July 2022

Lobster rolls, boats, lighthouses, kayaks, Subarus, art, rocky coasts, harbors, gorgeous light, beautiful water, friendly people … I could go on and on and on about Maine! We thoroughly enjoyed spending the July 4th holiday traveling all over the coast of Maine. We flew into Portland, spent a few days in that area, then made our way in and out of various harbors up to Mount Desert Island. We saw Ogunquit, Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Boothbay Harbor, Camden, Rockland, Rockport, Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park, then drove over to Bangor, back down to Portland and flew home. It was a lot of mileage to cover and pretty much wore us out, but gosh, it was so much fun. Here are a few of my favorite photos from the trip:

Thurston’s Lobster Pound

Botanical Gardens

Botanical Gardens

Along the Portland harbor

Botanical Garden

Ogunquit’s Lobster Shack

Camden

Scott at the Bush Compound in Kennebunkport

The Claremont Hotel in Southwest Harbor, Maine

Walking along the Portland coast

One of many lobster rolls

ART

The big news for this month was my workshop with Bill Davidson at The Booth Museum’s Art Academy. It was my fourth workshop with Bill and probably my favorite. When I first painted with him back in 2018 I was so green and inexperienced that a lot of what he taught was over my head. I remember writing down nearly everything he said in that first workshop, and I still have those notes and look at them often. But now that I have a lot more experience, it flowed quite easily. He was pleased with the way I painted and gave me a lot of encouragement. Of course, he does that with all of his students. I hope that someday when I teach on a regular basis that I can make my students feel that way, too. 

We spent time in the Booth Museum looking at museum quality art, analyzing color, value, brush strokes and composition. 

Loved my fellow students … everyone was excited, engaged and supportive of one another

This is one of Bill’s all time favorite paintings - the artist is Bill Anton

Using chromatic black and titanium white to nail the values in our underpainting

We began by painting the same painting along with Bill

   

After the initial painting Bill let me paint from my own photographs, so I used one of my favorite photos from Maine to practice. It was exciting to see the underpainting come to life so quickly and adjust the values until it clicked. Then all you have to do is add your color on top. I’m a big fan of this new process!

JULY PAINTINGS

Dipping my toes into gouache

EXHIBITION NEWS

I submitted a bunch of paintings for several juried exhibitions around the Atlanta area. 

Roussillon    6x12     oil on panel  

“Roussillon” was juried into the “Ordinary to Extraordinary” exhibition at the Acworth Arts Alliance. The show will be on view from August 6 - September 24.

Boulangerie    11x14       oil on panel

“Boulangerie” was selected for the National Juried Art Show in Douglasville. The show runs from September 1-29 at the Cultural Arts Council of Douglasville.

And 4 (!!!) of my abstract paintings were juried into the South Cobb Art Alliance’s “Art at the Avenue” exhibition which runs from August 27-September 17 at The Avenue West Cobb. 

TEACHING

The folks at Pontoon Brewing invited me back to lead another abstract painting class! So fun! There are some space limitations there, so I’m keeping it simple with black and white acrylic paint. My plan is to lead the students through drawing a black and white still life then painting in the values. I decided to test it out this weekend and it worked really well. Fingers crossed that my students enjoy it!

READING

I’ve been reading every art book I can get my hands on lately. While we were in Maine I fell in love with Fairfield Porter’s paintings. His work is uncomplicated and peaceful. So I purchased a book about him and read it cover to cover one afternoon. I’m a huge fan.

 

And today Scott and I went to one of our favorite bookstores, Atlanta Vintage Books, and I picked up 3 books: Edward Hopper in Vermont, Drawing on the Artist Within and Oil Painting Outdoors.

And last, but certainly not least …

OTIS AND JULIUS

I hope you had a great July. See you back here in a few weeks for more art and cats :)