Still trying to find . . . ?

Posted by Aline on May 30, 2018

I have taken the equivalent of a sabbatical, I guess. The beauty of being one’s own boss, one can do that sort of thing on a whim, with only your friends and followers to answer to. I went on that wild weekend to Acadia last fall, wherein I diligently painted at least two paintings every single day, and then I just lost interest. Except for a few pet portrait commissions, I did not pick up a paintbrush all winter. I did draw diligently, every Saturday at our life group sessions. And last weekend I made the annual pilgrimage to Bartlett so as to make the end of winter, forcing myself out in the open to paint en plein air.

Today, therefore, I am here to report on a few of the drawings and all four of the Bartlett paintings. Which first? I just now photographed the four paintings so I’ll start with them. Only the last one was actually painted in the Town of Bartlett, near the Inn where we have always stayed. The first one is from our way up. I went up with Sharon Allen, and she needed to make a few stops in Tamworth, where she had doped out some good views during a week-long event just finished. I decided on a close-up view of a small waterfall, thinking to explore shapes and colors–something out of the box since I should have grown less prone to habits. I tried, I really did, but if there’s anything outside the box here, I don’t see it manifested.

Tamworth Waterfall

I worked and reworked the colors found in and under the water until I just about drove myself crazy. Why, if I apply the matching color in the correct spot, doesn’t the water resemble nature? I concluded that it has to be done in layers–simply not possible with oils en plein air. So when I got home after the weekend, I tried again to duplicate what I remembered. No, a layering technique can’t be superimposed. Pause for reflection: Do I really want to be a super realistic painter? My forte, if I have one, had been speed and spontaneity.

Onward and northward: The next day after our hearty breakfast at the Bartlett Inn, we debated where to go to paint. There were seven of us, and although we never all of us agree on location, we like to keep tabs on where we are all heading–except for Byron Carr, who still goes for obscure, hard to navigate spots that none of the rest of us can access. First stop for four of us was the alpaca farm in North Conway. The owner suggested that we set up behind the house and barn, which was downhill and away from the livestock. That was OK with me as I had no idea what kind of subject would snap me out of my lethargy. It turned out that a building was a good choice. We had good light when we started and I tried to keep it in mind as I filled in the shadows. The part that pleases me the most, however, is the accumulation of stuff piled in front of the barn. I decided I would depict the piles as piles, with just enough articulation to suggest the nature of the stuff comprising the piles. I hope you get that.

Farm in North Conway

In the afternoon, we headed West to the Franconia Notch–I don’t remember what the reasoning was. It is a far way to go since Bartlett is South of the Crawford Notch, and you can’t get to Franconia Notch from there without first driving North. In between is national forest timber and trees and maybe a few logging roads, and somehow when you get to Franconia Notch, there are mountains all around, extending back to Crawford Notch. Hmm. That does seem to compute. Anyway, we finally settled on a spot on Profile Lake, near the area where our iconic mountain man profile once lived. (It crumbled quite a few years ago but we still pay homage.) Like I did in Tamworth, I decided to focus in on a small patch of stream and shadows and reflections and, most importantly, sunlight glinting off the water and trees. Water layers again, but I was more worried this time about the drama of shadow and light. A passerby complimented me on the expressiveness of the painting, and I thought, yes! I’m getting it. When I got it home, however, I decided to simplify the composition by bringing the water down to the bottom of the painting, wiping out the sandy shore. I did a great job on the sand, but it was “de trop”, as a Frenchman might say.

In Franconia Notch

Rain was forecast for the next two days of our weekend. When the sun was nevertheless visible in the morning, we hurried to the most local of possibilities, a road that runs along Saco River in the Town. But there is no river in my painting. A rivulet feeder into the Saco is implied by the presence of rails on a road, which takes a sharp curve to avoid running into a white house. Not exactly a view that dreams are made of. But I thought I had a good composition and hoped I could present the elements–road, trees, railing and house–in such a way as to draw the eye. It was a good exercise but did not result in a painting that anyone is going to want to put on their wall. (If I’m wrong about that, it’s yours!)

House at the Curve in the Road

I promised some kind of narration about the drawings. I wouldn’t have thought to mention them at all but for a Call for Art coming from Exeter for representations of nudity. I spread a bunch before me and selected five to photograph and three to submit to the Call. All three were accepted, so then I had to get them framed. Shot myself in the foot there. The exhibit was very nice, very short and open only on Saturdays for the duration. Now I have three framed nudes (beautifully framed, thank you Grace of Creative Framing Solutions) looking for homes. The price for each is $150, or best offer. Each is roughly 11×17 not including mat and frame.

View from the Top

Demure

Study in Foreshortening

. . . Myself. Still trying to find Myself, meaning what kind of art is in me? I have been struggling with this polyglot art for many years now. What are the common strands? Representational in subject matter. Impressionistic in style. I feel urges, to break free of representational, to jump into a bath of expressionistic paint. Yet when I am confronted with the specific task, I revert to representational impressionistic images. Stay tuned. Something might change.

Thanks for staying with me.

Exhibiting

Posted by Aline on February 11, 2017

I haven’t written a blog for two months. I have thought about it a lot, but what to write about?

(1) It’s winter, and dreary sunless winter most of the time.

(2) I can’t go to Florida for my usual reinvigoration because I’m working at tax returns in order to support my art habit.

(3) As I get older, it seems as if everything I do has to take longer. Five times longer. I have turned into a snail.

As a result of all those factors, forget about blogging. . . I haven’t even been painting!

Two months–that’s December and January, and little bit of February, assuming I finish this start and publish it today or tomorrow. During those months I was busy with a different aspect of the profession of art making. I was exhibiting. So I’m hoping that’s a subject that might be amusing for artists and non artists alike, especially since so much of that was compressed in that stretch of time.

There are two kinds of exhibiting: juried and not juried. For the juried ones, the process starts with the application or “entry”. The artist obtains decent photographs of the artwork and sends the images electronically to the juror(s). For the unjuried ones, the artist usually need only identify each piece by title and size. For all of them, the artist must consider the logistics of getting artwork to the place of exhibit, and then getting pieces back home at the end of the exhibit.

Entering multiple exhibits requires some basic record keeping. You don’t want to put forward the same painting in different, overlapping exhibits. You can’t deliver paintings to two locations at the same time. You can’t deliver paintings when you are tied up at work either. Friends and families are helpful in this regard.

I was particularly busy with the business of art these past few months. Maybe because I was not getting many rejections, a turn of events devoutly to be thankful for. The effort required for me to keep all my exhibit balls in the air sapped my energy to actually keep painting–with the exceptions of commissions of pet portraits and the re-creation of lost paintings. Yes, on two occasions I submitted photographs of paintings that I could not find! But let’s go back to the beginning.

In November, I responded to a call for art from a Boston gallery, the Bromfield, for smallish pieces to go in their annual Winter Show. I have never exhibited in Boston before, so I decided to go for it. Of 4 images submitted, 2 were accepted. Both were 8×10 rather abstracted landscapes involving water. Lake’s Edge, which was on my wall and on my business card; and Water Layers, which I distinctly remember seeing when I was offering 8×10’s for $100 each in Littleton’s Art Festival. But I could not find Water Layers in any of my home places for stacking older paintings. Thank goodness I tried to find it right after getting the acceptance, because that barely gave me enough time to paint a copy of it from my photograph of it. Oil dries slowly.

Water Layers, 8×10, plein air, half hour painting at Baboosic Brook in Merrimack NH

The exhibit at the Bromfield Gallery required three trips to Boston: one to deliver; one to attend the opening; and one to pick up at the end of the show. I took a friend with me each time because venturing into SoWa (South of Washington) arts district alone intimidated this boondocks artist. Yvonne, another artist, accompanied me on the first and third trips. It wasn’t the neighborhood that intimidated me; it was the traffic and fear of accidentally getting on the Mass. Turnpike, because that has happened to me before when trying to find something in the South End. Parking in the neighborhood of the Gallery was also a challenge better handled with another person riding shotgun. Alas, all of our good luck in finding the place and scoring a parking place got washed out by a blowout of one of my snow tires as I was pulling into a dubious corner space. I had rammed my poor tire into a sewer grate. AAA to the rescue. Yvonne missed a delivery of a turkey to her front porch back in Manchester. Come to think of it, I guess I owe her a turkey. Just glad I was not alone!

The middle trip, the one to the opening, was pretty darn delightful. My friend from grade school in Wilmington Delaware, Jackie, accompanied me. There was a Christmas crafts fair going on, and all of the galleries at 450 Harrison Street too, as was usual on the First Friday of a month. As soon as we got here, about five o’clock, Jackie and I allowed ourselves to be seduced by a restaurant called 500 in Italian. Cinquecento. As we were investigating the menu posted outside, passersby stopped to encourage us and even advised which meal to order. Since we did not have a competing agenda, we went for it and ending up spending a boatload of money, mostly for a carafe of wine that cost $35. Good time, great meal. Girls night out. Christmas shopping got done too–later.

Let this be enough to whet your appetite for more show war stories. Now that I have a toe in the water (to mix metaphors), I shall be more likely to wade on in.

Places where you might catch a few of my paintings are:

NH Antiques Coop in Milford NH
Bartlett Inn in Bartlett NH
Red Jacket Resort in North Conway NH
Mesmer & Deleault Law Firm in Manchester NH
McGowan Gallery in Concord NH
Armory Cafe Gallery in Somerville, MA
Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth NH
Currier Art Museum in Manchester NH
Ellis River Art Gallery in Jackson 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!

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

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.

Abstracting the Landscape, Part 2

Posted by Aline on May 18, 2016

Having recently come off a weekend devoted to abstracting the landscape (see previous post), during which we painted from photograph, imagination, memory, music and purely abstract concepts, I resolved to apply my newly acquired abstracting skills to actual landscapes. No, more correctly expressed: I resolved to TRY to apply those abstracting skills to actual landscapes. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. The spread of nature’s delights is so seductive that it is almost impossible to reduce a painting to a few good non abstract ideas.

Upper Ammonoosuk Falls, wip

Upper Ammonoosuk Falls, final

The photo on the left is the result of my painting for two hours at Upper Ammonoosuk Falls, getting sucked into the whole nature thing, trying to capture all the rocks and water rivulets. Fighting with myself. Until finally I heard myself remarking to another artist, by the way of encouragement, that depicting falls, boulders, etc. was hard because of the clutter. Clutter. Such an important non abstract concept. I went back to my painting and swept the water down over all my clutter. And it worked. So what if the scene never looked quite like that!

This morning I went over all four of my weekend paintings to see if any adjustments were needed. In the photo on the right you can maybe detect minor but important touches: the large rock slab in the virtual center was grayed back so as not to compete with the white of the falling water; the indeterminate brown area in bottom right was darkened and sharpened so as to clarify that it sits higher and in front of the falling water. I also added a few strokes of white water to the cascade, just to gild the lily. (By the way, while spell-checking Ammonoosuk I discovered YouTube videos of this spot, featuring reckless youths diving into the pools. Here is one of them.)

But did I really abstract my landscape? I did a better job than usual in reducing details. It’s a start. Maybe I’ll do better on the next one?

The next one turned out to be a panorama of intensely green fields dotted with intensely yellow dandelions, backed by periwinkle mountains, covered by gray clouds threatening rain. Because of the high chance of rain, we had driven south to Conway, where there is a bridge overpass that could provide us shelter from the rain while giving us a river’s edge view of an old-fashioned covered bridge. But we each of us got sucked in by the dandelions, and set about creating rain shelters within which to paint. I was riding with Sharon, so we had to find two ways to create painting studios out of one SUV. She had the tailgate. She also had the bright idea of creating a shelter for me out of my big yellow poncho and the two doors of her vehicle. Here’s a photo of me getting set up under my yellow tent. 20160513_152644

The tent cast such a strong yellow light over my painting (but not my palette), that I thought I was losing my mind when every time I scooped up a big blob of white paint to use in the sky, it turned yellow as soon as it hit the sky. The yellow tent had to have affected the rest of my painting as well, but it was only obvious in the sky. As a result, I had not much of a good idea of how my painting was coming along. This is not a good situation to be in, for a painter. However, I was trying to be abstract, so maybe, I thought, hue doesn’t matter. I blocked in the elements I wanted: the intense green pasture, the intense yellow dandelions, the intense blue mountains. Added a few tree and shrub features. Still a result not so abstract, but the important thing was, I was thinking abstractly.

Dandelion Field, wip

Dandelion Field, final

The one on the left is the painting as it was on Friday afternoon; the one on the right received some help today. It needed more yellow in the dandelions since it no longer had the benefit of a yellow poncho glowing all over it. I cleaned up the sky a bit. The photos do not do justice to the yellows and greens. Oh, well. Just keep in mind ALWAYS–the original looks so much better than the photo.

For my third painting, I was fortunate to be able to pick the group’s subject of the morning, and paintings always go better when one is inspired by the subject. There is a railroad that goes from North Conway north through Crawford Notch to a station near the base of the Cog Railway that climbs Mt. Washington. To get through the Notch, the train must travel on rails cut into the granite sides of the pass, and in this particular place, also bridge a gap in the rock face. Especially with the morning light casting a shadow of the rails onto the granite, the tracks create a pattern both arresting and intriguing.

No. Conway RR trestle, wip

RR Trestle in Crawford Notch

On the left side is what I got done on site. We were painting from a parking lot surrounded by growing things in various stages of greening (the trees budded out almost before our eyes–not just overnight but over lunch), so my view of the area below the trestle was obscured. I had installed rough representations of that obscuring growth, but I was bothered by the fact that you could not tell how far away the trestle was, nor how high it sat on the side of the granite face. So I scrubbed the growing things and tried to transform them into rock face. At home, today, I tried to improve on that aspect, as well as the rock formations above the trestle. I’m not convinced that my changes improved the perspective.

For our last outing, we chose a spot not far from our home base (the Bartlett Inn). As before, I resolved to think abstractly, just capture the shapes and colors that represented the site. The color for this one was blue. Intensely blue sky, intensely blue water reflecting the sky. A nice snaky curve in the waterway, good aerial effects for the more distant mountains. Simple elements that I should be able to use for an abstract landscape. Alas, the landscape had other ideas.

Saco River, wipe

Saco River, Bartlett, final

As an abstracted landscape, a pretty miserable failure. But more than passable as a normal plein air landscape, so I forgive myself. The changes I made this morning to the earlier version on the left were mostly in the light greens and the sandy shores. I don’t understand why the blue of the water looks so different now. I think there might have been too much contrast in the first photo. You can tell I have played around with the photo’s color cast, trying to match up with the original painting. The truth of the water lies somewhere between the two versions.

My companions for the weekend were my roommate, Betty Brown; chauffeur, Sharon Allen; colleague from Snow Camp, Suzanne Lewis of Rhode Island; young artist Stephen S from Hooksett; new members Leslie and Paul, from Massachusetts, and of course, the esteemed organizer of this semi-annual Getaway Weekend, Byron Carr of Contoocook. Some if not all of these people have websites where their paintings of the same scenes may or may not be posted.

If you are a regular reader, you have noticed I am employing a different format for the paired photos. WordPress has added new options, and I am learning how to use them. You can click on the above photos to enlarge them and to read their captions. Do you like this format?

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; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester, part of the Healing with Art program; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Please save the date of Wednesday, June 22 for a reception at Labelle Winery in Bedford of the Petals 2 Paint show whereat floral designers create live flower arrangements inspired by a painting by participating East Colony artists. This has been an annual event of the East Colony Fine Art artists for many years, but this 2016 show seems likely to be our last as a group. Since the flowers don’t last more than a couple of days, you might as well plan to come for the reception.

Kickstart

Posted by Aline on May 9, 2016

I have continued to be Very Bad and Unrepentant. Finding oneself takes time. I had to write an artist’s bio last week, and instead of reciting biographical facts about myselves, I skipped merrily over past incarnations to state affirmatively–I’m all mixed up but happily so. Here is how I put it:

Pursuing a profession in the arts is inevitably a struggle because excellence is never actually attained. One is always reaching. Aline has found herself reaching in more than one direction at a time, which for a long time has confused her and perhaps worried her followers. But she now has decided to embrace the diversity of her subject matter and styles and celebrate each on its own terms. Her style ranges from loose and impressionistic to refined and deliberate. Meanwhile, she has served notice that she will be experimenting with abstracted landscapes as well.

And indeed I do today have something to show for that last bold statement. I attended a three-day workshop on Abstracting the Landscape with Barbara Danser, who teaches at the NH Institute of Art but last weekend (yes, including Mother’s Day) was teaching for the Currier Art School (an offshoot of the Currier Museum of Art, which I serve as a docent). Barbara started us off slow, with a photograph that we chose from many that she had ready. Then she had us paint the same scene without referring to the photo. I believe the purpose might have been to divorce us from the details and focus us on the big picture (so to speak). Also to this end, I believe, she imposed time limits as a way of weaning us away from detail in our paintings. In the beginning, the limit was fifteen minutes for each effort. Later on, she allowed us 30 minutes, perhaps even more when she saw us close to accomplishing something.

From Photo

From memory of photo

After that one use of a photo for inspiration, Barbara gave us “Prompts” as inspiration. The first one involved a female walking on a beach in the mist.

Beachwalker in the mist (6×6)

For the next one, she played some music. I wish I could remember what it was–classical for sure. Debussy?

From a musical prompt

I deployed my palette knife more than usual because that is a faster way to lay down lots of paint. Once I had the paint on the panel, I could move it around. I had been using paper to paint on, but with the one above, I used a panel that I had previously painted on. There is no trace of the original painting showing through.

After lunch on the first day (Friday), Barbara gave us another photo to work from: that of a wave. We had a choice of waves. I chose the more dramatic of the two:

Wave from photo

Naturally, we then had to paint the same wave from memory:

Wave from memory

After the wave, we got no more photos to use as references, but we examined the works of other abstract landscapists to get us in the mood. I also found myself mentally referring back to paintings I had painted years ago, which was a little spooky.

The sequence of the next seven paintings, and the specific prompts for each one, has gotten a little muddled in my mind. What I can remember about each one I have put in the caption, which I believe you will be able to read if you click on the image. All of them were either 8×10 or 9×12, but I have accepted WordPress’s suggestion for varying the apparent sizes.

Light drenching land and sky alike

another music prompt

Trees, spring green

no idea where this came from

New Mexican artist, minimalist

Trees, avoiding green.

Rain drops, musical notes. The Last One.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

And save the date of Wednesday, June 22 for a reception at Labelle Winery in Bedford of the Petals 2 Paint event whereat floral designers create live flower arrangements inspired by a painting. This is an annual event of the East Colony Fine Art artists and seems likely to be their last show as a group. The flowers don’t last more than a couple of days, so you might as well plan to come for the reception.

Color Me Encouraged

Posted by Aline on August 20, 2015

Last week I was bellyaching about how dissatisfied I was with my paintings, and Fate apparently paid attention, showering me with encouragement this week. Just a little, no “tens” on the ten-point encouragement scale but maybe, considering all, a solid seven.

First, I partook in the 4th Annual Essex (Massachusetts) Paint Out on Saturday. It was my first foray into this event but I had heard that the auction was widely supported. We painted Saturday and handed in the wet paintings before leaving Essex to go home. On Sunday we returned (I was already in Gloucester for my Figure in the Landscape workshop with David Curtis) for a Silent Auction (4-6) and a Live Auction (6 -7). About 18 works had been preselected for the Live Auction–works by popular local artists. About 100 paintings were entered in the silent auction.

Here’s how a silent auction works: the artist declares a value for the painting (in my case, $325 for each 9×12 wet painting, unframed); the authorities (actually, some computer, they alleged) use that value to peg the minimum/opening bid (in my case, $125). Each painting is accompanied by a bidding sheet. The top line states the opening bid. A bidder writes his/her name on that line. Thereafter, other bidders could come along and bid higher by writing their names on the next line, and stating the higher bid next to their names. The first bidder must lurk in the area, watching for such an eventuality so as to strike back with another bid if he/she really wants the painting. So that is the Sunday scene.

Now back to Saturday. Flo Parlangeli and I sought out a scene with marshland (for her) and buildings (for me). Based on a tip I got at registration, we drove to the end of the appropriately named Water Street. From there, we had a view upriver (the Essex River) to the Town of Essex (buildings, including a steeple, de rigeur for a New England town), and a view downriver toward the bay, eventually toward the ocean. Downriver was Flo’s choice.

View of the Town

Essex River–Highway to the Sea

The edges of the Essex River are very marshy. Its pace looks relaxed, and its path meanders and splits off to form separate pools here and there. When the tide is low, mud flats are exposed. The Town is celebrated for its clams, dug out of those mud flats.

We were welcomed by two brothers who had inherited the house at the end of Water Street, and encouraged to go anywhere on their land, either side of the road, despite the No Trespassing signs. They also regaled us with inside stories about our location and the town. The bottom of Water Street had once been called Callahan Point, Callahan being their great grandmother’s maiden name, or Clay Point for the industry of brick making that once thrived there. Associated buildings are long gone and the land is now all under conservation never to be despoiled again.

Soon we were joined by another artist–from New Hampshire! Total coincidence. She was a pastelist and left after lunch, never to be seen again. We looked for her painting at the auction but could not find it. I suspect she was a victim of Dissatisfaction. Speaking of lunch . . . Wow! I volunteered to go collect the lunches for all three of us since I had finished my first painting. That turned out to be quite a project. They served clam chowder (of course), tossed salad, sandwiches of every description, homemade chips, cookies, water and condiments. I had to choose what kind of sandwiches and figure out how to transport three lidless clam chowders cups to Water Street.

Flo was working all day on one larger piece looking downriver, and didn’t finish until about 4 o’clock. With that extra time to think, it occurred to me that between us we had two extra tickets to the auction event, so we offered those to our hosts. One of them said he would bid on my upriver painting, and indeed he did, and he won it for the opening bid. My other, downriver, painting also sold, to a local art photographer whose stunning sunset-over-the-marshes view was in the live auction. (Unless he got outbid–I have not received any word yet of the final bids.) Unfortunately, Flo’s painting did not find a bidder. Indeed, a quick glance around the barn of the items up for silent auction suggested that less than half were finding bidders–not exactly what had been anticipated based on prior years’ performances. I suspect the large format of Flo’s painting might have put off savvy buyers, who are all too familiar with the cost of framing.

We stuck around for the live auction, at first because David Curtis had one in it and I thought I might get a David Curtis painting for an unrealistically low price–what a coup that would be! However, I fell in love with a different painting and had to go my limit ($300) to get it.

Wildflowers in August by Carole Loiacono

This artist spends half the year in Florida, apparently. I guess she was not at the auction. Neither was David Curtis, and by the time his piece came up for bidding, I had “shot my wad”. Sorry, David.

Riding on the crest of my Essex success, yesterday I embarked with Sharon Allen and Jim O’Donnell on trip up to Wolfboro for the annual paintout sponsored by the Governor Wentworth Arts Council. This paintout also ends with a sale of some sort, sometimes an auction, other times, a straight sale. One time, I sold in the silent auction format–$100 for an unframed 8×10, which I had to split with the host organization. My buyer that year had guarded my painting so that no one else could get near the bidding sheet to compete with her. I didn’t really mind, because it’s not about the money for me. I was flattered.

This year we were allowed to set a price, and to be consistent, I put the price of $325 on my 9×12 painting. Yes, only the one painting. We had to turn them in at 2 o’clock and I had picked a difficult subject that took almost all of the 4 hours available to me. There were no buyers for $325 paintings. $60 paintings, yeah. I would have attributed my failure to find a buyer to buyers choosing against me, but for the fact that I WON People’s Choice!!! I now know how Sally Field felt accepting the Academy Award for Norma Rae. I had not even voted for my own painting, assuming it wouldn’t even be in the running. Instead I voted for Jim’s excellent painting of the water vista. And Jim came in second! I am so glad I voted for him. Fate rewarded me.

Proud Winners

My painting was of a statue in Cote Park called “Sharing”. It features two bronze figures and a park bench, which visitors use like a bench for photo opportunities. If only they’d stay long enough for me to incorporate them into the painting. The title of the sculpture must refer the “sharing” of the experience of eating ice cream cones by grandfather and boy. It should be noted that there is a place to buy ice cream down at the docks. After handing in my painting, I availed myself of a cup of something chocolatey. A rather large cup. Turns out, I deserved it!

A Moment to Treasure

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Library Arts Center in Newport, 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; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

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.

Paintings by Aline

A Painter's Progress

Category Archives: river

Still trying to find . . . ?

Exhibiting

Catching up–Bartlett Style

Portsmouth Paintings

Abstracting the Landscape, Part 2

Kickstart

Color Me Encouraged

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