Hi friends, family, and painting enthusiasts!  Another summer season is on approach and after this long winter I am so ready!  I will be showing work in various venues this year.  Here is all the information.

First, I will soon be taking sixty new paintings to the exemplary Landing Gallery for my new solo show, Wild Life, about the pleasures of painting outside.  The show will be hanging before Memorial Day weekend and the official opening is Friday evening June 7th from 5:00 - 8:00.  At the end of June Landing Gallery will rehang a selection of my work for the summer, so please stop by when you are in Rockland.  A new catalogue for the Wild Life show is available from the gallery or from me directly. 

Then in August, five paintings of mine will be in the annual Blue Hill Public Library fundraising exhibit.  This year's show is entitled Vacationland, and is curated by Marcia Stremlau.  The show opens Friday August 2nd from 4:30 - 7:00 p.m., and will be up for the entire month.  This is usually a terrific group show.  Marcia has a great eye and I'm so pleased she is including my work again this year.

Again in August, the Dark Harbor Studio and Gallery on Islesboro is showing work from the group of artists I go on retreat with each fall at Long Ledge, the island home of painter Brita Holmquist.  The gallery is located in the Williams Building at 509 Pendleton Point Road in the village of Dark Harbor.  Our show will be opening on Thursday August 15th and will be up for a week.  

And, in August and September, I will be showing a few paintings at Betts Gallery at the Belfast Framer in their group show H2O, about water in all its forms.  I love painting snow, fog, clouds, the ocean, and inland waterways and am looking forward to seeing what the other artists in the exhibit will focus on.  The show opens in the evening on August 16th and runs through September 21st.

Here in my studio I have work for sale too, as always.  I've been framing some work and just added a lot of new images on the available work page of this site.  For more information about these paintings or to see others I have available, drop me a line.

That's all for now, although I am waiting to hear about another possible exhibit in the fall.  I will post an update about that when I know for sure.  I can't sign off without talking about painting for a minute, though.  Last year was an exciting one for me, painting-wise.  I spent a lot of time far inland, drawing and painting a few particular rivers, lakes, and mountains in northwestern Maine, and I feel like I am starting to know Maine in a new way.  Usually my attention is riveted by the ocean and islands, and that has been the case with me for decades now.  So to head in the opposite direction, go into the woods, and see how water behaves there has been a whole new thing for me.  I am rapt!  Some of my paintings from this ongoing exploration are shown with my other new work here, if you want to take a look.  And this is an example of one of them underway (a little over half-done), from last October, beside Lake Onawa:   

One last thing!  I must mention at least one painting from my new solo show, which is mostly ocean paintings.  This is on the cover of the Wild Life catalogue: September field up-island, Islesboro, Maine - oil/canvas, 16 x 20", 2018.  Come see it in person, at the show...?  Thanks for reading and thank you especially for your interest in my work (yes, this means you!).  I hope to see you out there in nature, in the months ahead.

Hi dear art friends - paintings of mine will be up and about this season, all over the great state of Maine, as will I!  Here is my summer and fall schedule:

First, the exemplary Landing Gallery now has all the work for my new solo show, Tree and Cloud.  The opening is Friday evening June 1st from 5:00 - 8:00, and the show will be up through the month of June (the gallery also keeps a selection of my work up all summer, so please stop by even if you can't make it in to see the whole show).  Catalogues are available at the gallery, and from me. 

In July, I will be painting around downeast Maine, and also heading inland for a few days to take a workshop with artist Alan Bray, at Monson Arts.  It's been a long time since I've taken a class but I have been yearning to paint in the woods lately and have admired Alan Bray's paintings for years, so this is a great opportunity!  To say I'm really looking forward to it is an understatement.  I'm already preparing some canvases and panels to bring with me.

In August, six paintings of mine will be in a group show at the Blue Hill Public Library:  Points of View, curated by Marcia Stremlau and Susan Webster, opening Friday August 3rd from 4:30 - 7:00 p.m.  Part of the proceeds of sales from the show goes to support this wonderful library and their community programming.  I'm very happy to be partipating in this fantastic annual exhibit again.  

Then in the fall, Betts Gallery at the Belfast Framer will have three of my paintings in a group show on the timeless theme of Trees - Maine is the Pine Tree State and trees are a major theme in Maine art and in my art too. The show opens on Friday September 28th, from 5:30 - 8 p.m., and runs through November 2nd.

And, I also have ten paintings hanging up right down the street - we have new neighbors who moved to town this spring and just opened a restaurant in their gorgeous historic house.  The Hichborn - their food looks amazing and "will follow the seasons of Maine."  Charlie and Kirk, the owners, a chef and artist respectively, want local artwork on the walls and asked me and several other artists from here in Stockton Springs to show paintings together.  It's great to have some work up with neighbor-painters Scott Moore, Peter Walls, and Fredrick Kuhn!

One more item of note - let's talk about books for a minute!  For the past few years one of my winter projects has entailed putting together two small books of my watercolors.  I love oil painting and that is my primary pursuit, but watercolor is also a great joy.  I scanned some of my favorites, put them together in a 10 x 8" hardcover, and printed the book online, via Blurb.  A Maine Coast Sketchbook shows 23 watercolors, plus 2 on the front and back covers, and a few mussel shell sketches for good measure.  I'm very happy with the color reproductions and archival paper.  Bonus: I am painting small watercolors inside the front cover of each copy, and signing them, and offering copies for sale here on my website.  That's the first book - the second one is longer, at around 100 pages, and is a poetic reverie about a day on the coast of Maine - morning, noon, afternoon, and evening - with brief text and sketches of the coast and of beach finds throughout.  Tidelines: a reverie is a 7 x 7" hardcover with a dust jacket, also printed on archival paper.  I am making a small drawing inside the cover of each copy of this book, too, and signing them.  Copies are only available to buy from me directly (contact me at sarah@sarahfaragher.com).  The catalogues from my three solo shows of the last three years are also available for sale.  Please take a look at my available work page for more details.

​Thanks for reading all this!  I'll sign off for now, with a painting.  This is one of the bigger paintings from my Tree and Cloud solo show, at 24 x 36".  Moonlight, starlight, from the harbor, Great Spruce Head Island, Maine - oil on canvas, 2017.  Seeing it again is making me think of island nights and the paintings that I hope to make, this  summer.  Stars, fireflies, phosphorescence, rising suns and moons - luminosity in the midst of darkness - an ongoing exploration and endeavor, always.  My best wishes for the seasons ahead!

Hi friends, it is deep winter around here and while I miss painting outside (so, so, so much), I am very busy working in the studio, framing paintings for a solo show in June at the wonderful Landing Gallery in Rockland, Maine.  The show is called Tree and Cloud (to complement last year's solo show Water and Stone) and consists of recent work from around Penobscot Bay and downeast Maine - about sixty paintings in all, from 5 x 7" up to 40 x 64".  The paintings will be at the gallery by mid-May and the show opens during the First Friday art walk, on the evening of June 1st.  A catalogue will be available in early May.  Full steam ahead!  Art matters!  I believe this now more than ever.  And, I must say, thank you to everyone who feels the same, and even more thank yous - a big bouquet of them - to folks who purchased my work last year.  It was my best year yet and I cannot thank you enough (yes, you!).  I live in a more or less constant state of gratitude for being able to devote the days of my life to painting.  I love it beyond words.

Snow is falling thick and fast this afternoon here in rural Maine and while I love to paint it (take a peek at my new work on this site to see a few recent snow paintings, made from inside while looking out the windows), right now I am remembering a particularly gorgeous hot summer day.  Sitting out on the ledges, making watercolors as a small-boat regatta streamed by, for hours and hours.  A brief look back at that day - finest kind - to help tide us over through the coming weeks and months, until we are back there once again.  Thanks for reading.  I hope to see you in June!         

I'm not going to fib, this has been a long difficult winter and continues to be a trying time in general.  However, I am happy to say that painting is bringing me a sense of purpose and joy, especially as I continue to explore subjects that are close to my heart.  This is a studio painting (there it is...! in my studio...!) I made early this spring, from memory, of the full moon rising over the treeline near the cabin I stay in on Bear Island in Penobscot Bay.  I saw this happen last summer and carried the image with me until the time felt right to try and paint it.  And one day, when nothing else was insisting on being done first, that moment finally arrived - 18 x 24", oil on canvas:

I suppose we could call the finished painting an ode to Payne's Gray, one of my favorite colors to both paint with and mix other colors from.  My palette tells the tale, doesn't it!  About the search for how to paint that evening-time, when any color in the landscape reads as near-black, and yet isn't, at all.  Wonderful to think about the eerie magic of a midsummer island night, this time of year.  Here's another new painting, from late-winter - also made in my studio, but this one from life, by looking out the window and down the hill we live on, to the ocean, about a mile away:  

Snow fell the night before, and the wind was whipping up the cove and the fat clouds overhead.  This one is a 12 x 9" panel, a familiar size I love to paint on.  The cloud shadows on the water and the snow on the far hills, mmm.  Every winter for the past few years I've made many paintings of this view, either zooming way in or widening out to encompass more space.  

​Another of my ongoing painting obsessions remains my love of Mount Desert Island and Schoodic.  And I'm so happy to say that Landing Gallery in Rockland, Maine is once again having a solo show of my work this year - Water and Stone: Schoodic and Mount Desert Island.  I will deliver around 60 paintings to the gallery in mid-May.  The show dates are May 26th - June 25th, and the official opening is during the First Friday Art Walk on June 2nd, from 5-8 p.m.  I have been working on this show for several years and many of the paintings in it are from my time as an artist-in-residence at Acadia National Park.  I was born in Bar Harbor and lived there as a child before moving away, and I have to say that painting in that area, now, as an adult, has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life.  It feels like a full-circle journey.  Paintings in the show range in size from very small (5 x 7") to large (40 x 64").  There will be a catalogue available, with images of 23 of the paintings.  This painting (already sold) is on the front cover - Blue and gold day, the corner, Schoodic Point, Maine, oil/canvas, 18 x 18":    

I also have work in a few group shows around the state this summer.  The first is the season opener at Landing Gallery, the 2017 Invitational, alongside works from Scott Baltz, Andrew Anderson-Bell, Roberta Baumann, Bruce Busko,Tom Curry, Brian Krebs, Monique Lazard, Marlene Loznicka, Bill Mayher, David Peterson, Björn Runquist, Robert Stebleton, Liliana Thelander, Jill Valliere, and J.M. Wilde.  The opening is Friday evening May 5th, from 5-8 p.m.  One of my paintings in this show is Morning view to North Haven, from Pendleton Point, Islesboro, Maine, oil/linen, 16 x 14":  

Then, two small paintings of mine are in the summer season show, Maine Wood(s), at the L.C. Bates Museum in Fairfield.  The show opening is May 4th from 5:30-7:30 p.m.  I am not going to be able to be in two places at once, unfortunately, so I won't be at the opening myself (I will be in Rockland at Landing Gallery instead).  I have not seen a list of the other artists included in this show, but did see some of the work when I dropped off my paintings last week, and it looks fantastic so far.  It will be up through mid-October.

Lastly, some of my work has been selected for the August exhibit Island Light at the Blue Hill Public Library.  This show is curated by Jennifer Mitchell-Nevin and Marcia Stremlau, and I am thrilled to be a part of it.  It opens on Friday, August 4th and runs through September 1st.  This is an important fundraiser for the library and I'm so happy to participate, to help support literacy, books, and artists all at once.  Again, I haven't seen a list of the other artists yet, although I do know that the amazing painter Louise Bourne will have work there too.  And three of my paintings will be in the show, including this one - Penobscot Bay fog bank, from Islesboro, Maine, oil/canvas, 20 x 20":​

Whew,  I think that's all for now!  One of the great things about being indoors working all winter is this:  as soon as the warmer weather returns, I find myself caught up with everything - ready for summer shows, work framed and photographed and labelled - and thus free to pack up my painting basket and head outside to make new work!  Last week I painted on Deer Isle and also in Lincolnville.  It's so wonderful to sit by the edge of the ocean and, as if you couldn't tell from most of the paintings above, observe and try to paint the light.  As far as I'm concerned, an excellent thing to focus on, now or at any time.

​Thanks for reading - I hope to see you at an opening this summer!

Fall is here  and I have been out painting the gorgeous colors here in Maine, mostly on the blueberry barren which is a fifteen-minute walk from our front door.  After driving a lot this summer to paint, mostly way downeast, it's a relief to stay home for a change and focus on what's just a bit closer at hand!

A few notes about where to see my work this fall.  First, Landing Gallery in Rockland has  a good selection of my work up, through Christmas.  My solo show there this summer was a success and I am so happy to say that we will be teaming up for another solo show of my new work from Schoodic and Mount Desert Island, in June of 2017!  The paintings for this show are completed and I am going to frame them this winter, while working on some new projects.  I have just added a new Schoodic section to my website, too - some of these paintings are already sold and some are on hold for my solo show.  More details about the show in the spring. 

In the meantime, two of my paintings of Schoodic are in a wonderful group show curated by Carl Little, at the Northeast Harbor Library for the month of October.  The show complements the new art book by Carl and David Little, Art of Acadia, from Down East Books, which I am thrilled to be included in.  Here's the painting that's reproduced in the book - a painting I've been studying for several years in my studio, ever since making it:

Moonlight, Schoodic, Maine - oil/canvas, 18 x 18".  (Photo credit Ken Woisard.)   And here is one of my paintings from the Art of Acadia exhibit:

Two sea ducks, low tide, the view to Champlain and Cadillac, Mount Desert Island, from Schoodic, Maine - oil/panel, 12 x 9".   It's an honor and a delight to be included in this show (and in the book!  I mean, jumping for joy around here!), alongside artists Amy Pollien, Rob Pollien, Richard Estes, Philip Frey, Joellyn Duesberry,  David Little, and many others. 

And last but not least, I will have seven paintings in another group show that I'm very happy about - for the past decade I have been going to Islesboro for a week every September to paint with a group of friends at the house of artist Brita Holmquist.  This year was the first time in ten years we haven't been able to get together, because of Brita's health.  She is now on the mend, thank goodness, and we are celebrating and having a group show together, which opens at Elizabeth Moss Galleries in Falmouth, Maine, on November  17th (the opening is from 5-7 p.m.), and will be up through the first week of January 2017.  Brita is having a solo show there right now, not to be missed!, and our group show will follow.   Here's one of the paintings that I will be delivering to Elizabeth Moss in a few weeks, for this show:

8:00 a.m., East Penobscot Bay from Pendleton Point, Islesboro, Maine - oil/panel, 10 x 22".  This is one of the paintings I made at last year's retreat on Islesboro.   And here is the list of everyone who will be in our show, as far as I know right now - Brita Holmquist, Susan Van Campen, Nora Tryon, Sharon Townshend, Liz Moberg, Natasha Mayers, Wendy Garner, Jean Wyman, Louise Bourne, Anina Porter Fuller, Pamela Elias, Sondra Bogdonoff, Margaret Ryan, Nikki Schumann, and Judy LaBrasca.  And myself - pinch me!  It's going to be an incredible show.  Last year at the retreat people were making amazing work. 

That's all for now - except to say THANK YOU to friends, family, art collectors, and other supporters, who viewed, commented on, and/or bought my work this year!  I appreciate it more than you will ever know!    

This spring seems to be all about rebuilding, around here, and fresh starts.  I'm getting a clean sweep in my attic painting studio, for one, which is dismantled right now because of various home construction projects (chimney work and a new roof).  I can't wait until the work is finished so I can put everything back the way I like it, especially the easels I usually have set up to receive wet paintings when I bring them inside after making them outside!  Right now, instead of that useful system, there are paintings strewn all over the rest of house, on pretty much any horizontal surface that has room and is above or beyond the reach of our cat Hodge.  Tricky!  Nevertheless, painting outside again with the return of the warm(ish) weather has been a great joy.   After spending wintertime painting inside there is nothing to compare to the feeling of working right out in the middle of miles of open space once again.  The cobwebs are gone in a moment and contentment is a rising tide.

Speaking of open space, I've got two paintings in a group exhibit at the L.C. Bates Museum at Hinckley, on Route 201 just outside of Fairfield, Maine.   The exhibit is fortuitously entitled Open Spaces:  Reimagining Pastoral Maine, and it opens this Friday evening, May 6, from 4-6 p.m.  The show will run from May through early October.  Directions and more information at the museum's website, here.  

And, I'm so happy to say, my solo show at Landing Gallery in Rockland, Maine, is happening very soon:  Postcards from Home, May 24 - June 26, with an opening during the first Friday art walk on June 3, from 5-8 p.m.  I'm getting ready to deliver the paintings to the gallery - they are framed and ready to go and there are a lot of them!  Around seventy paintings in all, mostly small but a few quite large.  The gallery has a color catalogue to accompany the show, and I have copies too - they are five dollars each - to buy one please contact me or the gallery.

After my solo show I will be taking two painting trips, one to Bear Island and one to Great Spruce Head Island, in June and July respectively, and also plan to be painting around Frenchman's Bay and Schoodic for much of the summer.  Then in September the group of artists I go on retreat with at Long Ledge on Islesboro will be meeting again.  This will be our tenth year together, and Elizabeth Moss Galleries in Falmouth, Maine, will be showing a selection of our work in a Long Ledge exhibit in November.   This will be a tremendous show - the other artists at this retreat have been making incredible work and I feel so lucky and blessed to be included both in this group and in this show.  Dates and details to follow when the time comes.

And, as always, I welcome visitors to my home studio - or should I say, I will, when I reassemble it!  Soon!  Please call or email ahead to make sure I'm home.  And, if you are out and about this season, and see a painter sitting down in the ledges at Schoodic, or on a remote beach in downeast Maine, look for an old gathering basket full of paint to see if it's me.  I'd love to take a quick break and say hello.  Best wishes for a peaceful spring and summer, filled with nature and art.

Islands off Sand Beach, Stonington,  Maine - oil/panel. 5 x 7" - from my solo show Postcards from Home.

January thaw time.  How I love it.  I was out painting from my car, earlier this week.  Temps were in the 40s and it sure was windy, but the car provides shelter.  In fact I sit in it, to paint.  With a wooden panel propped up on the steering wheel, my palette in the passenger seat, supplies in the back set within reach, and the window rolled down, I am good to go.  Painting snow, and seeing the way it transforms the landscape, is quietly thrilling.  I want to do more of it, but today I'm indoors, working on everything else in life.

And, truth be told, I have hardly been painting at all.  Since returning from the residency at Schoodic I've been caught up in family matters, and am also preparing for my upcoming solo show, Postcards from Home, at Landing Gallery later this spring.  All the paintings are finished. Most of the frames I need for them are on order, and I'm ready to attach the paintings to them, as soon as they arrive.  Great winter work.  I've also spent quite a bit of time selecting paintings for the booklet/catalogue.  I'm really excited to be doing a booklet, and just made the final choices and had them professionally photographed.  I have a mock-up (right now it's hovering around 24 pages).  I'll order it from the printer soon.  My first show catalogue!  It feels like a such big deal, in my little world!  I say that, since the paintings in it are all small, but I hope they represent the best of what's going to be in this show.  One of my favorite things to (attempt to) paint, in the last few years, is a huge expanse of space, in a tiny painting.  The postcard format, the rectangle, keeps calling me.  5 x 7" and 9 x 12" wooden panels are my favorite sizes.  I will also have some large paintings in the show - the postcard format scaled up - but not many.  More news and images later in the spring!

Speaking of spring - I know it's not even February yet, but I already have spring fever.  I think that painting so intensively outside, so late into the fall, and then coming indoors so abruptly... well, it felt like a waterfall that dried up overnight.  And so,  I CANNOT WAIT to get back out there, back to work, and preferably back to Schoodic, as soon as possible.  Not to pick up where I left off, in November, but to continue exploring there.  The day before I packed up and came home, all I could see were the paintings I hadn't had time to make yet.  Rocks and trees were whispering, "What about us?" and I promised I'd come back as soon as I could.  I've been there once since then, on my birthday in December, a week before Christmas.  It was freezing and gorgeous and as compelling as ever.  I didn't get any painting done that day, but I did one quick sketch in pen, and took a good long look at everything. 

Here's to an early spring!  And one painting from the residency.  It's not going to be in my upcoming show - I will be studying this one for a while, to see where it leads me:  "8 a.m., Schoodic, Maine" - oil/canvas, 18 x 24".     

Late last week I returned from my time as an artist-in-residence at Acadia National Park.  For three weeks I lived in an apartment on the old U.S. Navy base, now the Schoodic Institute, within the easternmost part of the park at Schoodic Point.  But mostly, I was not living in an apartment, I was living outside.  The warm fall weather held.  I was out there painting watercolors at dawn, and sunset found me attempting oil paintings as the last light of the day waned.  I got up early one morning to see the full moon set over Cadillac Mountain, and I walked out at night many times, first to see the moonlight on the ocean, and then again when the moon waned, to sit on a granite ledge and gaze into the vast starfield overhead.   During the days, I sat by the shore painting, hiked in the woods, wrote and sketched in my diary, and filled a watercolor album, all while encountering the spectacular landscape of this wild area, not to mention the wildlife living therein.  Birds, living there and migrating through, mammals including deer, a porcupine I sketched, an otter family I was lucky enough to see twice, many snowshoe hares with their fur just changing from brown to white, and a coyote, who loped by me one day on her way into the woods - alert, intelligent, fully alive and completely at home in her environment, perfectly connected with her landscape.  On my best days at Schoodic, I felt that way myself.  I say on my best days, because they can't be all best days.  I make room for all the emotions that might arise, not only joy, during the intense and introspective time of a a residency. 

Here is how mine unfolded.  Week one:  general euphoria, an unlimited feeling of spaciousness and possibility, coupled with some rushing around, to try and paint everything I love most, all at once!  At the end of week one the hurricane blew through, and the ocean was truly awesome.  In fact it was overwhelming, and after attempting to paint the aftermath of the storm I had to retreat into the woods for the rest of the day, to move away from all that raw energy.  Week two:  the storm did pass, peacefulness returned, and with it a settling in, and still that broad feeling of time being suspended.  The wall clock in my apartment didn't work and I didn't need it to, because the time was always now.  I made major efforts on large canvases during the mornings, then lighter efforts on smaller canvases in the afternoons.  I also took a few days to just work in watercolor, and hiked around with my sketchbook and supplies in a backpack, and stopped wherever I wanted to paint.  Week three:  nothing lasts, and the wheels start coming off the bus.  The pace I was working at was difficult to sustain, and I missed home and my loved ones very much.  I also realized that I would not have time to paint everything.  I mean, I wanted to paint everything!  (I still want to!  It's all so good!)  But instead I could only choose individual moments - this rock, this tree, this view.  And what I was able to paint did not come all that close to the splendor of what I was actually seeing.  Over time, this can be upsetting!  However.  I have made friends with failure and I am in love with trying.  Often when beginning a canvas, I say to myself, quietly, Just try.  And then I do.   For me, it's the only way to move forward as a painter - one canvas at a time.  Again, this can be frustrating!  By the time week three was finished, I was very tired, and ready to pack my things - all my tries - and return home.

I have no images to share right now, of any of the 34 oil paintings I completed, simply because I haven't photographed them yet.  They are unpacked and leaning up in my attic studio, though, and I run upstairs and look at them for a few minutes, then have to leave again.  At their worst, they say to me, "All that, for this?" and at their best, they say to me, "All that, for this!"  What a difference one punctuation mark makes!  Many of them fall flat, in my eyes, but some of them also approach transcendence (again, in my eyes), and they make every attempt worthwhile.  What a strange thing painting is - I can't think about it too much or I start to wonder why anybody ever does it in the first place.   It echoes and describes pure feeling, pure emotion - in a word, love - in a way that nothing else seems to do.   How?  What a mystery it is.   

Wonderful people at Acadia National Park and the Schoodic Institute hosted me at this residency, and left me alone for the most part, to paint the weeks away in happy solitude.  I cannot thank them enough for this great gift.  I returned to the home of my youth, went back to the land in the ways that suited me best, learned a lot about myself and my place in that landscape, and will be unraveling and examining the skeins of this amazing experience over the coming months and years.  And, needless to say, I'll be returning to paint at Schoodic again, whenever I can.  There is more work to be done there, by me, and I can't wait to do it.

It's October already!  This year has been almost unbelievable, on so many levels.  A few highlights:  the solo show of my work at Landing Gallery in Rockland this summer very nearly sold out, and the weather has been consistently amazing for outdoor painting, so I've been out there as much as possible.  I experienced immersive, productive painting retreats - ten days on Bear Island in June, and a week on Islesboro in September - and soon I will be heading off to the Schoodic peninsula for a residency at Acadia National Park.  This week I've been sanding and gessoing panels and preparing to stretch canvases of all sizes to be ready for whatever I encounter there, from quick small sketches to larger more developed paintings.  I also want to do some drawing, and perhaps watercolors too.  I think with all the stuff I'll be bringing along I could open a small art supply shop for the duration of the residency. 
;O) 

In other news, I will have work in two upcoming shows and wanted to share the details.  First, from October 3rd through November 30th, six paintings of mine will be at our great library here in town, the Stockton Springs Community Library, alongside paintings from six other local artists.   Some of the paintings are very close to home, like this one, painted while looking out the living room window at the neighbor's house across the street:

This was a freezing snowy January day, but there was warm light on the south side of the house and it all felt very glowy against the blue shadows - the painting is 12 x 18", oil on canvas.  I wanted to be outside painting, truly, but here in Maine in the middle of winter, well, we do what we can do!

The second show I'll have work in this fall will be at Landing Gallery in Rockland again, from mid-November through the holidays.  Five or six gallery artists, including me, will be showing around ten paintings each, all still life.  I'm excited about the opportunity to exhibit some of my other work besides the miles-wide landscapes that are my current preoccupation.  I've written here before about how still life was my first painting love, when I learned to paint in college and for years after that, and I return to still life painting a few times a year, even now.  It's all about the close looking, really, and love of form, attempts at description, and compositional choices.  And of course color, and the paint itself - all of it!   Most of the paintings I'm taking to Rockland are quite small - flowers in a vase, tomatoes on a plate - but this one is a bit larger:

A pail of delphiniums - oil on canvas, 18 x 18" - in a corner of our dining room.  The delphiniums had all blown over in a high wind and I brought them inside.  They asked to be painted until I finally gave in and said Okay, okay! and set up my easel in the dining room.  For a few days.  The other members of the household (husband, cat) approved and were generally patient and understanding.   Here's a close-up of the pail:  

I can't even say what a pleasure it was to paint this metal pail.  I kept adding stripes of color to it as the rest of the painting developed, and by the time I was finished with everything else, the pail was finished too.  When I was first drawing and painting in college art classes, highly reflective surfaces were among my true loves, so returning to this theme in paint felt great.  Should I have put my own reflection in there, I wonder?  Lots of painters do, but to me the painting already feels like something of a self-portrait (as do all paintings, it seems - I mean, painters can't help it - you paint, and there you are! which can be both a blessing and a curse), so I didn't need to be any more descriptive than I wanted to be at that particular moment.

The framed painting in the background isn't one of mine, by the way - it was painted a few decades ago by a dear friend.  It was a great exercise, painting a smaller simplified version of her painting, and makes me want to go to museums to set up my easel and paint versions of some of my favorite paintings by other people.  I've always read that there's no better way to learn from the masters, and I have done some quick sketches before, in pencil or pen.   But, that will have to wait for the time being.  I've got enough on my plate for the upcoming months, and besides, I'll be outside, learning from that other great master - nature.

In conclusion,  some words of thanks.  The interest in my paintings over the last year has been such a blessing, and helps lift me up and out the door, with blank canvases in hand.  So, THANK YOU.  It means the world to me to be able to continue to do what I most love to do.