It’s not what you say
or what you do, but how you make people feel that matters the most.
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Damariscotta Overlook, by Carol L. Douglas. |
I reeled. The damaged work represented a quarter of my oeuvre for this residency. “I bet you
feel like crying,” Clif
Travers said, sympathetically. If he’d looked closer, he’d have seen tears
pricking at the corners of my eyes.
Well, there was nobody to blame and nothing I could think of
to do about it. My studio space at the Fiore Art Center has a spanking new roof,
door and siding. Water must have migrated along a beam from elsewhere and down
the wall. This was freak damage, which can happen anywhere, at any time.
Furthermore, our work—as precious as it is to us personally—is still just
stuff. It was a rotten experience, but by no means did it rise to the level of
disaster.
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Damariscotta Lake, by Carol L. Douglas. I've finished this residency with eight pairs of landscapes, one in oils, one in watercolor. |
“It’s no use crying over spilt milk,” I told myself sternly,
and set off to paint.
Paint is a perverse mistress. I’ve struggled for a month in
oils (which are my primary medium) while watercolor has flowed much more
smoothly from my brush. Here on this last day, in the grip of distress, the
paint flowed freely from my brush. In fact, it went so smoothly that when Anna
Abaldo of Maine Farmland
Trust contacted me about the damaged paintings, I declined to talk. Why drag
myself back to earth when my work was going so well?
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Clouds over Teslin Lake,
by Carol L. Douglas. This was painted in 2016, and is quite small.
|
When we eventually met up, she—with very few words but
immense compassion—made me feel infinitely better. She has a plan to deal with the
damage, which is in itself reassuring. More importantly, the experience
cemented my already-high confidence in her character. “At the end of the day it’s
not what you say or what you do, but how you make people feel that matters the
most,” said Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.
Point Prim, watercolor, by Carol L. Douglas. This was painted in 2017, with a pretty bad head, I'm afraid. That's all Poppy Balser's and Bobbi Heath's fault. |
Later that evening, Lois Dodd—who’s a personal
idol and Maine’s greatest living oil painter—came for supper. I’m totally star-struck
around her, and can’t think of a thing to say. However, she’s a lovely, warm,
articulate lady. She critiqued one of my paintings. That’s an experience I’ll
treasure.
David Dewey
slipped me a small notebook before our meal. It contains a series of charts that were
the basis of Joseph Fiore’s
color exercises. They’re little mathematical puzzles, and they fascinate me.
Today I’ll stop at a drugstore and buy some graph paper, and tomorrow—my
painting finished for this residency—I’ll sit quietly and try to puzzle them
out. I couldn’t ask for a better end to a lovely month.