LANDSCAPE Portfolio
I work en plein air, wet on wet, very quickly. I try to keep my field easel ready for a dash out to catch a sunrise or the last light of the day. By studying nature I have a sense of what to expect and thus prepare to attempt to translate something about it onto a panel while it's happening around me. No amount of preparation and study has ever limited my astonishment and joy as the light changes. In just a few hours I've composed, worked up to the moment of light effect and then hung on to it in my mind's eye while I wrap up. In the afternoons I often miss the light window and am trudging out in the dark - hungry, mosquito eaten and happy. At sunrise just the opposite, from frozen to over dressed if the sun is strong. On a gray day I'm lucky and can keep painting until I run out of time. [See below for more background]
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I learned from Frank Mason, a great artist and gifted teacher. He studied with Frank Vincent Dumond, in my home town of Old Lyme, CT, where the Lyme School of American Impressionists flourished with the encouragement of Florence Griswold. It is an incredible gift to have connected with that tradition. As a student of Art History I didn't have much patience with impressionism but as a practicing painter the genius of the greats, and of being out there in nature, was so obvious. I didn't put all that together until I met Frank. But as a girl I fell in love with the marshes and the light - it is my longest lasting love affair. Probably the greatest lesson I learned from Frank was not to become attached to a piece at the expense of the whole. It's OK to throw away what isn't working in a particular context, lovely as it may be on its own. I have to remember I have the ability to create something that wonderful again, and more. He encouraged me not to be afraid to start fresh every moment but also hang in there and keep looking and more importantly, thinking. It's not enough to work hard if I'm not stretching my brain to see. learn, translate, evaluate, use the best of what I've got in every way. Painting is really hard work for your brain. Fun work.
I mix and tube my own colors and also make my own rigid panels by spreading and sanding countless layers of rabbit skin glue and whiting. It's a better, more reflective, and more enduring surface than anything I can buy. It's a ridiculous labor of love.
Cleaning up. Is also beautiful.
Arriving late afternoon I begin to think about what happens when low rays of light break across the marsh.
I am often happier with what is happening on my pallete as I clean up, then with what is on my panel. But it doesn't matter a great deal if I walk away from a location with a keeper, though that is generally the preferred outcome! It's always good to be out there and at a minimum I learn something that I tuck away for the next visit. The answer to the inevitable question: "So how long did it take you to paint that?" ...about 50 years.
I would like to give credit to a patron, Harry Wilcox III, with whose encouragement I returned to my field easel in earnest, the result of which was Rand's Canal - my first painting upon my return from a 16 year painting hiatus.