 "Matt Thompson Hoisting Lobster Traps, Monhegan Island" THE PLEIN AIR CONNECTION NEWSLETTER, March 16th, 2013: "LIGHTING OUR FUSES" Our Creator once again gave us favor all day long as we enjoyed the variety of events that took place last Saturday. Kay Carter met Becky White and I early at 9 am in the Dysarts parking lot. This was the morning after a full schedule of all of us participating in the Art Walk in Downtown Bangor the night before. Refreshed and all ready to go we all piled into Kay Carter's pick-up truck which seems to be the vehicle of choice for the Plein Air Connection activities. We jokingly refer to it as our official paint-out vehicle. Each of us brought 2 paintings with us that we loaded into the back along with Ulrike Guthrie's and Suzanne Robert's paintings to enter into the Waterville Art Society's 2013 Open Juried Show at the Waterville Public Library. The weather was sunny, not too cold and it had lightly snowed the night before yielding delightful views on our way down to the show. When we arrived at Waterville Public Library and parked in the public parking area behind the building we were met by Nora West and her two very nice creative friends Joyce Dubey from New Vineyard, Maine and Marge Austin from Chester, Maine. Once we entered the library and brought in our first load of paintings we were met by my new friend Annie who had just entered her work and my fellow art colleague Eric Glass who had just finished doing the same. The timing was perfect and the registration ran so smoothly we were on our way by 10:30 am. After we registered we all then decided to car pool and meet at the Colby college Art Museum where we viewed the Alex Katz "Matter of Light" show that will run til March 30th, 2013. We were particularly impressed with the sheer size of his paintings and one in particular was "Pas de Deuy", five oil painted panels totaling 132 inches by 360 inches. We also delighted in his small 12 inch figures painted on aluminum on both front and back. It gave us ideas of what we might do for our own projects. A favorite of mine was the light depicted in "Twilight" which was 126 inches by 96 inches. When we first arrived as a group of eight, we asked the museum attendants if we could have our connect meeting in the museum. They informed us that we could, but the space proved to not be adequate for all of us to sit down. There were simply not enough chairs for all eight of us. So they offered us a proper classroom in the building next door to have our meeting after we were finished looking at the art. This was very generous on their part and we thanked them as we thoroughly enjoyed their hospitality wide-eyed like kids at a circus. We all sat in a circle and I lead the discussion by first asking all the participants to introduce themselves and say a bit about themselves. Listening to Joyce describe her unique Plein Air system and Annie share about her small Altoids paint box was delightful and memorable. This week's discussion was based on Week 5 of Julia Cameron's book "Walking In This World." I put 9 questions to the group so that we would discuss our experiences based on the different sections of the chapter. We talked about our boundaries and how our personal energy is sacred. We discussed how our sexual energy and our creative energy are closely intertwined. We sited artists such as Pablo Picasso, Rockwell Kent, their wives and how their art styles were driven and even changed by their relationships. We also discussed how our passions raged when we were younger and how we how we finish our work better as we have gotten older. Then we moved into the thought of our passions being sensuality creative, rewarding more passion when we exercise it. We agreed that It becomes a fuel for Art. We also answered the question " Should an artist marry and marry well?" since we were all married. We agreed that there should be a merriment in our marriages, the importance of our spouses supporting what we do as artists, and how agendas should not replace adventures. We explored whether we allow the passion of our Creator in our art. Which lead into an interesting discussion of how we sometimes have fears as a painter to show up at the canvas or page and simply begin. How we should try new things, paint with new color schemes that are sometimes inspired by God. We discussed how fear keeps us from expressing our passion in our art and how sometimes music without words can lull us into the painting in our studios. Then we talked about how we put the tiger back in our tank as artists and which freedoms are the ones we allow ourselves to be a little less nice too so that we can be a little more genuine. Our character is the courage to evict what does not serve the goals of excellence. When we stop playing God by rescuing others; God can then play through us. If honesty starts with us and it does, then we have to learn to say no to others. We shared how difficult thas is because the problem with worthy causes is that they are so worthy. The same could be said about needy people. We considered how impossible it is to say "yes" to our own art passions if we can't learn to say "no" to others. This brought us to how we experience energy debts and if we are spending our creative time wisely. We looked at our investments in our relationships, and if by them, we make room for our art. The idea of an artist who does not make room for his art, who resents making room for everything else, lead to an interesting discussion on artistic "faith" deficits. It is hard to have faith in our future creative endeavors if we have no charity for ourselves in the present. I ended by giving everyone a task on investing in ourselves energetically. For this week, set aside 1/2 hour of solid writing time to write in addition to your morning pages and in your journal. Imagine your best friend or patron's voice who has supported you in the past. It can even be the voice of your mother, father and of course God. Listen and receive what they might suggest to you now and a few small changes in your life to make. Write them down and after a week, revisit the entry. Then move toward these suggestions. The connect group ended around 1 PM and by now we all had an appetite. So we went to the student Cafeteria on Campus and experienced not only the endless choices of food, but the energy of the youth that we found ourselves surrounded by coming and going. The food was excellent and our discussions continued even there as we all sat together at a round table that supplied room for all eight of us. We discovered that Joyce was having her own show at the Thayer Art Gallery in the Thayer hospital not too far from where we were. So we all went to see her wonderful watercolors, oil paintings and mixed media paintings. Somewhere between the campus and the hospital God planted the thought into my head about us all getting our paintings in the show. So I said to the group,"Why don't we just believe that we will all get our paintings in the show!?" And we all laughed and then later identified that as our hope. Sure enough, Everyone did get into the show who was in our group and in any way connected to us! We not only got into the show with over 88 entries, but ALL of us got both of our painting in the Waterville Open Juried Show 2013! One by one we all found out the good news with delight! It was a perfect end to a fantasticly creative day. I still remember the joy on Kay Carter's face after finding out her two were accepted into the show. This was the very first time she had ever entered an open juried show and she hit a home run! Congratulations Kay and everyone! Next week we will be painting at Acadia National Park's Schoodic Point. We will be meeting at the recently closed Aubuchon Hardware parking lot in downtown Bangor to car pool there with a stop over at the Ellsworth Dunkin Donuts to meet up with Becky White and anyone else who might want to join us. We will seek out a local restaurant and dine together over a critique at around 3 PM. I hope you can all join us. I hear it's going to be in the 50"s so we hope to still have a little snow left to include in our paintings. But as always, I know God has so much more planned then we can imagine. Hope this has encouraged you all. This Spring lets light our fuses and put a tiger back into our tanks. With kindest regards to you all, Michael E. Vermette The Plein Air Connection Coordinator |