The following is the third journal entry on February 21st, of Michael E. Vermette's Artist-in-residency at Crawford Notch at the Appalachian Mountain Club's new Outdoor Highland Center in 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 paintings 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 6 PM for the guests at the AMC Highland Center. This is his story.
LOVE DOES
There is something that happens when you take ownership over the landscape image you are painting. You no longer act like a spectator or a consumer, because you are an owner. You own the image. And just like faith is at its best when it's like that, painting images are best when they are owned by the artist that paints them. By the end of the second day of my residency I embraced this type of ownership with my oil sketches.
That evening when I turned out the lights to my room to retire for the night, I gazed out my three story window and beheld with amazement the crescent moon high in the sky over the Notch. I resolved to paint that scene in the morning with the hope of getting up early enough to witness it set behind the mountains just as the sun arose. Our words are powerful. They can inspire excellent paintings or tear down an opportunity before it can even get started. And I remember after seeing that crescent moon I exclaimed in a daze, " I need to paint that moon!"
Sure Enough, early that next morning, I awoke at 4 am, dressed in all of my warmest layers and doubling up on everything. The weather app on my phone read 9 degrees with a slight westerly wind. I headed out into the dark of the night by 5:00 am. immediately the cold hit my face mask with a slight breeze freezing my eye lashes. It was then that I realized what I was about to do. I adjusted my headlamp and set out for Saco Lake on the other side of route 302 near the lodge. My goal was to paint a study before breakfast and get back at about 7:30 or so before totally freezing.
I set up my easel on the edge of the lake that had frozen over long ago with drifts of snow on it revealing only wind blown lines that exposed an icey zig zagged line leading the eye toward the base of mount Webster. Everything was difficult and took time to accomplish what usually takes minutes to do. So I continued methodically and carefully to set up in the dark. But the thing that motivated me the most was the idea that I was actually doing what I had easily declared in the warmth and comfort of my room the night before. I was setting my declared passion into motion. I was painting the crescent moonscape over the Notch. To my delight, it had actually dropped down quite a bit like I expected and appeared to be on a course to set in the Notch toward the base of Mount Willard. And although it was awe inspiring I could tell that this morning was going to be a morning that would require me to put a good effort forward to capture this beautiful image.
Much of my face was protected from the wind with a ski mask. I had my Carhart insulated overalls, warm jacket and hood, but my hands are usually the areas that take most of the punishment. I use wool gloves with the fingers cut off at the mid knuckles so that I can feel the palette knife enough for a soft touch when applying the paint, particularly when layering. I also wear rubber/latex gloves over them to protect my hands and wool gloves from the paint and the cold air. At first the latex quickly freezes up and I have to move my fingers and even put them in the pockets of my coat to warm them until the warm blood flow moves down from the palm of my hands. But I can do this only if I haven't started painting. There is always a perfect battle that the artist has to overcome, a point of no return that you have to commit too in order to produce a great work of art. But if it is executed right the viewer will never be aware of that sacrifice the artist had to go through to create the inspired work. What will remain is the pure rapture of the image.
Besides, in a painting subject such as this, the subject was half painted before I started to paint it. This is not only because I took ownership of the painting image but more because of what love does for the image! What I'm describing is building a bridge over adversity because of the very fact that you are doing something about the image you are in love with.You can't live in the past, or the future, but you have to live in the present to experience this powerful driven life-force. Even if you are not completely clear what direction you will go in a painting, the very action of going forward is a faith-love action that will always take you to a place of adventure and success.
The strange truth I've noticed is that almost every artist in the area knows about these visually phenomenal occurrences that happen at Crawford Notch almost daily. The thing is, they never seem to get around to painting them. In every worth while subject there is a difficulty that the artist must go through, especially in plein air painting. I had really two choices. I could look at my circumstances, like the subzero weather, and see only the difficulty and let the cold dictate my whole week. Or, I could choose to see the Creator in the difficulty and believe that the love and the passion for the subject comes from a source that assures you that you are purposed to go through the doorway of this difficulty to gain what's on the other side.
In fact once I made the decision to stay and render the oil sketch, it really wasn't that tough after all. On the other hand, if I gave into the extreme cold, it would be amazing just how powerful It would have become this week; the fear of the cold might have keep me from visually painting what I loved the most about this landscape.
I settled down, so entranced by the color combinations, that I hadn't noticed a mist descending upon the notch. I kept changing a color that seemed to appear on my painted surface as beads of color too light in tone. First I though it was my own wrong color choices, but in actuality it was the frost coating the surface of my painted marks. My Black Oil wax medium that I add to my paints to make them semi-transparent, held up superbly to the subzero weather. It makes sense to me that an oil based medium would work better than a solvent based medium like Liquin or Turpentine. Not only would it dull the paint but it would gummed up and even freeze solid. But My Black Oil wax medium is made of mostly oil and wax and when added to oil paint it just got a little stiff, but still very malleable under my palette knife.
I loved how the sun appeared to be rising in this study as the moon was setting. I couldn't have been more pleasantly immersed or found in a more dazzling color clarity than that morning's sunrise. The sage colored tones were the frost coated trees while the other side of the high diagonal snow banks was the hidden route 302, a bank I had to climb over to cross the two lane highway to return to the AMC lodge. It was only when I arrived, glad for the opportunity to warm up, that I realized that my headlamp was still on and that I forgot to shut it off. But everything else was intact and I thought "that is what passion does." As for the painting, it thawed out beautifully and the frost evaporated almost instantaneously upon meeting the warm air of the lodge. No evidence of the struggle.
The love of a subject can drive you to battle through circumstances that try to hold you back. The sacrifices that you subject you body to in order to capture an image eventually breaks through and you find yourself on the other side in almost total disbelief that you have accomplished what you never knew was possible. And that physical product, inspired by the spirit of excellence is what love does.
