Catching up–Bartlett Style

Posted by Aline on September 8, 2016

I have been not performing, blog-wise, up to the standards I set for myself this summer. If I had met those standards, two topics would have been set before you already and the third would have been pulled together for today. The problem, as often happens, is just when I gather my thoughts and my photo illustrations, I notice something in one of the paintings that I must, MUST fix. Then after the fix, a new photo must be taken. It has been a summer of revisions and regrets.

One topic was to have been: best and worst plein air (marine) painting of the summer, covering why I thought one was good and the other not–but wondering how I could have rescued the one that was awful. A second topic was to have been the rest of the works resulting from the Stuart Ober course–you’ve seen the portrait of Sparkle, but I did a bunch of other stuff that never would have got started but for the impetus of taking a course called “Explorations in Oil Painting.” One of them could have been a topic in itself, as I worked on a 12 by 36 of “Impressions of Manhattan from the Whitney Museum”, a complex skyline with streetscapes that can always be improved or added to. I’m still adding.

This week, I hoped to be posting all the Figure in the Garden paintings from David Curtis’ garden, 2016 edition. Those paintings are finished, but the last one still needs to be photographed. I scaled up to 16×20, making the photographing more challenging.

And now, as topics pile up, I just got back from a workshop up North with Michael Chesley Johnson, for which blog I made promises. I feel a little like Mickey Mouse must have felt in the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. (Disney movie “Fantasia”)

I am going to take the advice I always gave my tax delinquent clients: do current returns first, then the past-due ones. Therefore, today without further ado, without messing about, I am posting photos of the three plein air paintings from the last two days, showing what I can accomplish in the approximately two hours available for each, before stopped by lunch and/or rain. Raw footage, as it were.

Excuse me while I go snap photos of each one with my iPhone.

. . . .

Eight students gathered at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett NH to learn plein air painting from Michael Chesley Johnson, of Campobello and Sedona, for perhaps the shortest workshop ever–two days. We were lucky with the weather, in that the rain held off Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning until I was able to get one painting each time close to completion. I produced a third painting during the Wednesday rain. . .storm is too strong a word. Rain Event. More of that later.

Tuesday morning MCJ opened with a demo of how to paint rocks. We piled into a gazebo near the Jackson Historical Museum– it was shaded, just the right size for 8 students and a teacher, next to a rock-filled Wildcat River, and near our next stop: a preview of the museum’s upcoming show. Then lunch at a local deli, then back to the Wildcat, a river responsible for the phenomenon known as Jackson Falls. We got some sun, but mostly clouds, so we got experience with painting en plein air on overcast days. How to find a “hook” when there are no lights and shadows to create drama? Well, falling water is always interesting. Unfortunately, New Hampshire has been suffering a record drought, so instead of impressive, thundering cataracts of water, we got meandering trickles.

(MCJ photographed me working at the Falls and posted it to Facebook, if you are interested. I was wearing my usual distinctive hat, so everyone who knows me recognized me. I could probably link to it, but I don’t have time to learn how to do that! Got to get this post done.)

Jackson Falls, v. 5 or 6

Day Two, or Wednesday as most people know it, we headed down into the Valley to experience the location of Albert Bierstadt’s “Moat Mountain, Intervale, New Hampshire”. That is why I have titled this painting Bierstadt Meadow. Most of us chose to paint the ledges that are to the right of my scene, but I’ve a bee in my bonnet all summer about the pinky-purplish grass that shows up at this time of summer. It is most prevalent along highways. It was not present in this meadow, but there were other plants sporting colors in the same family, so I thought I would try to fake it.

Bierstadt Meadow with Bluebird House

We were treated to very little sunlight, but the weather forecast did not include rain. Nevertheless, Sharon (Sharon Allen, who organized this workshop and spends half her life painting around Mt. Washington Valley) “felt” it would rain and urged us to move to a sheltered location–under a bridge in Conway from which we could paint a red covered bridge from below and to the side. When we got there, most of the river (Swift and Saco merge near here) was, well, absent. We were going to get more practice painting rocks. However, a puddle under the bridge reflected the red covered bridge, and I chose to make that the subject of my painting.

Under the Bridge, of Another Bridge

All of my paintings were painted on the carton paper sold by Judson’s plein air supplier. The paper slows me down a little because it absorbs paint, making it harder for me to cover the surface. But once my surface is juicy with paint, I can go to town. The geometric shape on the right is the stanchion [is that correct term?] of the overhead bridge. When the rain blew in [is Sharon a witch?], it disturbed the puddle and handicapped me. Oh, well. Had to fake it.

Since I probably will not get to the topic, best and worst marine painting, and I cannot NOT show you the best, I will now show the best. Two “tall ships” came to the Portsmouth area. August 12 was the day I chose to visit them. One docked in Portsmouth for people to tour. The other docked in New Castle for people to ride. I would have bought a ticket to ride if my timing were better, but as it was, I had to wait for the “Harvey Gamache” to return to port before I could grab a photo of it. Meanwhile, I painted its expected path from New Castle’s Grand Island Park. In my studio at home, I added the sailing ship using my photo as reference.

The Harvey Gamache Passing into New Castle

I have some happy news: two of my pet paintings will be part of a nationally juried exhibit in a museum! The museum is the Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Arts Center in a place called Solomons, Maryland. The Sculpture Garden is affiliated with the Smithsonian! The two honored paintings are “Sparkle”, which had been sold but the owners have agreed to lend the painting for this exhibit; and “Partners in Crime”–the two tuxedo cats on a cat tree.

Partners in Crime

The exhibit’s theme is “Fur, Feathers, and Fins–Our Faithful Pets”. It will run from October 7 through January 29.

Other places where you can catch a few of my paintings are:

NH Antiques Coop in Milford NH
Ellis River Art Gallery in Jackson NH
Bartlett Inn in Bartlett NH
Red Jacket Resort in North Conway NH
Bernerhof Inn in Glen NH
Mesmer & Deleaut Law Firm in Manchester NH

As usual, you may view paintings with prices and order prints, phone cases, pillows and the like at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me by email to alotter@mac.com.

If you want to add a public comment to this blog, go to the bottom of this page where it says “Leave a Reply”, and enter your comment in that box. I love to get public comments, so don’t be shy!

Portsmouth Paintings

Posted by Aline on August 4, 2016

Since my last post, I feel as though I have been feverishly busy, but most of the painting time has been studio time. Not many of my plein air landscapes have come inside without need for improvements. I am enjoying the process of making improvements–well, I hope what I’m doing improves the paintings,–but worry about why the need. Am I getting pickier? Am I getting slower? What’s up with all this tinkering, etc.?

I hope I’m getting smarter, that I see more ways to improve when I get the painting home and can assess its defects dispassionately, without being influenced by reality. I suspect I am also getting a lot slower in painting, as in everything else I do. I can’t even get dressed in the morning without straying off the rails into some distracting musing. Maybe that’s late onset of attention deficit disorder, but when I am painting, I am able to keep my focus on the painting and the scene.

So, last weekend–oops, two weekends ago!–I participated in the annual Portsmouth paintout put on by the NH Art Association, which is a Portsmouth outfit. I believe that makes the fourth year of my participation and I haven’t missed a year yet. I couldn’t complete the event on Sunday because of my commitment to Sundays in the Gloucester garden of David Curtis, but I managed to produce three 12×16 paintings, which is pretty large for plein air.

The first painting took me from about ten in the morning until about two in the afternoon. The heat was enervating. I had a good concept for my painting: under the drawbridge with the drawbridge raised to allow a tugboat to pass through. My brain wasn’t working in top gear, however, so it took me a while to realize that if I took a photo of the raised drawbridge, I wouldn’t have to wait for it to be raised to see how that changed the elements. The product as “finished” in those four hours (a pretty long time for me to need for a plein air painting) had good bones, but it was rough–very rough. The sky paint did not even cover the gray ground.

The second painting was from the same vantage point but a different perspective–closer to being under that drawbridge, which is called Memorial Bridge, with a view of the other two bridges from Portsmouth to Maine: another drawbridge and the elevated highway bridge even farther back. Someone called me on the phone about one o’clock and commented that I did not sound well. Interesting. Did I mention it was very hot that day? I told her I was fine. As fine as someone who has become dehydrated without being aware of that fact. It was a hint, and eventually I took it– I got the elements of those three bridges down in an hour and then quit. As you would expect, with all those excuses, I had to do a lot of improving when I got the two back in my hands. Here are the finished versions:

Comin’ Through

Three Bridges, Portsmouth NH

For my third Portsmouth painting, conditions were better. I didn’t even try to get started before noon. I spent only two hours. I was in the shade. There was a breeze. For those reasons, perhaps, I have not felt the need to tinker with the painting produced at the Elks Club of Portsmouth:

At the Elks Club in Portsmouth

Just a few days ago, I went back to Cape Cod to pick up the painting that had been shown at the Addison Gallery’s show “Found my Park”, and to paint something new somewhere on the Cape. The old painting looked better than I remembered it, so there’s another example of getting ‘er done outside, but it was 11×14, much smaller than the Portsmouth ones. Here is what I’m talking about:

View from Salt Pond Coast Guard Station

To find another good spot for painting, we watched for likely signs–to beaches or parks. We chose to explore Nickerson State Park in Brewster. An amazing and huge tract of wildness. No ocean, no dunes anywhere, but glimpses of water. I finally went online with my iPhone and found a map that got us to Cliff Pond and Fisherman’s Landing. There was nobody there when I set up my easel, but soon we were inundated with children and dogs. I had a dog with me myself. It wasn’t a problem, but I did not feel inspired. After I got home and had a chance to sleep on it, I knew what I had to do. I had to add stronger dapples of shade and sunlight throughout, including on the figures of my companions.

Sun-Dappled Afternoon

I have to confess that my dappling in this painting may have been influenced by my recent trip to the Peabody Essex Museum’s exhibit of Childe Hassam’s Isle of Shoals paintings.

I want to thank all of my followers who took me up on the offer of free paintings. I am grateful because can you imagine the humiliation if I couldn’t even give away my paintings? Ouch! But it’s just a drop in the bucket, so if you have been hesitating because of some reluctance to take advantage, the offer is still good. I am limiting to paintings 11×14 or smaller, simply for ease in mailing. The priority mailing cost is $12.00. Stake your claim!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the New Hampshire Antique Co-op in Milford; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

July in New England–outdoors in the heat of the sun

Posted by Aline on July 21, 2015

I feel a little as if I have been running around without purpose, just answering one call after another to paint outdoors. But now, looking over my output, I see there must have been other things absorbing my time and attention. Nevertheless, you are not likely to want to see the entire three weeks’ of artworks, and I am in the happy position of picking my favorites to talk about. I have painted in Manchester, Goffstown, Newport, Portsmouth, Rye, and Newington, all of New Hampshire, plus Gloucester, Massachusetts. Here are the best of the lot:

Uncanoonuc Garden

This location is on the side of a hill called Uncanoonuc. Actually, there are two hills by that name, next to each other, and even Wikipedia avers that they are “mountains” with impressive views of Manchester to the east, the Wapack range to the west, and on a good day, Boston to the south. From Manchester, the Uncanoonucs resemble the mounds of a woman’s breasts, and Uncanoonuc is a native American word meaning just that. One Uncanoonuc boasts a road upwards. Along the way is a retail plant nursery that has installed groupings of shrubs and flowers to show its customers how lovely is a good landscaping plan. The blue spruce caught my eye, in part because much earlier in my painting career, I had recreated another Little Blue Spruce.

Little Blue Spruce–Putney VT 2008

Well, I don’t think I can say my blue spruce technique has improved at all since 2008! The earlier blue spruce was growing at the studio of the “Putney Painters”, where I was taking a workshop with Albert Handell. Albert liked my spruce but thought I had crowded it too much with the other trees. I usually take the advice of masters to heart, but maybe 20 percent of the time, I stay true to my own original intent. I see his point, but I also admire the pluckiness of the baby spruce staking its own territorial claim under less than ideal circumstances. I’ll bet today it is crowding that building in the background.

In Newport, in the course of delivering and picking up a painting for the regional show at the Library Arts Center, I got myself invited to participate in the Garden Tour, as a painter. They had about ten different gardens open for tour, each with different attributes. I told them I cared only about the flowers, not interested in mountain vistas or water features, so they sent me to the site of an abandoned gravel pit. The homeowners have been reclaiming the land patch by patch. As each load of topsoil was dumped into a pile, stuff got planted . I chose to paint the pile devoted to the memory of a beloved dog who had passed the year before.

A Boy and His Dog . . .

The message set forth on the rustic sign reads “A boy and his dog are joined at the hip and heart forever.” So instead of flowers, I found myself focusing on hardscape elements of rocks and sculpture, so easily is the artist’s intention waylaid. When I had finished A Boy, I made another stab at featuring flowers. I went in search of a floral closeup.

Flower Box

I knew I was doomed to fail at the task of matching the glowing fuchsia reds of the petunias, but set out to try anyway. The next day, after the paint had set up a little, I was able to add cleaner, brighter color here and there so as to convey the sense of color, even if the exact color remained elusive. The straw strands in the basket came mostly out of my head, or rather, out of my memory of my favorite painting by Jamie Wyeth–Hay Bale.

Isn’t that the most lovingly portrayed hay bale ever? A living, almost breathing, hay bale. Don’t you feel like you could stab it with a pitchfork right on your computer screen? Just imagine how it looks in person, as I saw it on the wall of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts last year.

I have one more Exeter painting to show–it was painted “live” just before a lawn party at the Exeter Inn. I painted another during the lawn party, but I don’t love it so much.

Exeter Inn

I was pleased with the flowers in this painting, and I hoped my handling of flowers in the landscape might be improving.

Portsmouth and its environs saw a lot of me the past few weeks. And I saw just the tiniest fraction of paintable spots, so rich is Portsmouth in architecture and marine attractions. I accumulated three favorites:

Inlet, Boat ramp

Entering Prescott Park

The Zinnias are perhaps too carefully depicted. Reality is my downfall.

Wentworth by the Sea

The biggest challenge here was the shoreline–how to show the transparency of the water’s edge lapping on the rocky beach.

Again this year, David Curtis is giving his workshops on painting the figure in the landscape, in his garden. Our model was dressed as a bride:

Bridal Portrait

I’m growing weary of green! Note that the landscape portion of this figure in the landscape is not much more than fuzzy suggestions of landscape. I felt it had to be thus.

But not all work was done outdoors. Our Monday life group met twice:

Natalie 2

Sheridan

All in all, the lesson I have taken away from these three weeks of fairly intense painting is renewed awareness that I still suffer from a deficiency that has plagued me all along. I’m not “loose” (messy) enough. Is it that I’m so fast a painter that I end up wasting my time on “cleaning” and straightening and perfecting? For example, the windows behind the window box were never “finished” because, thank the lord, I realized I could not improve on their rough state. But examples of overpainting are too abundant. When will I ever learn?

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

with the East Colony artists for the rest of July at 163 (167) Water Street, Exeter, NH; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Firefly American Bistro on 22 Concord Street, Manchester (reception August 3); and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester. Also, on July 23, from 5 to 8 p.m., the doors to all art galleries in Manchester are open and served by a old-time trolley. I am participating as a member of the Manchester Artists Association in a one-day exhibit at the Rines Center, on the Trolley route. It’s all free! See the Open Doors Trolley Night website for more information and a list of venues that have a show going on that night.

As usual, you may view paintings with prices and order prints, iPhone cases and the like at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me by email to alotter@mac.com.

Mt. Washington Valley in May, 2015

Posted by Aline on May 24, 2015

Last weekend was the annual spring artists’ getaway to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and I was happily present. This time I took some larger panels to paint on, instead of those 9×12 carton paper supports I have been relying upon lately. I’m a big girl now and I want to paint bigger. I took three 12×16 panels, one 9×12 panel, and as back up if I needed them, a small stack of the carton paper sheets.

There were eight of us, not very many but very select. Walt and Ann from western Massachusetts; Suzanne from Rhode Island; Helene, my roommate, from Nashua, NH; Betty from Wolfeborough, NH; and of course the stalwarts and leaders of this plein air event, Sharon Allen and Byron Carr. It was a great weekend, with the weather cooperating for the most part–rare for a New England spring. Weather forecasts for rainy Saturday afternoon sent us off course in search of meaningful nonpainting pursuits, none of which really panned out (the museum in Jackson was closed), whereas the weather stayed lovely and would have been ideal for painting. [virtual teeth gnashing] I made up for it on Sunday and the good thing is, I never had to dip into the reserve supports of carton paper.

My first painting Friday morning was this one from Pear Mountain Road.

View of Mt. Washington from Pear Mt. Rd.

I added the telephone wiring after I got home. I did not want to smudge my lovely blue sky by trying to add the wires into wet paint; besides, at home I had some new tools called “French curves”. I don’t know the proper method of deploying them, but I picked out an appropriate curve and used it as a guide for my brush. The resulting lines are almost too confident. These wires wee a necessary element of this painting. Here is what it looked like before I added the wires. The greens in this cell phone version are more accurate than the ones in the expensive SDLR Nikon version above. (more whining complaint below.)

View of Mt. Washington wip (cell phone photo)

After lunch four of us gathered at Jackson Falls. I have painted various versions and aspects of Jackson Falls over the years. How to make this one better? Feature a big rock instead of all that white water.

Portrait of Big Rock at Jackson Falls (cell phone photo–because Nikon version too dark)

Since I was working large, I had no trouble filling each half-day stint with just one painting. I was pretty happy with how things were going so far. The next day we went looking for a covered bridge because of the Stupid Weather Forecast. The one we chose is not open to traffic, and usually we would have been content to paint it or paint from it at road level. This day, however, my painting buddies discovered a way to get underneath the road with a view up at the bridge. This created a curious problem, one I did not recognize until I had already committed to my vantage point. Damn covered bridge is essentially four stripes of almost equal width running across the top of painting–that is, if you want to show the water too. Nothing more monotonous. I struggled with the size of the stripes. I messed with the edges. I toned down the red so as to push the thing into the background. Still awful. When I got home, I decided it couldn’t hurt to try scrumbling shadowy darks over the left edge of my bridge, and I think that may have saved it from the scrap heap. Here are the before and after:

Convergence of Saco and Swift Rivers (before)

Convergence of Saco and Swift Rivers (after)

OK, the colors don’t match. For some reason, photographing all of these paintings has been unusually frustrating. The new Photos app that Apple has forced on me does not give me a way to adjust the level of yellows, blues and reds. I am not coping well!

That accounts for my three large format, 12×16, panels. Sunday morning, after the usual fabulous breakfast at the Bartlett Inn (but no rancho huervos this year–I forgot to complain about that!), Sharon and Betty and I followed Byron up a road off Route 3 between Twin Mountain and Franconia Notch:–white water, moss-covered rocks, deep pools. For the best spot, you needed to be pretty adventurous, but I found a tidy little version close to the road and fought off Sharon for it. I included some Trillium at bottom left because I saw some on the slope to adventure spot. This may be my favorite from the weekend.

Woodland brook 9×12

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

one last week at the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Library Arts Center in Newport, NH; at the Sharon Arts Center in Peterborough, NH; at the Buttonwoods Museum in Haverhill, MA; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Marco Island Part 6 (final): Kooky, Experimental

Posted by Aline on March 29, 2015

At long last I get to complete the report. I seem to have caught the same bug that laid me low for the month of February–probably from the plane home–and just hope that after only 8 days, I’m getting over this iteration of it.

I left you in my previous blog with 4 paintings to be posted. The first two are from one location on Collier Boulevard, farther South from our usual haunts. I discovered South Beach when we went in search of the beach wedding, and conceived the idea of one daylight painting showing the colorful, tree-lined boulevant with high-rise condo buildings behind, and a later one showing what happens at night, with lights lining the street and dotting the windows of the high-rises. Mary had other stuff to do that afternoon, so I was dropped at my chosen spot, by her always obliging husband, Frank. I set up in the swale between the boulevard and the sidewalk on the right side of the street. I got lots of welcome attention from low-rise residents from my side of the boulevard as they strolled by on their way to the beach. A few voiced a guess that I was painting the big, pink building that was my backdrop because I lived there. If only!

South Beach Residential

It certainly wasn’t a beautiful building, but it was an interesting building, and it was representative of the many such buildings lining the South Beach. (By the way, I decided to take these photos with my iPhone in order to be consistent with the ones already posted, but they didn’t come out as well as the ones that were photographed in the South Florida light. I was able to manipulate them so what you are seeing is pretty accurate–by reducing exposure, increasing contrast and saturation, and increasing red and yellow. Go figure!)

Mary came to pick me up after about 2 hours and we grabbed a quick supper at a nearby restaurant. By the time we had returned to the site, we had about 1 hour before sunset. I composed my picture by moving farther away and including more of the buildings on my left. I had basically a black and blue scene. Then the lights started to come on. Not in the pink building but on the grounds–Christmas-like lights wound around the three palm trees, fountains sprouted under spotlights, and walls and landscaping got their share of the drama. There were a few glows issuing from a few of the balconies, but very few.

South Beach Nocturne

Mary observed that many owners of condos on Marco spend only a few weeks at the time there since they tended to have many desirable locations to call home. It’s also possible that the windows are glazed with impenetrable coatings, like limos get. Anyway, the painting was my very first “nocturne”, which is what artists call a painting that depicts a night scene. Most nocturnes are painted in the studio, I’ll wager, but there are plein air nocturnists. I don’t know how they do it–shifting focus from darkened scene to lit painting seems impossible to me. I quit pretty soon after sundown. In order to pack up my gear, I deployed my cell phone flashlight, and one of my strolling admirers held it for me while I gathered up stuff. It was fun.

The next day was Tuesday, the day before my flight home. Every since I had been visiting Mary on Marco (2009), she had been mentioning her desire to paint a certain bridge. She already had one really good painting of it, but felt she could do even better one day. I asked her to make that day that Tuesday. So off we went, toward the Everglades, a road not heavily trafficked. I set up close to the road, so I got more of the dust blown our way by big trucks. It was a little unnerving to have the trucks barreling right at you, for we were on a curve. I have lived to tell the tale. It’s just what plein air painters have to do, you know, risking life and limb for their art!

My Bridge from Everglades, looking North

Here is Mary’s version in watercolor:

Mary’s Bridge

Since my flight wasn’t scheduled to take off until after 5 p.m. on Wednesday, we were able to meet up with the Wednesday Painters again, this time inside a private, gated community with its own beach and wildlife area. A marshy area caught my eye–the reflections mostly, but with a stray clump of marsh grass providing a great focal point. I set up with a view of the clump, next to the railings, and decided to include the railings in my composition. I suspected that the framing of the reeds by the fence contributed to my decision to paint the reeds.

Watery Home

Compare a cropped version without the railings:

Watery Home-Detail

So was I right? Or is the Detail better? Because I paint on paper, I can easily crop the painting for best presentation.

Here is a photo Mary took of me just before I started to pack up my gear–sorry about the absence of reds–fault of her iPhone sending, or mine receiving. The two wet paintings were ensconced in their Art Cocoons there to my right.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Paintings by Aline

A Painter's Progress

Category Archives: bridges

Catching up–Bartlett Style

Portsmouth Paintings

July in New England–outdoors in the heat of the sun

Mt. Washington Valley in May, 2015

Marco Island Part 6 (final): Kooky, Experimental

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