#212 One Rainy Day in Maine

One rainy day a few years ago, we limped into Christmas Cove through a pea soup fog looking to have some lunch and stretch our legs. The Claudia - our first little sailboat, and a real Tom Sawyer Huck Finn boat, was not a great vessel for bad weather.

Twenty one feet long and open (no cabin), she was fun to sail because we could maneuver through shallow water. We sailed her for ten years all around Penobscott Bay. We built a platform for sleeping on after a couple of years of sleeping on the hull, and a tent out of nylon, mosquito netting and 1/2" plumbers pipe that I had made, which was great unless we had a downpour. It was like sleeping on a raft - we were only about eight inches above the water.

After lunch aboard under our little dodger, we tied the Claudia to the public dock and meandered down this road and that looking at real estate. Most of the places are old and traditional out there with a few huge exceptions. It's the kind of area magazine and TV ads tell you to expect to see on the Maine coast.

I liked this place because it was still pretty Maine-looking. It was the kind of place I would have liked to have curled up in next to a wood stove with my blankie, and a good old fashioned murder mystery. Kind of like today.

One Rainy Day in Maine • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12"• $200

#211 The Eastern Prom

It was hot and humid last night here in Portland, so I decided to take my dinner down to the Prom.

It really is a pretty special park overlooking the islands in Casco Bay. With the comings and goings of people, and watching the activity in the bay - the barges, tankers, fishing boats, pleasure boats and ferries - it's pure entertainment.

I was going to do an impressionist interpretation, maybe with nudes just for fun. But I decided to portray the park for what it is - a place for common folk like me.

The Eastern Promenade • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200

SOLD - City Flowers

I don't know if I like flowers. Maybe I'm annoyed that they are always so happy-looking. It doesn't matter what you say, do or throw at them - they're  always so happy-looking.

It's also annoying that they somehow keep cropping up in my work, as flowers are known to do randomly out there. I'm continually being pestered - do you like me yet, they ask, I don't know, maybe, I reply.

I decided to paint tulips this time because everywhere I walk these days, tulips are front and center. There's no getting around them. I understood this to be a hint of sorts, so onto the canvas they went.

I also have to admit that urban gardens are a lot of fun to find.  City dwellers do some crazy stuff. Those with limited budgets in ghetto apartments like mine will do the most ingenious things to make their places look better. Of course it is a bit like putting perfume on a pig, but effort counts for something, and I have to admit, I always forget where I saw them.

City Flowers • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200

#209 Forsythia

It was foggy this morning. My brain was foggy too from lack of sleep. I've been switching my entire computer system over to a much needed update. It's been a tussle computer chatting with software companies, downloading enormous programs, and trying to figure out how to use the whole blessed thing.

I was going to do a fog painting, but after lunch with a friend, the sun came out on my way home. I passed a row of forsythia along the roadside. I would never attempt to paint forsythia - it's too hard. I don't even think I can spell the word. But I decided to knock off a sketch anyway, just to remind myself of how bright and sunny a Maine spring can be, and how bright and sunny my brain will be again when I get some sleep.

This is a painting of hope.

Forsythia • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200

#208 The Boatyard

There's something really satisfying about hanging out in a boatyard. You get to work outside near the water, breathe that invigorating salt air, rock out to the sound of halyards clanging, grinders grinding, polishers whirring, hammers hammering, and fellow sailors cursing.

And then there are the boats. You get to look at boats all day - all kinds of boats, and their bottoms, keels and props.

It's also a great comfort to be able to look around and discover you're among kindred spirits, that you're not the only sucker out there throwing your life's savings into the bottomless money pit that is owning a boat.

And finally, there are those confessions of harrowing stories that keep adrenaline junkies going back out there for another year, the stories that make you forget that feeling you felt of profound relief last fall, when you could haul your boat without having killed another vessel, critter, yourself or anyone else.

The Boatyard • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200

SOLD - The Old Portland Company Buildings

I was walking back from town the other day along the river when this view of one of the Portland Company complex buildings in the late afternoon light stopped me in my tracks. I'll miss the complex the way it looks right now, and I'll miss this walk - I've been doing it since I moved here.

I've been thinking long and hard about those buildings. There's has always been something really comforting about them, even when the ruckus of an early evening rock and roll jam session bumped it's way through the alleyways from somewhere out in the back, or when I was spooked by the echo of my own footsteps as I'd slink through those eerie deserted canyons after the crews had gone home for the night.

I think it might be the color of the brick - the warm reds and browns that remind me that there was a time when buildings looked like they were literally constructed from the ground up.  More importantly however, these building are like the tracks they helped lay down from Portland to Montreal. They're not just a photo or an account-of in a history book, they're those tracks I can still walk in places, the glimpse of an immigrant worker standing in one of the upper windows, the screech of metal working against metal, and a blast of heat from furnaces that forged time along from the Civil War. We've all got a story somewhere in those bricks.

The Old Portland Company Buildings • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200

SOLD - Spring Has Sprung

Contrary to advice from sages throughout history, it's time to stop stewing in the present, and start ruminating the future.

And so I will imagine for you a spectacularly beautiful day, warm and sunny, gently brushed by a soft little breeze that releases itself to afternoon and a night time sprinkle for the garden, the whole of which repeats itself because it is right.

Spring Has Sprung • 8" X 8" acrylic framed to 12" X 12" • $200