Acadia

 

Acadia

 20 in. x 20 in., acrylic on canvas

$600 unframed

This is a fairly large piece.  It needed to be.

Unless I'm in the White Mountains, Maine always feels so much more wild than New Hampshire.  Yet, because I've spent so much time there, it's so much like home.  In fact, geologically, it's much closer to New Hampshire than Vermont, which is made of very different stuff.  That's obvious just by crossing to the Shire-esque west bank of the Connecticut River.  No, Maine is largely made of great slabs and piles of igneous granite just like New Hampshire, along with pine needles and sand banks and brushy barrens and swamp maples and oak groves and clover-covered fields.  But the interaction of granite cliffs and salt water is what makes Maine so different from New Hampshire.  We've ruined our meager 18 miles of coastline with ugly traffic tangles, shops and arcades and sidewalks with parking meters that would steal one of your kidneys for payment if they could (I won't apologize for excoriating whatever leaders of state and coastal towns for overdeveloping it into abject ugliness... fight me, shameful scoundrels).  But Maine has managed to keep bit and bridle firmly attached to the would-be ravishers of much of its coastal natural spaces, and for that I'm thankful. 

I hope you like this piece of coastal Maine, with its tenacious, weathered conifer trees, its wildly changing skies and unrelenting tides.  A dear friend camped near here with her family and graciously allowed me to paint from what she captured while she was in Acadia National Park.  

Photo reference courtesy Kate Goodin

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Sunny Side Up

Sunny Side Up

8 in. x 8 in., acrylic on cradled panel 

$150 unframed 

Last year I painted bacon.  At the time, it didn't occur to me to move on to the obvious eggy follow-up.  When I paint, one thing does not automatically lead to another.  But of course, now I'm thinking about toast... anyway.  This wonderful fried egg was a fun and interesting challenge to paint, from the crispy golden edges to the scattered salt and pepper.  There's not actually a lot of pure, straight-from-the-tube white in this piece; the subtle pale colors swirling in the cooked egg white are surprisingly convincing and I was able to reserve the white for the few highlights. 

 

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Moonrise

Moonrise

8 in. x 10 in., acrylic on canvas 

$160 unframed

The moon rising in the inky darkness over water. As it peeks over the horizon, it casts a complementary glow up into the cloud cover and across the surface of the lake.  It faintly illuminates the grasses and earth on the near embankment between the trees. There's something cozy in a nocturnal landscape, and I aimed for looser, expressionistic brushwork here in an effort to capture the fleeting moments of cresting moon and the rapidly changing turbulence of the clouds.  Photo reference Jill Hatfield.

 

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