problem solving

Summer is here and I've been painting outside like mad, even on gray days.  When rain threatens, as it has so often this spring, I put my palette into a small plastic carrying case (I bought several of these at an art supply store many years back, and they are perfect for this, and also for carrying small wet paintings), and bring along a plastic trash bag or two, so if the rain gets going I can toss everything into the bags quickly.  I keep my brushes, paint rags, medium, small canvases and panels, snacks, etc., in an old gathering basket.  One trash bag will fit over the whole basket, if need be.  I can sling the basket over one arm and have two hands free for navigating terrain and balancing a wet painting, too. 

This photo is from last week, taken at one of my very favorite places to paint, out on Bear Island in Penobscot Bay.  I return here every year to see what this place has to say.  And what it says, I find wordlessly enthralling.  Rain, maybe, it's all so good and I love to paint gray days, and I was ready with my kit all set up.  I even found a big piece of driftwood to sit on, instead of sitting on the beach.  No easel for this one -  most places on the island I walk to carrying just the basics, and I prefer sitting on the ground, at sea level, to lugging my french easel hither and yon.   The tide was rising fast, and almost covered the little sand bar connecting me to the rest of the island.  

Here is the painting I did that day, while sitting there.  Painting for me is so often a question of drastic simplification, of getting down - or attempting to get down - the big shapes first, and then almost ignoring the actual scene itself, to work to resolve the painting.  After the initial lay-in, that series of intuitive decisions, the painting quickly becomes its own entity and I see clearly (if it's going well... ahem...) what to do and how to do it.  Before I pack up the painting to finish it at home, I look closely again at the landscape itself, to make sure  I have indicated everything I need.  Then, with a fairly clear idea of what to do next and what I want the finished painting to look like, I am done working on site.  This painting is oil on panel, 10" x 22", and I worked outside for a few hours on it, then the rain really did start, and so I finished up quickly and spent maybe another hour working on it inside, a few days later.

Painting is, for me (among so many other things - it's hard to even talk about!), a series of questions and problems we set for ourselves.  And the best part - these are questions and problems with answers and solutions.  One reason, surely, that a successfully resolved painting is such a satisfying thing, both to make and to view.  It may not be beautiful, or easy, but it can be an honest record of an experience, and a detailed map of a journey.  A friend of mine says he prefers to see a painting in which the difficulties the painter had while making it are evident.  Not all problems have tidy solutions, in painting and in life - and seeing a record of the struggle unites us.  That sounds high-falutin', but oh well, there it is.

A reminder for friends in the area:  I will be at Landing Gallery in Rockland for the evening art walk on July 5th.  Landing Gallery has a group show opening, Maine Landscape Painters, which includes ten of my recent paintings.  Some successfully resolved, some... not so much.  You know, the usual!