Busman’s holiday

What does a gallerist do on a snow-day? Hang my show, of course.

Dancing Santa, by Carol L. Douglas

Maine Gallery Guide ran this feature about my upcoming studio Open House yesterday. If you like the Maine scene (especially if you live away), you really should subscribe to their newsletter. It’s the single best resource for our state’s art scene. Here’s a link to the sign-up page.

Meanwhile, my husband is fretting about the boxes and bags of stuff littering our house. “You’ve bought at least three times what you need,” he frets. Parties are where my inner Italian, usually tamped firmly down, comes into play. What’s worth doing, is worth doing to excess, I tell myself—and I buy more.

Part of the mess in my dining room.

No shindig is complete without the last-minute household disaster, and ours came in the form of a cracked chimney tile. This created the opportunity to move our woodstove from the kitchen to the dining room, where it has some chance of actually heating the house. We got the bad news two weeks ago and worked fast. Our mason opened the dining room wall last Monday, only to find a copper water line. All work stopped while we looked for a heating specialist to move the pipe.

Luckily, a young friend is coming to do the job on Sunday. Meanwhile, we have a hole in the dining room wall, and the rest of the room is a shambles. Whatever you do, don’t use our back stairs. The contents of our china cabinet are lined up on its treads. That staircase’s primary function is as a laundry chute, so we’re on pins and needles. If we forget, we’ll shatter a lifetime of useless collecting in a single moment.

And more mess. I bought the wine totally for its name.

Yesterday the storm that’s plagued the northeast this week finally showed up in mid-coast Maine. With so few people out, Sandy Quang left work early and stopped here to collect her mail. The poor young gallerist was about to enjoy a busman’s holiday. She spent the afternoon and evening helping me hang my work. She’s much better at it than me, and she has the additional advantage of a fresh eye. By the time we finished, the snow had stopped. It was a beautiful night, the moon shining dimly through the clearing clouds.

Even though the studio is a mess, I took a video of it for Bobbi Heath. “Are you posting that on Instagram?” she asked. No; it’s a mess, and I’m not very good at video. “People love to see the sausage being made,” she countered. She’s right; the two small videos I posted are being watched. Here’s a link and a link if you are also an avid sausage viewer.

Happy New Year! by Carol L. Douglas

Which brings me to my two resolutions for the new year. First, I’m going to learn to take a decent video. Second, I’m going to master my email list. But I’m always conflicted about email.

Yesterday I timed how many emails I was deleting. It was about 15 an hour, all asking me to donate money or to shop. That didn’t include the ones that ended up in my spam folder, which I watch carefully—Bruce McMillan’s very fine Postcard of the Day was landing there for a while.

You can meet the original of my 4-H Christmas Angel on Saturday. She's presiding over my tree, as she does every year.

That overload makes me hate the medium. But it’s a necessary evil, I’m afraid, at least until something better comes along.

Meanwhile, I hope to see you—in person—at my studio on Saturday. Here are the details, as if you could possibly forget them:

Carol L. Douglas Studio Open House
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Noon to Five
394 Commercial Street, Rockport

Seeing and re-seeing

Painting what you know, vs. what’s actually there.

Spruces and pines on the Barnum Brook Trail, by Carol L. Douglas

Yesterday I was visited by a filmmaker from Wisconsin. Patrick Walters is in Rockport for a workshop at Maine Media Workshops being taught by my pal Terri Lea Smith. I didn’t catch his name when he texted, so I didn’t look him up beforehand. That meant I had no preconceptions and did no prep.

I thought he was looking for background shots for a film, “b-roll” as he called it. He would photograph a few things in my studio, ask me some cursory questions and move on. Instead, we talked for nearly an hour.  What seems to fascinate him is the question of seeing, or re-seeing, the familiar, as he termed it.

The first thing that ought to go out the window in plein air is slavish fidelity to reality. Painters can aggressively edit subjects on the fly in a way that traditional photography (in contrast to Photoshop) can’t. Walters asked me how we do that.

Sunset near Clark Island, by Carol L. Douglas

The easiest way is through the discipline of drawing. It’s where you can experiment without wasting hours on a painting that won’t work. Drawing saves time, and it helps you narrow your focus. All of the important design work in a painting is contained in the drawing. The better you know your subject, the better you’ll paint it.

We spoke about seeing what you know, rather than what is actually there. Art students are told early on to stop drawing “an eye” or “a hand” and actually try to draw what’s in front of them, but that’s an easy lesson to forget. Walters told me about painter Bo Bartlett’s experiences with vision, chronicled in the movie SEE. As Bartlett’s vision ebbed temporarily, he substituted what he expected for what was actually there.

A lobster pound at Tenants Harbor, by Carol L. Douglas

For years, Rockport harbor was home to a red lobster boat called Becca & Meagan. Many artists have painted or photographed it over the years, including me. One summer, I held my class at the harbor. A new watercolor student chose our red lobster boat as her subject. “You’ve got the hull wrong,” I told her, and corrected it. She, in her own turn, drew it back the way she saw it. We seesawed back and forth through most of the class, both of us getting frustrated. Finally, she interrupted me and insisted that I look again. I realized Becca & Meagan had been hauled and replaced by Kenny Dodge’s new red lobster boat, Hemingway. What I ‘knew’ had overwritten what I was seeing.

Familiarity helps us telegraph our drawing, but it does have pitfalls. Still, I think it nets the best pictures. The value of my road trips is not necessarily in the high finish of the work, because it isn’t finished at all. Rather it’s in learning new ways to see, to represent atmospherics, and to measure distances.

Anticipation, by Carol L. Douglas

Paul Cézanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire more than 60 times. His familiarity with the mountain meant he didn’t have to waste time exploring its contours. He was free to experiment with mark-making and composition instead.

His Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings also demonstrate the flexibility artists have to manipulate their subject. From his vantage point on Les Lauves, he could see the Croix de Provence, which stands 19 meters tall on the highest visible ridge. It’s been there for a long time and is a notable landmark in the region. Cézanne edited it out. Doing so allowed him to focus on the mass of the mountain itself.

Timing is everything

Yesterday would have been a perfect painting day, but I’m a native of these here parts. I knew it was probably the last day we had to winterize before Mother Nature dumps snow on us. So my laddie and lassies and I moved and stacked the seven face cords of wood we’ll need this winter, raked the turf and swept the driveway, rolled up the hoses, trimmed the roses, and put things away for the season. We get lots of snow here in Rochester, and not being prepared gums up the works.

Conversely (and perversely) the day we met to shoot my how-to-paint video was miserably cold and windy. Why can’t Mother Nature cooperate?

Serina Mo filming.

But Serina Mo did a GREAT job with it, and I've learned just how much of a Buffalo accent I really have. Enjoy!

I will be teaching in Acadia National Park next August. Message me if you want information about the coming year’s classes or this workshop.