#302 Surviving in Maine

Like a fabric woven from the people who live there, the foothills in Maine are unique - there's no other place like it. When I married in to Maine, it was the people I loved the most. And then I fell in love with the land and the farms I passed on my drives every day that were growing food and raising critters - still a big part of life in Maine back then.

Today there's a movement afoot to protect those farms and get them producing again. I hope the young folks who are making a go of it can make a decent living. I hope too, that they continue to insist there is a way to survive doing what they love to do.

Surviving in Maine • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

#301 September Summer Conundrum

I sketched this house I found on North Haven over the summer because, well, it's summer again. My garden is looking like something out of an August issue of House and Gardens - I have a flower that bloomed in July, dried it's blossoms in August, and then shot up a new shoot of flowers a week ago. It's not supposed to be doing that.

And whereas my brain is getting anxious to see fall colors, and my body is starting it's hibernation process, there's no way anything is evolving in that natural direction. It's hot, it's humid, and so it's summer, again. It's what I would call a September summer conundrum - do I love it, or am I alarmed?

September Summer Conundrum • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

#300 Mountains on Fire

When the fires and the mountains

and the rivers and the trees

and the animals and the flowers

sacrifice their lives

to teach us everything they know,

will we still take for granted

their return

to teach us

all over again?

SOLD - When Summer Lets Go

It's below freezing on top of Mt. Washington as I write this. Doesn't seem right somehow - that summer is beginning to let go already. I haven't even been swimming yet. I've usually gone a lot by now.

Guess we'll need to get used to it - looks like our summers are going to act like this one in the future. Not to worry - we'll be fine. We'll just grow more hair.

When Summer Lets Go • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

SOLD - Just Around the Corner on Monhegan Island

So...I wouldn’t describe this summer as a banner one weather wise. It’s been a tad cool and windy. And cool and windy has been happening at the same time - reminding me a lot of winter. But as some year-rounders have rationalized, Maine’s climate builds character.

Once in a while I’ll reminisce about a week I spent on Monhegan Island - it seems to be where I go in my head when I think about a perfect summer day. This particular day the sun was in full bloom, the wind tucked away and the air worth bottling. I ignored most of the reasons artists go out there to paint and kibitzed with the locals at the coffee spot most mornings and afternoons forcing myself to paint in between. When I’m visiting a beautiful island, sitting still just doesn’t work for me, so I walked about the island. This painting is a corner I encountered. We had a lovely visit.

Just Around the Corner on Monhegan Island • 8"x 8" acrylic framed to 12"x 12" • $250

#297 Boats and Buoys

 

We couldn't figure out what was missing. And then Tom got it. Buoys. Usually a seriously challenging obstacle course during the summer cruising months, early spring is fairly clear on Penobscot Bay.

Between a sea of buoys and armada of fishing boats, ferries, and the hoardes of summer yachters like us, the bay can be one big hazzard. It's almost worth freezing our butts off to get out a month early.

Boats and Buoys • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

#296 Shakedown Cruise

Forgetting again, that it doesn't warm up in Maine for good until the Fourth of July, the idea of sailing off across a 50 degree body of water in a light and finicky 50 degree breeze was not what we had envisioned over the long winter as our shakedown cruise for 2017.

It was Tom who made the first move - he unfastened the sail cover. Guess we're going sailing, I grumbled under my breath pulling on my ski jacket, hat and gloves, already cold, but always a glutton for punishment and never mind that we might be found adrift, frozen in place, both of us with goofy smiles on our faces as if we had lapsed further in to a euphoric insanity split seconds before death finally got a hold of us.

As it turned out, the sea and weather gods decided to humor the captain. The wind and tide, pushed us pleasantly down through the thoroughfare and in to Perry Creek, where we spent a cool quiet moonlit night eating baked beans and playing cribbage, and a long slow sunlit morning marveling at the surrounding beauty that was holding us captive.

Shakedown Sail • 8" x 8" framed to 12" x 12" • $250