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.

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!

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.

Marco Island Paintings Part One: M.C. Reining

Posted by Aline on February 24, 2013

I returned from my two-week painting vacation on Marco Island with 14 paintings, and the next two days was back to painting and drawing nudes. Too much for one blogpost anyway, so I am deferring for a few days the pleasure of showing my art in favor of first displaying the artworks created by my Marco Island hostess, Mary Crawford Reining.

On most occasions, we were looking in the roughly same direction to paint if not the same scene, neighboring scenes. You will be able to identify a few exceptions (most prominently the boat featured in my previous posting). You might find it interesting to compare our different treatments of the same subjects. But it would be like comparing apples to oranges, which I understand is not a good thing to do. Mary is a watercolorist (she claims to switch from medium to medium, but I have only seen her painting with watercolors in the five years that I have been plein air painting with her) and her style is looser than mine. I have noticed that the more experienced an artist is, the more successfully they attain looseness. Mary is very experienced, having studied art and having taught art, and, most importantly, having never in all those years ceased to think and behave like an artist.