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.

Urban New Hampshire

Posted by Aline on June 29, 2015

I have saved up a number of challenge paintings for this post. The challenges came from the subject matter. Although landscapes in general are less demanding than other genres because nature is so variable in its beauty, the same cannot be said when architecture, vehicles or people become prominent in the scene. Perhaps I have been setting myself up for a higher failure rate. But I can’t learn if I stick to easy subjects. I’m not sure which of these are failures and which are the successful embodiment of a new direction in my artistry. I’m feeling my way, so to speak, across the landscape of my creativity.

Newport

First, a large (20×16) rendition from a photograph taken when I realized I had forgotten my chair. I simply cannot stand to paint for two hours at an easel. Old bones, or something like that. So I photographed my inspiration and tried not to become a servant of the photo. This is a vacant mill (it is for sale) in the Town of Newport, New Hampshire.

The Ruger Mill, Newport, NH

The lead in to this view of these sunken buildings intrigued me the most: that curvy downward driveway must have been a nightmare when shifts changed. The river that powered the mill flows out of sight in the back of the buildings. I believe that same river is the waterway that led to my next Newport painting. A one-lane covered bridge next to a rolling park is a kind of hybrid between straight landscape and architecture, but no one can deny a bridge is a construct subject to the laws of perspective. It was threatening rain the day I was in Newport for this painting, and after I scouted the various aspects of the bridge, it did rain, furiously. I waited. After all, I was several hours away from home and there wasn’t any reason to hurry home. After about 20 minutes I got lucky. The rain stopped and the sun even came out intermittently. For an hour. Suddenly–that means without warning–it started raining hard again so I packed up quickly and headed home.

Newport Covered Bridge

I studied the quick block-in long and hard. I knew the perspective was probably wrong. The bridge was level, but looks as if it is slanted upward in my painting. The reflection reinforces that notion. I consulted the photograph taken when I was scouting, and it shows a bridge going straight and level. But I really, really wanted to trust what I blocked in at the site. After all, I was seated while painting, and I had been standing to take photographs. If I changed the bridge and the reflections, I would have all those stripey shapes that I hate so much. Ergo, slant stays. For the good of the art.

Exeter

Again this year I participated in the paint-out fundraiser for the American Independence Museum in Exeter. I had scouted locations the day before, when I was delivering paintings to our pop-up gallery on Water Street, and spied a good riverfront vantage point on private property that had a sign warning “No Trespassing Fishing . . . [other forbidden activities]”. There was nevertheless a guy fishing . I asked him about the sign, whether it was vigorously enforced. “What sign?” he asked. He had never noticed, but it didn’t matter: he lived in the condo complex and gave me permission to paint there the next day. First, I painted the buildings across the river, but I included a vigorous evergreen that partially blocked my view, instead of moving to the right where the shrub would not block my view. That meant painting a close up of a potted plant, in addition to the architecture in the background, not to mention the river itself and a boat tied up to a landing. I felt it might be possible because I had chosen a large panel, 16×12, for the project. But the evergreen defeated me.

Exeter Riverfront

Almost from the same spot, I found a charming bridge that I wanted to paint. The evergreen was in the way again. For this one, I did stand up, because I really had to in order to see over the shrubbery. But I knew I only had a hour to paint because the wet paintings were due back at the Museum for the wet paint sale, so I figured, for an hour I can stand. Note the different treatment I tried out for the same shrub in the second painting.

String Bridge, Exeter

Neither painting found a buyer, but in my haste to set up, I mispriced them as if they had been framed. Just as well, because when I got them home, I improved on the shrubbery. Not so much but I was happier.

Last week, I was back in Exeter to see if the pop-up needed any help. It didn’t, so I went up Water Street and painted the scene looking down and back to where our gallery is. Shrubbery was replaced by automobiles. They moved in and out of the parking spots in front of me. What can you do? I never got a good enough handle on what existed behind the cars, so I had to include the cars. Maybe I can develop that into a specialty!

Water Street, Exeter

Portsmouth

Market Square in Portsmouth was the site of an organized paintout last Wednesday. Only four painters that I was aware of, which including me and Flo, actually participated. Flo and I settled on the shady corner kitty-corner from the dominant building, North Church, whence I included North Church and the street running to the right and down. Blocking my view on the right was a tree and Flo, who painted the picturesque row of storefronts behind me. It would not have been realistic to paint Market Square without vehicles or people. So I grabbed a few impressions–one trolley and one van for vehicular traffic, and two couples for the human sort. Traffic is so annoying; it moves. The parked cars in Exeter were a piece of cake by comparison.

Market Square in Portsmouth

New Boston

Last is the painting I did at the Farmers’ Market last Saturday in New Boston. A call had gone out on the NH Plein Air list inviting plein air artists, and I answered the call. I was the only one to do so. I’m not sure, in retrospect, whether the idea was for the artist to be selling artwork or to be creating artwork. I had assumed creating, because in years past I had done the same at the Bedford Farmers Market. So I created.

Under Dogwood, New Boston

For a little while, I had a group of musicians in the gazebo, but alas, they had to leave after an hour, and without warning! Well, challenges, right? Another difficulty was the Dogwood tree. Since it was in the foreground, like the nasty evergreen shrub in Exeter, I felt I had to do more than suggest a generic tree with white blossoms. It should convey the idea of a dogwood tree. Conveying the idea of musicians was much easier! Go figure! (Pun not intended.)

So there’s an assortment. Is anything happening here in terms of this Painter’s Progress?

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

with the East Colony artists for the rest of June and all of July at 163 (167) Water Street, Exeter, NH; at the Bedford Public Library; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the NH Institute of Art, 77 Amherst St., 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!

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

Tag Archives: bridge

Still trying to find . . . ?

Urban New Hampshire

Marco Island Part 6 (final): Kooky, Experimental

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