Category: Landscapes

This is a classic New England scene. Sadly, it isn’t as common as it used to be, as many cows spend their lives in factory farms and don’t go outside.

 

Bostonians are roughly divided between those who, on vacation, head for the ocean (often Cape Cod) and those who head for the mountains and lakes (Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, the Berkshires). We are among the latter category. To me there is nothing more peaceful than staring across a lake at the distant hills.

I’m taking the rest of August “off” from posting new paintings, and am posting some of my favorites from my archives. All were painted of Vermont and New Hampshire.

I’ve often wondered what people mean by “the big sky”. When we flew out of the Denver airport returning from our trip to Colorado, I took this photo out the huge windows at the airport, then did the sketch on the plane. It’s the kind of landscape that, as a resident of the East Coast most of my life, I feel unfamiliar with. No hills, no trees, flat and visible as far as the eye can see. A very different perspective.

As we drove back from Crested Butte to Denver to fly home, the views were spectacular. Here is my final attempt to catch the beauty of the receding ranges of mountains. (Watercolor, Moleskine watercolor notebook, Carbon Ink Pen, white UniBall pen.)

When I went with our daughter Kate two weeks ago to Chicago so she could promote her new book Following the Red Bird at the ALA Book Convention, we had an afternoon to sightsee. Everyone advised us to take the Architecture Boat Cruise down the Chicago River. The city is rightly proud of its incredibly architected skyscrapers, in a vast variety of colors and designs.

Like many others, I am deeply disturbed and saddened that our country is going to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.

Many of us are headed to the lakes of New England this weekend, others are headed to the ocean.

“What is life if, full of care, we have no time to sit and stare.” — William Davies

Inspiration is everywhere if you keep your eyes open. I saw a painting of tree trunks at Crate and Barrel a couple of weeks ago. I snapped a photo of it, and made my own version, adding the shadows. The different textures and colors of the bark is what interested me.

Oil and acrylic paints are great, but for me nothing beats the transparency and unpredictability of watercolor. This little painting of distant hills across a lake, painted from my memory of vacations in Vermont and New Hampshire, shows how watercolor bleeds and puddles and  blossoms. This magic is why watercolor still fascinates me after 20 years of painting.

 

If you have a greenhouse near you, it’s a great way to spend an afternoon. This sketch was done at the Wellesley College greenhouses in the rainforest room. It’s such a confusion of overlapping plants that it was hard to keep straight which plant I was drawing. At some point I gave up and added shapes and background to the plant frenzy. 

In Mexico I was lucky enough to make the eight-hour round trip (by car, foot and horseback) to visit the area of the mountains where Monarch butterflies from all over North America come to breed and rest during the winter months. Carefully protected by the Mexican government, there are only three small areas of the preserve which aren’t fenced off. Lots of butterflies in this little area festooned an evergreen tree making it look like a living Christmas tree.

From the moment I saw this man in the streets of San Miguel, I knew I wanted to make a painting of him, so I snapped this photo to bring back to Massachusetts. Some sketches take just a few minutes, like the one of Connecticut Hills you received last Friday, but this took a couple of hours. The best way to be motivated to spend the more time is to love the image.  In retrospect, I regret not buying a basket from this man to thank him.

There is a lot of change going on in America, much of it deeply distressing to many of us. Please know that my art is not intended as a denial of our need to know or to act. Instead I hope it will be a moment of respite from the news of the day.

This little painting was made with cray pas, a sort of grown-up crayon. The contrast between purple and yellow, which are opposites on the color wheel, make it more dramatic. If the colors were green and blue, which are contiguous on the color wheel, it would be more restful. 

For some reason I am fascinated by the idea of the moon on a snow-covered landscape with birch trees. Here is my latest version of that scene. 

Yesterday was the annual Christmas Bird Count, when birdwatchers across North America dust off their binoculars to do a bird census. My friend Linda and I did not brave the 4:30 owl count, or even the 6:30 regular count; we arrived at the Newton Cemetery, coffee in hand, at the civilized hour of 9:30. With rain falling on top of Saturday’s snowfall, the birds were scarce. But I made this little sketch, using pen and charcoal pencil (with a tissue to smudge) of a little island with birch trees in the middle of the pond.