Pathways

On Mount Desert Isle there are wonderful paths that roam all through the park.  They serve as ways to get places and as destinations from which to view some of the park's greatest vistas and features.  I became fascinated by the paths themselves with their deeply compacted earth worn bald of grasses and plants from years of nature pilgrims shuffling along them.  Each turn became its own destination with sea smells and sounds of rustling leaves cooly intruding on my concentration for guiding my steps.  Each of these three path paintings had a different story and promise of old secrets if I'd just continue a little further.  Each explores atmosphere, light and color differently because the narrative asked me to.  I am especially drawn to the struggle between the roots and the granite bedrock polished and exposed only by the passing of human feet.

Bar Harbor cliffside path

Bar Harbor approaching the stairs

Bar Harbor slanted stone path

Coggeshell coop

Behind one of the barn buildings at Coggeshell farm is this marvelous old coop or pen,  I could have worked with this in so many ways but the structure of it and the "not quite four-square" nature of everything just wanted to be seen straight on so that it could tell you about its quirks and warps.  Those wonderfully interrupted angular shadows take you right around the corner to the field and tree disappearing in the moisture thickened air.

Coggeshell Farm coop

Coggeshell farm barn and coop

At the two century old Coggeshell farm here in Rhode Island there are a number of outbuildings that wear their age and function like mossy old oaks in a forest.  Nothing here is made to be false or evocative by design.  They simply are evocative and take me quickly to another time and way of life.  I am hypnotized by the textures and the play of shapes and lines creating compositions that are structured and yet richly imperfect.  The colors I see in these planks just need to be coaxed up and out to tell the story of the misty morning and quietness of the landscape out of time.

Coggeshell farm shed doors

coggeshell farm barn in mist

Coggeshell farm rusting implements

Blythewold rock beach

This painting shows some of the wonderful and colorful complexity that has grown on the rocks and debris at the water's edge along the naragansett bay here in Rhode Island.  Blythewold is a marvelous old mansion and grounds that are open to the public and this view was found along their beach.  It is a place full of the cries of gulls and the rushing shushing noise of the constant wave lapping.
The shapes are so rich.  Click on the image and then zoom in on the big rock to see abstracts just jump off the page.

Blythewold Rock beach

Bar Harbor Misty Point

At Bar Harbor the rocks that tumble into the ocean are so dramatic and powerful for me.  Every few steps there seems to be another opportunity for a painting.  This painting shows one of my favorite views in part because even today, the place is so strong with its sense of active nature and ancient power that it still feels almost primordial to me.

As a painting, the depth created by the simplification of using atmosphere to blend and simplify distant shapes, gives the place that slightly muffled quality that you find at northern Maine seashores often broken only by the squabbling cry of the gulls.

For me, this painting really wraps together the beauty of the small hard edged shapes with the color palette, composition and tone of the early 20th century landscape painters.  I have used this painting as the background for my blog because it feels like it can represent this body of work.

The birds were interestingly the key to bringing the composition to life.  I painted and painted and repainted them to get a flock that felt natural and that had the flow I was looking for.

Bar Harbor Misty Point

Coggeshell farm stone shed

Near where we live here in Rhode Island there is a historical farm (Coggeshell Farm) still run as if it was pre-industrial with all of it's out buildings that are hundreds of years old still in use.  This stone storage building lies right at the edge of a saltwater marsh and was so rich with overgrowth, moss and nature's hand I had to make it a subject of this painting.  Old doors always fascinate me as it is magical to imagine the passage of so much life and work through those doors over hundreds of years.  This building almost seems to have been built just as a home for this modest ancient door.

I painted the mortar mostly simple light colors to pull out the rich watercolor-like tones of the old slate and shale used in the construction.

The overgrowth of the brambles create russet whips that look like they are weaving this old building back into the land itself.  It's late fall and the leaves have dropped giving the scene that quiet and expectant pause that you get here in New England.  I wanted to capture the thin blue sense of  late afternoon light near the shore and to be able to smell the salt marsh and brisk breeze that carries the hint of dry leaves and hay bundles.

Here again I find the hard edges shapes this painting process brings out to be simply thrilling and so full of discovery.

Coggeshell Farm Stone Shed

Old man top of the world

This gnarled old tree high up on a mountain was a trunk found by my wife's brother in one of his many treks.  I worked with the shapes of the trunk and added colors, tone and movement throughout the painting to bring out the power of this ancient life that had carved out an existence in this impossible and breathtaking environment.  I wanted the glow in the sky to almost seem to come from the stump itself.

Old man at the top of the world

Primrose Hill Secret Creek

Hidden deep in back of a neighborhood was this marvelous creek with it's undisturbed banks.  I was struck by the jewels that were the fallen leaves and the colors of the light that came through in shafts and reflections.  It has a wonderful jumbled complexity yet holds together in a single composition both visually and emotionally.  The broken verticals of the dark tree and it's fractured reflection anchor this composition.  the two ducks I painted in as well to give the eye a secret in the complexity to find.

Primrose hill creek

Bar Harbor windy shore

This image evokes such a sense of untouched nature for me.  I painted the moose into the shot because we had seen one earlier in our hiking that day and I felt he brought the moment and sense of misty quiet to a place of anticipation.   I especially enjoyed simplifying the layers of trees and finding the severe shapes of the exposed rock face.

Bar Harbor Windy Shore

Bar Harbor Rock views

Again, Bar Harbor is a place of such varied and breathtaking views and sights.  I am particularly struck by the caligraphy of the rocks and the wonderful gestures and rich shape and color relationships that come with such an artistic biome.  both of these paintings are rich with powerful hard edges shapes and interesting local and zone color relationships.  In particular the cliff tree image has some strong darks in the rocks that set the whole composition moving for me.

Bar Harbor Cliff Trees

Bar Harbor Cadillac Mtn scrub tree

Moss Oak abstract

This is one of my favorite images because of the incredible shapes, the flow of the shapes and the wonderful colors I was able to coax out and paint in.  Decaying wood is like a painters palette.  This image really illustrates some of the unexpected colors that happen between things.  Look at the the slightly darker blue green of the barely seen leaves as they blend with the sky color up in the canopy. Ordinarily I might have painted them a distinct color from the sky because that's what I believed them to be but first forcing color simplification on the base photo brings out other possibilities to paint into.  the color transitions from the foreground to the background are also so interesting and so varied.  Really a joy to develop and paint this one.

Moss Oak

Lincoln Park Lichen Bark

In  this image I really worked to bring out the layers of lichen and moss that were slowly growing their way up this tree.  Simplifying the background trees to just simple shapes with little surface detail and making the foreground tree have most of it's shape relationship with the sun patches cutting back across the ground really brought this image together.  the shapes created by the color patches on the right side of the trees base really got wonderfully contorted.  I would love to do one of these as an enormous mural so that the hard edged abstract shapes took on a different scale.

Lincoln Park Lichen Bark