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The following is the eleventh and final journal entry on February 24th, of Michael E. Vermette's Artist-in-residency at Crawford Notch at the Appalachian Mountain Club's new Outdoor Highland Center in Crawford Notch State Park and the White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire. The duration of his residency was a week long, between February 19th to February 25th, 2017. In this time he created 11 painted oil sketches that were made completely outdoors en plein air within the region. Sometimes near the lodge, other times hiking up to 5 miles to and from a site on snowshoes with his studio on his back, he painted in the coldest weather and in the most challenging conditions. On the first day he featured a presentation of the White Mountain Painters and the following week an Open Studio exhibition of his work, displaying two new paintings each day between 4PM and 6PM for the guests at the AMC Highland Center. This is his story.

GOD LOVES A TRIER

After returning from a successful morning painting session at Jackson Falls, I arrived just in time for another scrumptious lunch at the AMC Highland Center. I witnessed the changing weather from sunny morning to rainy afternoon descending upon Crawford Notch like a closing door. My residency was soon coming to an end and there was only enough time for one more painting. So after lunch my plan was simple, I would set up in the studio classroom I was using as a makeshift gallery and paint the notch from the first story window during the rain storm.

Interesting enough, I had noticed the high snow banks were eye-level with the viewing angle and the horizon line, almost completely obscuring the crawford station.The huge thick storm clouds descended into the valley reaching and covering the mountains in a marvelous abstraction. In fact much of this painting would have a non-objective look with interesting cloud, mountain, and snowbank shapes that related to each other in an excellent animated rhythm. I set up my easel and put out my paints on my palette, beginning to draw first in charcoal. I was hoping to attract some visitors who might want to watch and there were a few that did stop by during my engagement with the paint application.

My thoughts went to how I ever got to the place where I confidently begin. Why do I know with a certainty that I can just begin and everything will come out just fine. I think it's the truth that was imparted to me by my parents that I could do anything if I just try. I wasn't an easy child to raise by far. I had Dyslexia and was terrified of taking tests and reading aloud. But my mother worked with me unceasingly with the encouragement that I would be able to do the very things I was afraid I could never succeed in. In fact I would have been the last person that I would choose to be a teacher in my graduating class. Yet, that is what I became, a certified public school artist-teacher of more 31 years and a painter of more than 45 years. My mother led me to a life in the Spirit and use to sit for hours watching me paint in places like the Thuja Gardens on Mount Desert Island, Maine. Her saying, "God Loves a trier" has stayed with me all these years.

As I began to mix the paint on my palette and apply the palette knife shapes to my surface, I thought of how empowering that statement is. It implies that all we need to do to overcome the fear that comes our way and to muster up enough faith to show up to the easel and just begin. Then the Spirit meets us at that place and slips into us as a hand in a glove to co-work with us. And very excitedly we find ourselves in that wondrous place of discovery and rightness. A life lived in the Spirit is a body in motion. It's not a philosophy, a good college try, or a mindless indifferent "I might as well try" or even a religious formula; It's attracting the Spirit by taking a step into our daily adversity with the faith and the fact that you will never face this alone. It's following and actually doing what some call the voice of the inner child or a still quiet voice that suggests "just try". The Life in the Spirit that my mother led me to is a spiritual and creative helper who is always available and comes along side me as an encourager, an inspirer and even one who will argue with me and yes, many a times, has saved and warned me, keeping me from utterly failing.

So much of what we are allowed to create as plein air painters depends a lot on what the Spirit in the natural environment permits us to paint. All week I had beautiful weather but not without challenges. And now, at the end, that door is closing marked by a final and constant rain. It is as if the landscape itself is saying to me that my residency at Crawford Notch has ended. My watercolor painting residency before this one a few years ago in the Fall, ended in the very same way, in rain. And so I finished my last painting no. 11 "February Storm at Crawford Notch, NH" not with a sense of sadness, but with a sense of accomplishment and thankfulness. Just like my last residency here, I painted 11 paintings on the week and would pack up and leave tomorrow almost as quickly as I arrived.

That afternoon, evening, and throughout the week, I made a lot of new friendships and many visitors come by to the final opening to view the body of work I created. I want to thank Nancy Ritger and the staff at the AMC Highland Center for this amazing residency experience. I would like to also thank my wife Elaine who is a constant support for me and my mother who encouraged me to always try. And finally I would like to thank the Spirit who led me through this residency each day. We have all heard the phrase, "nothing ventured, nothing gained". But I would say, " Nothing tried, nothing infilled"; after all, God loves and is attracted to a trier!