which a bold black ring focuses the viewer's eyes on the colors and textures within. Noland felt that the "touch and application" of color was as important as its hue, and he applied the paint in heavy brushstrokes to emphasize the different stages of his working process. Stripes and dashes of green, orange, and yellow show partially through the white paint, as if waiting to burst through and fill the circle with color.
"I do open paintings. I like lightness, airiness, and the way color pulsates. The presence of the painting is all that's important." -Kenneth Noland
In 1977, he was honored by a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that then traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and Ohio's Toledo Museum of Art in 1978. In 2006, Noland's Stripe Paintings were exhibited at the Tate in London. He was the fifth husband of his fourth wife. He died in Port Clyde, Maine in 2010.
Wiki notes, edited:
Mitchell Jamieson studied at the Abbott School of Art and the Corcoran School of Art. In the 1930s, he traveled to Key West and the US Virgin Islands to paint under the Treasury Department's Art Project, and received commissions to paint murals for post offices in Upper Marlboro and Laurel, Maryland; Willard, Ohio; and at the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C. During World War II, Jamieson served as a combat artist in the U.S. Navy. He sketched and painted the occupation on North Africa, the invasion of Sicily, the invasion of France, and the Okinawa invasion.
He was commissioned to paint a mural in what is now the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building to commemorate Marion Anderson's famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939. Titled An Incident in Contemporary American Life, the mural is still on view to the public who visit the building. See it HERE.
His works are in collections at the White House, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Seattle Art Museum.
Wiki notes, edited:
Hartley, born in Lewiston, Maine in 1877, moved to an abandoned farm near Lovell, Maine, in 1908. He considered the paintings he produced there his first mature works, and they also impressed New York photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz. Hartley had his first solo exhibition at Stieglitz's art gallery 291 in 1909, and exhibited his work there again in 1912. Stieglitz also provided Hartley's introduction to European modernist painters, of whom Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse would prove the most influential upon him, observing Cubist artists in Paris and Berlin.
end
a Bartlett pear and Mineola with shadows
on February 11, 2021, painted March 7, 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
on a sunny day by my home entrance-way
on March 2, 2021, painted March 3, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Sky blue: Prussian Blue (W&N);
Icicle blues: French Ultramarine (W&N), Payne's
Gray Bluish (SH), and Cobalt Turquoise (SH) 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
in the woods and fields and rocks walls behind
my home in Shapleigh, Maine on February 6, 2021,
painted February 14, 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
in the snowy fields behind my home with a
Pearange (a pear|orange) on February 6, 2021,
painted February 8, 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
in a snowy field
by my home in Shapleigh, Maine,
on February 6, 2021, painted February 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
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Color Pair Art of the Day
Orange and Blue
Wiki notes edited:
Sir Terence Ernest Manitou Frost RA (1915-2003) was a British abstract artist, who worked in Newlyn, Cornwall. He was renowned for his use of the Cornish light, color and shape to start a new art movement in England. He became a leading exponent of abstract art and a recognized figure of the British art establishment. At the Barbara Schaeffer Society in New York, 1960 he had his first US exhibition. There he met many of American abstract expressionists, including Marc Rothko who, along with his wife Mel, became great friends. The success contributed to an award of the John Moore Prize for 1965. In 1992 he was elected a Royal Academician and he was knighted in 1998. A retrospective of his work was held in 2000.
Wiki notes edited:
Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, RSA, was a Scottish Colorist painter, renowned for his depictions of the elegant New Town interiors of his native Edinburgh, and for his work on Iona. He was a left-handed painter.
While a student, the President of the Royal Scottish Academy tried to stop him painting with his left hand because: "No artist ever became great who did so." Cadell swiftly replied, "Sir, and did not the great Michelangelo paint with his left hand?" The President did not respond and left the room quickly. A fellow student asked Cadell how he had known that Michelangelo was left-handed. Cadell confessed, "I didn't know but nor did the president."
Cadell spent much of his adult life in Scotland and had little direct contact with many of the new ideas that were being developed abroad. So he tended to use subjects and environments that were close at hand, landscapes, fashionable Edinburgh New Town house interiors, still life and figures in both oil and watercolor. He is particularly noted for his portraits of glamorous women whom he painted in a loose, impressionistic manner, depicting his subject with vibrant waves of color. He enjoyed the landscape of Iona enormously, which he first visited in 1912 and features prominently in his work. From October 2011 - March 2012 the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art held a major solo retrospective of Cadell's work, the first since that held at the National Gallery of Scotland in 1942.
Wiki notes edited:
Dorothy Johnstone painted landscapes and portraits, particularly of children, and her style was free and relaxed, whether using oil, watercolor, pencil or chalk. Some of her work is displayed at the National Gallery of Scotland.
Johnstone was born in Edinburgh in 1892. Her father, landscape artist George Whitton Johnstone RSA (1849–1901), encouraged her artistic talents, and at the age of 16 she enrolled as a student at the Edinburgh College of Art. She took Life Class where she revealed her talents at informal portraiture, a genre for which she became well known. In 1914 she became a member of staff at the Edinburgh College of Art. From the summer of 1915, she became a regular annual visitor to Kirkcudbright in Galloway, where she would paint with other female artists including Jessie M. King as part of the Kirkcudbright School.
Dorothy, with her close friends Cecile Walton and Mary Newbery, was a member of The Edinburgh School, which reformed in 1919, a collective of gifted and progressive artists associated with the Edinburgh College of Art. During 1919 she was living in Kirkcudbright where she had an affair with Vera Holme, who would go on to be the Pankhursts chauffeur.
In 1924, at the peak of her artistic career, Johnstone mounted a joint exhibition in Edinburgh with fellow artist Cecile Walton. She married her colleague and fellow group member David Macbeth Sutherland that year. They had a son, Sir Iain Sutherland, in 1925, and a daughter in 1928. As a consequence of her husband's appointment in 1933 as head of Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen, now Robert Gordon's University, and of the marriage bar in place at the time, she gave up her career and her students.
She kept her links with Edinburgh by continuing to exhibit her portraits and landscapes at the Royal Scottish Academy, to which she was elected an Associate (ARSA) in 1962.
Tate notes:
Following the precepts of traditional color theory (based on the segmented color wheel divided into primary, secondary and tertiary colors), Mondrian used the complementary colors orange and blue to remarkably vivid effect. Each color is allowed to dominate a major area of the painting (the church and the sky respectively) but is also repeated within the area of the other.
As Mondrian himself wrote in a letter to the Dutch review De Controleur in 1909, "I believe that in our period it is definitely necessary that, as far as possible, the paint is applied in pure colors set next to each other in a pointillist or diffuse manner. This is stated strongly, and yet it relates to the thought which is the basis of meaningful expression in form, as I see it."
From 1908 Mondrian spent several summers on the Dutch North Sea coast of Zeeland, which provided the inspiration for a number of paintings. He regularly stayed at Domburg, where an avant-garde artistic community gathered, and he found his subjects in the town, along the sea dunes and in neighboring areas. One of these was the small rural village of Zoutelande, whose Gothic church tower has been identified as the subject of this painting.
It's likely that Mondrian made the painting in his studio either while on holiday or once he returned to Amsterdam rather than on the spot, and his memory may have been aided by photographs. Examination of the canvas shows that the artist originally painted Sun, Church in Zeeland on a slightly larger stretcher, setting the tower a little to the left and allowing the beginnings of the spire to be seen at the top. He must have soon rethought this because at a very early stage the canvas was placed on a smaller stretcher and painted areas at the top and right were folded over to make the tower central and exclude the spire. The resulting painting is more frontal and direct than first conceived.
MET notes:
Between 1887 and 1891, Signac spent the warmer months pursuing his two passions, marine painting and boating, on excursions to seaside resorts. One of five views made during a trip to the Mediterranean port of Cassis in April–June 1889, this work was singled out for praise when the series debuted at the Salon des Indépendants later that year. At Cassis, Signac found "White, blue and orange, harmoniously spread over the beautiful rise and fall of the land. All around the mountains with rhythmic curves." Until 1894, he evoked analogies with musical compositions by inscribing each of his pictures with an opus number.
Art UK notes:
Painter, teacher and architect, John Miller was born in London. After National Service he worked at a variety of jobs, before becoming a full-time painter. For a brief period, he was an actor in films, theatre and television and in the early 1950s ran L'Elixir, a coffee bar and restaurant on Richmond Hill, Surrey, with his close friend and companion, Michael Truscott, the potter, picture framer and restorer, as its chef; although it was a success, with the writer Beverley Nichols and singer Eartha Kitt among its clients, it was demolished because of road widening.
He next studied architecture and was articled to the church architects Milner and Craze. In 1958 he moved to Cornwall, settling in the Penwith peninsula, and becoming a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists in 1961, serving as chairman for some years.
His seventieth-birthday show at the Portland Gallery, 2001, was a sell-out, by which time Miller's richly colored pictures of sky, sea and sand, of the Hayle Estuary and of Tresco, Isles of Scilly, had become almost his trademark.
Miller has work in public and private collections around the world. His seventieth-birthday show at the Portland Gallery, 2001, was a sell-out, by which time Miller's richly colored pictures of sky, sea and sand, of the Hayle Estuary and of Tresco, Isles of Scilly, had become almost his trademark.
Wiki notes:
In 1956, Ellsworth Kelly met Robert Indiana, who moved in the same building and they became partners. Indiana became his mentor. They broke up around 1964. One of the reasons was Indiana's use of words in his paintings which Kelly considered such technique not worthy of high art.
Helen Frankenthaler:
"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute."
