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Painting John Porter on the porch of the Irondequoit Inn. Normally, you develop a painting all over, in layers, but not if your model has temporarily disconnected his oxygen to pose. (Photo by Carol Thiel) |
September and October are New York’s grandest months, when our
state throws off its sartorial rectitude and arrays itself in scarlet, purple, and
cloth-of-gold. And the last week in September was the best possible time to be at
the Irondequoit Inn with 14 of my
fellow New York Plein Air Painters (NYPAP).
This organization is being wonderfully revived by painter Marilyn Fairman, who organized the
event.
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A tiny study of trees and reeds, by me. |
However, there’s a reason Native Americans considered the
Adirondacks their summer home. Its
cold is brooding, often accompanied by rain and mist, and the weather is
fickle. Last autumn, the mercury was
hitting 80°
F, but this year it was pouting in the 40s and 50s, with rain and wind. That
often corresponds to the best fall color, but it's chilling to work in. However,
we are all dedicated outdoor painters, so of course we soldiered through.
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Painting at Oxbow Inlet (Photo by Mary Beth Vought) |
At one point, I trekked through a drenching downpour to find
Janet Yeates turned out like the Gloucester
fisherman and Ruth Crotty in knee-high Wellingtons, the hood of her rain
slicker pulled tight around her face. Both, of course, were too stubborn to
quit. Ruth was tarping down her easel under a pine tree, muttering, “What else
could possibly happen?”
“Lightning?” I asked.
Mercifully, I was wrong.
The start of our retreat coincided with the end of a
workshop given by National Geographic photographer Ralph Lee Hopkins. The
end of it coincided with the start of my painting workshop. The Irondequoit Inn
was a whirling parade of the visual arts, running for two weeks straight, and
it would be difficult to express just how energizing it was.
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Snag at Piseco Outlet, by me. |
My trip started with Bruce Bundock’s opening at Locust Grove in Poughkeepsie. The show should have
been called Friends in Low Places, because
Bruce’s gift is finding the sublime in the pedestrian. This
review features one of his finest paintings, but this
painting currently is my favorite: a classic composition that might
typically be used for a villa on the French Riviera, but which he translated to
a raised ranch along the Hudson, with a tanker in the background. Since it’s
Bruce’s day in the sun, I might as well add that he was recently profiled for
his day job as a preparator at Vassar, here.
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Value study by workshop participant Carol Thiel. |
For several years, my goal in landscape painting has been to
capture the sense of tapestry rather than the sense of distance. I find that much more difficult than building
a global scene comprised of discrete objects like buildings, islands, lakes and
hills. I’ve gone past the point of liking or disliking the results; I am simply
compelled to paint this way. Nothing was different this week: as my friends and
then my students turned out fantastic paintings of the woods, fields and lakes,
I continued to slash and burn amongst the trees.
One afternoon we finished up early and took a canoe trip in
Piseco Lake and up the mouth of Fall Stream. We each brought small
watercolor kits, but no painting was done (although the paper was certainly
damp by the time we finished). But we did look at the mists, the black water, and
the gold-drenched grasses on their earthen hummocks.
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Watercolor of Piseco Outlet by workshop participant Shirley Ernst. |
At 94, John Porter is the Piseco Company’s oldest living
shareholder. I’ve had the good fortune to spend time with him during the last three
autumns. He’s a retired woodsman, and wonderfully knowledgeable about both
natural and human history. He’s getting a bit frail these days, and mostly
looks at the woods from the front parlor. On the last afternoon of my workshop,
we were working on architecture. I had set up a painting of the lovely old green
chairs and dinner bell on the Inn’s commodious porch. The rain vanished, the
sun came out, and it was suddenly warm. John joined us for a few minutes, so I
put him in my painting. I’ll share it with you when it’s done, because to me it’s
a wonderful memory of a precious day.