19 Years of Painting A House in Maine

2017, oil on multimedia dartboard

1998, watercolor

 I've been painting in Maine during summers for the past 19 years, always staying at the same house.  While I'm there, I paint lobsters, lobster boats, rocks, the ocean, the beach, adirondack chairs, the ferry across the harbor... and the 1880s Victorian house with the wrap-around porch that I rent.

19 years ago, I did a small watercolor painting from the front lawn and it may have been among the last times I took out watercolors and a soft brush.  Since then, I've painted the house from the front, the side, the beach, in the morning, at sunset, and any other time it has struck me that I can get a bit more familiar with the house.

Over the years, the house has been surrounded by more or fewer wildflowers, and drought has turned the grass to the color of wheat or wet summers have made it a lush green.  The landscaping has gotten a bit more elaborate, too.

My own exploration of paints, my palette, mediums and painting surfaces has resulted in some looser and some tighter paintings.   There have been times when I only have a short session in which to paint and other times that I have more opportunity to contemplate the scene.  Sometimes the spot I set up my easel gives me an angle that make the house look taller or wider, and I emphasize that.  The house's white siding can turn yellow in bright light or blue or purple in deep shade.

Artists paint the same subject over and over, not as a commercial strategy (although some do -- painting upon painting of an apple, then two apples, and so on), but as a way of getting to know and understand a subject or a place.  Jennifer Bartlett famously published a book, In the Garden, of almost 200 drawings in a range of styles of the garden at a villa.  Monet painted haystacks (and many other things) at different times of day.

And I keep painting this house.