More from Maine

 These two paintings were begun in Maine.  The still life on top was close to done when I worked on it there, sitting on the porch looking out toward the ocean.  What I needed to do when I got home was create greater depth by darkening the kitchen linens that folded down at the table front.

As for the view of the house from the beach, this is a subject I've painted many, many times.  Each time I feel like I get closer to the feeling of how that house is my definition of the perfect place.  I've played around with the wild roses in front of the house and this time I made the most of the path as it cuts through the roses.

I am almost ready to start working on some paintings at home again.

Maine Flowers & View

Coming back to this painting today, it jumped out at me that the cobalt blue that I'd used on the ceramic pitcher holding the flowers was way too powerful.  It wasn't in the original palette I used when I started the painting (the cerulean in the sky wasn't either... but it made sense to me).  I grayed it down so it could sit under and behind the flowers.  I also made the arrangement less static -- flowers now spill down in the front, not just the sides of the pitcher.

Shadows were missing from the table the flowers were on. I added small houses to the distant view (it's the town of Bass Harbor, Maine across the water; the porch is in Bernard).

Compared to the immediacy of painting outside, it's a different feeling to sit in the studio and think through questions about how the painting is seen, whether the light is consistent, whether things seem appropriately close or far.  It's my hope that I don't have to view this as a trade-off with either paintings that convey a moment in time or paintings that appear to be overly studied.

Working out a Painting Problem

This was the last painting I did in Maine and I decided to tackle a still life with a pretty complicated background -- house, trees, harbor & mountain.  I thought it was pretty well resolved in Maine, but when I got it home it seemed too dull, like I'd tinted the paint too much (mixing in white).

Now I'm trying to bring back more color, but I've feel like I've lost some of the relationships between the different elements of the painting and lost the overall color sense that made the earlier, muted version a cohesive painting.   This is most likely the result of two things -- one is that I'm not looking at the view from the porch in Maine, so I've got no reference for how I see the things in relation to one another; the other thing is that I don't know what colors I had on my palette and I think I've introduced colors that didn't exist in the original painting and they are not harmonizing with the colors that did.

This needs a day to sit and I will see what really needs fixing when I get back into it.

Yellow Still Life in the Kitchen

This was the painting that started all the still life painting in Maine this summer.  It was a rainy day and we set this up in the kitchen -- flowers, wedges of watermelon. peaches in a container, lemons and grapes.  We started painting in the morning and then returned to it later in the afternoon and kept painting until early in the evening.  It was great to have the chance to return to the same subject again and again and work out problems in the painting.

Maine Still Life

This still life was set up on the porch outside in Maine.  I'd just finished a very yellow still life (not posted yet) and it was very much still in my mind painting this.

Two Artists Painting A Still Life

We set up a still life on the porch of the Maine house, and my artist friend and I painted the scene -- still life in the front, the ocean beyond.  It was a hugely fun time painting.  I started out painting the dark values, trying to be sure the scene was organized by light and shadow before adding in the color.   Her process is more a compilation of brush strokes of color that she layers; the highlights are added last and the images emerge.  I'm not sure she'd describe her work that way -- but her results are always luminous and emotionally charged.

I'd seen an exhibit years ago at the Phillips showing how impressionists sharing a studio interpreted the same model or still life.  I'm fascinated at how we can each look at the same scene and come up with different ideas of what we're seeing.

Mine's on the left.  The blue willow pattern mug and pitcher make a strong statement in my painting, and  I've put the pine trees and ocean in the back.  In my friend's painting the mug and pitcher are supporting players.  She was absolutely accurate mixing the gray of the table the still life was on and I couldn't get that color to mix, and ended up with a warmer table color.   Interesting!

Painting in Maine

Next!

I'm calling these done.  The top one I resolved by merging the figure on the right into the background -- that pushes it back in the space and keeps it from dominating because of its size and shape.  

Hot Interior Space

It's 100 degrees outside and I'm not going out to paint!  I'm letting my Tuscany scene dry a bit and see how it comes out to figure out whether further changes are needed, and in the interim, the heat is making me see red.

I was at a party in a lush, red space this past spring and was struck by the range of feelings evoked by the large red room with its big windows and cosy furniture.  It was simultaneously warm, calm, airy, intimate and inviting.  This is my beginning of a painting based on what that space looked like.

Dinner in Tuscany

Our last night in Tuscany (just one week ago!), we had dinner outside. The patio overlooked the pool, which floated above the hills and valleys beyond.  The  sun was setting.  The color of the sun's last light and candlelight on the table was spectacular.

I'm working on capturing a moment during that dinner.  The lower photo is the earlier version.  The brightness on the right is a shiny reflection in the paint from the light in the room,  it's not that bright in the real painting.