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Rangeley 50 PLUS ONE SHOW

I had so many typos in my last newsletter, I thought I might correct them and share some other good news. My one person show at the Lakeside Theater in downtown Rangeley has been on display all last week and will end by Wednesday, September 7th, 2022. There is an article in the Sun Journal of the Rangeley Highlander about the show that was posted on September 2nd, 2022. If you'd like to see the article CLICK HERE.

So far this year, since my retirement, I have been resolved to do as many shows and plein air festivals and auctions as I can. It will keep me busy through October when I will finally settle down and do a combination of plein air and studio work. I simply want to live a life similar to what James Fitzgerald lived by being open to the Spirit, to paint wherever season I find myself in and where I am sent.

My next show opportunity after Rangeley is at the Yarmouth Frame and Gallery, to take part in the Paul Black show. I exhibited with Paul years ago in the past at the former Clark House Gallery in Bangor, Maine. I respected his impressionistic palette, his range and choice of color, and how in his latter years, like Monet, preferred front lighting for the direction of the light. It will be exciting to show with him my larger Allagash paintings and other selected works.

I hope to deliver paintings to the gallery in Yarmouth and my work for the Audubon Brush With Nature art auction by this Thursday. On Friday of this week, I also hope to participate in the Ogunquit Plein Air Painting Event at Perkins Cove. The competition is from 9am to 2PM. Then it will be a mad dash to frame the work for judging by 2:30PM - 3:00PM. The wet painting then goes up for sale at 3:30PM to 5PM. All of these events, plus a Monhegan Island Stay at the end of the month are helping me prepare for the upcoming CAPA (Cape Anne Plein Air Festiva), I am selected to participate in on the first week of October and ending on the 9th, ironically the night of the full moon. But for now, The Ogunquit Plein Air event is designed like an extended quick draw event. It allows both amateur and professionals alike to paint together, but in the end, judged in two different categories, similar to Cape Anne's Quick Draw event. Being my first year participating in both festivals, it will be a good example of the Spirit leading me to paint wherever I am sent on the artist plein air trail.

Belfast's Habitat for Humanity Plein Air Art Auction

I have been as busy as the two humming birds in my yard, darting around my feeder and getting ready for their long migration. For me, it was managing to paint en plein air in two locations in one week, namely, at Belfast at the beginning of the week and then at Biddeford Pool on the weekend. I loved every minute of it. For Habitat For Humanity, I chose to paint the iconic Tugs boats in the foggy overcast light of the first part of the week. I walked around a lot to view many different view points and subjects such, views from the large walk bridge. But in the end I chose the bright red tugs because they are such a symbol of Belfast Harbor and they appeared stunning in the fog. I settled down to paint them on a lower dock below the town wharf, just below the Nautilus Seafood & Grill. This vantage point gave a much more monumental view of the tugs and it also gave me a view closest to the water's amazingly complex reflection.

On Sunday August 28th the Habitat for Humanity Auction was held at the Arnold & E. Frances Withee building at 15 Front Street in Belfast. The hall was perfect for an auction event, which had a beautiful view of Belfast harbor. Most all of us artists and patrons conversed out on the large deck overlooking the harbor with our spirits and fancy hors D"oeuvres in hand.

It went amazingly well for their inaugural auction. I was among the highest selling artist with the painting going to a collector who once worked for the Farnsworth Museum. There was a great line-up talented and well known painters who were all invited to participate. In contrast, in the Camden Plein Air auction, it was different for me. What I learned from that event was to paint larger and within a square format. I have been learning something in each of these events that I have participate in. I have been wanting to paint on a square formate for some time now, and this event and subject matter gave me the opportunity to do so. However, one thing you are always made aware of is how every mark and shape in the composition is essential in a square composition. You really can't hide in the corners as you can a rectangle.

Brush With Nature Plein Air Painting Auction

After painting in Belfast on Monday and Wednesday due to the unsteady weather, I went to the Biddeford Pool on Saturday for the second time. I plein air painted a 16" x 20" oil on cradled panel of the East Point Audubon Sanctuary. Biddeford Pool is a large tidal pool, located off Saco Bay south of the mouth of Saco River, on the south Coast of Maine. I was excited to paint the amazing colored rock that appeared almost like petrified wood in it's grain. And of course, I was also thrilled to return to the sea to plein air paint on the coast, which always speaks to me. 

The weather was very foggy at the start of that morning. I began my day at 5 am in the morning. Weeks before, on an earlier trip I made in August, I discovered that there is not a lot of opportunities for parking. So it was important to get an early start so that I could get my pick of the nearest parking space, since I would be lugging equipment. The trail is an 0.8 mile hike that would lead me out to the spectacular views of East Point. I discovered this on my initial trip to the Sanctuary.

The other reason why I started out so early, was that I wanted to be totally present to the seascape, painting completely in the moment. I was so intentional in what I was doing, I would often get jumped by onlookers who just wanted a peak and make a comment or two. One couple I met was kind enough to take my picture just as I was finishing up. But as the day got longer and the weather changed into a much brighter and sunny day, I could find no evidence of the fog at all. The seascape was bright and top lit and a little washed out. The wonderful color of the unsettled ocean became serene, with much harder edged shadows. It was becoming another painting altogether. So rather than continuing to chase this new painting idea, and change a lot of my soft edges, I stopped and put my full attention to the a new painting idea.

It was then that I decided to shift my focus on what would become my final composition. Considering that the East Point sanctuary contains a oceanside trail filled with subject matter, I began to be drawn to the Wood Island Lighthouse as well as the rocky shore and the habitat. So I continued to look for a view that would combine the rock pattern of the smaller painting and use it as a reference for the foreground for the larger 30" x 30" painting. I would include more wild elements of this place which included such things as the surf I witnessed throughout both days that I hiked out there. Also the very lone combing waves and current lines that seemed to lead the viewers eye toward the lighthouse, which was about a mile offshore. I also wanted to include the billowing clouds that appeared later on that day, towering over the lighthouse in the horizon. It was a grand day, too grant to settle on one painting. so I completed two paintings that I will submit to this most worthy fundraising event. The first has a fresh soft foggy atmosphere of the moment the sun is just beginning to break through. The later, a larger, much more inclusive painting that depicts a greater sense of the Santuary on a grand and dramatic scale.

The location I chose was far from my home, and It wouldn't be possible if I hadn't stayed at my good friend's house in Gardiner, Maine. That morning, ironically, my fellow colleague and friend, Eric Glass, went to Belfast, Maine to paint his plein air painting for Habitat For Humanity, and I went South in the opposite direction to paint in Biddeford, Maine for the Brush With Nature event.

The public were able to view us artists painting on location for this event on Friday and Saturday, August 27th & 28th of this month. I chose to paint on Saturday. The online auction begins on September 18th and the Live Auction is on September 29th at Gilsland Farm in Falmouth, Maine. It should be a lot of fun. There are 26 plus new works of art available for bidding. For tickets and bidding information go to: maineaudubon.org/auction. This is a great opportunity to place a bid and support Maine Wildlife! The East Point Santuary is an environment that has a plethora of migratory butterflies and birds. I was even able to meet people as far away as California and make friends with a hansomely colored chipmunk. It was a great day to paint en plein air.

Great Art For Great Reads, Waldoboro Public Library

Earlier this year I was invited personally by one of my patrons to participate in the Great Art For Great Reads Online Auction. Initially I dropped off two paintings early at the library. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to paint for the event and a large painting at that. So I swopped out one of my watercolors for a large oil. Little did I know I could have left the one I took out in the sale. Next year they are going to try and go back to the inperson live auction that they had in the past. Maybe I could enter three then as some other artists did.

But for my primary entry, I decided to paint an image that was related to the compositions I had painted in the past years. It was placed in the back of my mind since before Covid-19 and I decided it was time to bring it forth. The image was of of one of the Friendship docks in the afternoon light. I love the design of how the dock pylons counter from light against dark to dark against light in the water reflection at low tide.The dock in shadow had a contrasting turquoise appearance that accentuates the afternoon light in the painting. The wharf ladder takes the viewer up into the composition just to the right of center where you are taken on a complex visual journey of lobster traps and fish shacks in the afterglow of light, with a distant glance of lobster boats. I wanted to create a restful composition of how one might feel at the end of the day.

As for the watercolor of the fisherman mending the net on a trawler docked at the Monhegan Island wharf, I decided to let it stay in the auction. I painted it on handmade watercolor paper from England called " Arnold ", that was given to me in 1999 by my good friend Anne Hubert, who has since passed. She gave it to me as a part of my Monhegan residency in the James Fitzgerald Studio on Monhehgan Island as we catalogued his vintage Whatman paper. This too was a vintage paper of high quality, and I did not want to cut it up because of the unique quality of the paper as a work of art in itself. So I used the whole 22" x 30" sized Arnaols handmade for the subject. I love the strong sense of side-light that is set up in the painting as a warm afternoon backdrop lit for the fisherman who is mending the green teal trawler netting. I painted this image years before my Monhegan residency, but this was the first time I rendered it on this gift of high quality paper. It is almost impossible to buy it on the open market today. And when I think how I first captured this image upon my first trip to Monhegan in 1976, I am humbled that even then I was being led to be a painter of Spirit.

Bangor Adult & Community Education Classes Begin soon!

I will be teaching two classes through Bangor Adult Education starting September 14th. 

"Painting Portraits in Watercolor" begins on Wednesday, September 14th. For more information CLICK HERE.

"Impasto Oil Landscape" begins on Thursday September 15th. For more info Click Here.

Both classes are 12 weeks long and are from 6PM to 8:30PM at the United Technologies Center, 200 Hogan Road in Bangor.

Have an amazing month of Creative adventures one event at a time,

Michael E. Vermette