Well, it is now…but way back at the end of October, when I first started working on this painting, the Chilmark Store Porch was a ghost town.
So we have left the seaworthy sights and sounds of Menemsha and retraced our steps to Beetlebung Corner. But this time we are turning right. Slowly, slowly, just a few short feet more…and there it is. If you time it right, one of the 4-runners will be backing out just in time for you to pull in. But if you don’t, just wait a couple seconds more for the next satisfied customer will be exiting shortly.
Closed for the Season – 16″ x 19″
There is so much nostalgia weathered into the boards of this old porch.
Generations of up island travelers have stopped to set a spell in the heavy green rockers. Early on a summer morning the smell of roasting coffee mingles with the fresh ink on the Gazette.
The lazy mornings give way to the serious trekkers dipping in for their subs and refilling their water bottles.
Afternoons, the kids gather and scatter and gather again and if rain is in the offing it can be standing room only until the skies clear and the bikes can roll out again.
And then it’s time for pizza ! With Frank’s home grown veggies the pies are legendary.
Back before they decided that hydroperoxide and baking soda was the best remedy for skunk attacks I remember making it just in time to be the last customer to buy all the tomato juice cans on the shelf.
Oh, the gratitude, for the all the pleasures of an up island convenience store with friendly faces and wonderful short order cooks and a welcoming porch…full of rocking chairs.
Today we take a drive up island. Through the tree covered lanes of West Tisbury, out past the Allen sheep farm, around the bend and wave to Irene at the Chilmark library, through the stop sign at Beetlebung corner, left at the Menemsha Inn, slowly winding down the hill and right at Jane Slater’s Antiques shop, then through the curvy bit at the Bite, ok maybe we stop there and order some fried clams… then continue all the way out past Larsen’s Fish Market, and circle around until we find a parking spot, doesn’t matter where cause we are here.
While looking at this painting…if you turn left you would see the Texaco station and the Harbor Master’s shack…and if you turn right you will be headed out to sea. I know which way I would turn, how about you ?
Dreaming of the Fleet – 24″ x 32″
This was one of those iconic Menemsha moments. I had been sitting on the dock with my sketchbook and camera just watching the two or three fishermen who were lazily casting off of the pier. There were some very big and fancy boats in the harbor and the tired old Strider looked a bit sad to watch from her moorings as they passed on their way out to the big water.
A young boy joined the anglers and I noticed he was angling his own self for a seemingly coveted position at the very end of the dock. They all quietly checked out each other’s progress with eyes only for the twitch of a line. No one caught anything while I was there but the peaceful rhythm of the tossing of their lines was calming while I studied the scene.
Back home in my winter studio I zoomed in on one of the photographs and saw the Derby pins on the boy’s hat. So it had been serious business out there with more than a little bit of competition.
I decided to give him an edge and painted out the other wannabees so he had the dock and the waters all to himself.
And I decided to do the same for the old boats.
And, in spirit, I’m floating alongside the gull, and…In my wildest dreams…I’ve got a contender on the hook.
It’s time to launch the countdown to this year’s Granary Gallery Show !
15 days from now, on Sunday July 21st, we will be at the gallery for opening night. There’s a whole lot to do between now and then and, in these days of record heat, I’m going to start this ball rolling with a look back at a winter morning in the studio. I’ll be posting a-painting-a-day from now on so check back tomorrow for the next installment but for now I give you…
Morning Studio – 24″ x 30″
This was a truly collaborative venture.
And heaven help us, it is a product of Social Media.
I’ve got this blog thing going and one or two people out there actually seem to read it. So, when I came over to the studio on a cold November morning with the barest hint of light in the early eastern sky I went inside and turned on the lights, took my pill, and walked out to join Finn for our daily trek around the lower forty.
As we turned the corner, by the hibernating lilacs, I was drawn to the warm rich color glowing from the kitchen windows. Outside, and all around us, the ground, the sky, the air, was steely blue grey. The rest of the neighborhood, the farm and the houses here and over there were dark and still save for that tiny light in our little corner and the bliss felt so good…I wanted to share.
So I snapped a pic with the phone and sent it to my blog readers and facebook friends so they too would have something warm and beautiful to greet them when they awoke. Some of them liked and some of them loved and most of them thought it was a painting and more than a couple of them said is should be a painting and I guess I agreed.
I started this the week before my knee replacement surgery. I was fearful and anxious, and needed a distraction, and I deliberately left it on the easel unfinished, thinking I would have an easier time of getting back into the swing of things if most of the compositional decisions hade been made, and what was left was the detail…the fun part.
It was a long hard two months until my creative energy returned enough to make my way back to the studio. And, when I finally was able to manage the short walk over from the log cabin and turned on that kitchen light,
I knew everything would be all right. It’s all in the details.
I’m thrilled to announce that my paintings will now be exhibited in the Sugarman Peterson Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico… Here’s a link to their website…Click Here
It is fitting therefore that, among the first group of paintings, they will be showing Bucket List. Thanks to gallery owners Michael and Christie Peterson I can now cross one more thing off of my….bucket list !
It’s a steamy July afternoon and the weathermen say it’s the coolest day of the coming week. So I am particularly enjoying the air-conditioned studio and I plan to stay right here at this computer for the next few days getting all the behind-the-scenes work done in preparation for the big Granary Gallery Show.
Only a couple weeks away now and I am easing off of my manic pace which has been sustained, with the help of caffeine and Tylenol, for the past several months. Those 12 hour days at the easel were intense and I’m kinda floating around in a daze without that extreme focus.
The calendar says tomorrow is the 4th of July. 150 years ago, this very afternoon, in just the same kind of suffocating heat and humidity that blankets the valley today, Gen. James Longstreet had ordered Gen. George Pickett to lead an assault on the Union soldiers holding their line on the hilltops of Gettysburg. The “high water mark of the confederacy” would be reached by softening the line with heavy batteries of artillery and sending in Pickett’s men. They did reach the Union soldiers and a few Confederates broke through… but the line held… Pickett’s charge proved to be the final battle in the bloody three day slaughter, and it turned the tide of the war.
I’ve been listening to the local NPR radio channel as they have broadcast live from the battlefields each day for the past week. If you’ve never been to Gettysburg, history buff or just tourist, it can be a very moving place to visit. Today, as the culmination of several days of re-enactment, the participants, and visitors, are lining up on opposite sides of the battleground. Then, in a solemn procession, they are walking across the fields to meet at the line where the original soldiers stopped that assault and there are meant to come together and shake hands.
When the crowds clear out, and the weather cools down, and both my knees have been replaced, I’m going to throw the traveling easel and the paint box in the truck and take a road trip over there and see if I can capture some of the spirit of that hallowed ground.
I was standing in the studio kitchen this morning, anchoring the cherry pitting machine to the counter, and figuring out how to position the bowls to catch the pits and cherries, when the phone rang. It was Herself telling me to get over to the log cabin…they just overturned DOMA. I had been monitoring the radio closely and, hearing no reports so far, and since so many got last year’s healthcare ruling wrong in the beginning, I was skeptical. So I went to the computer and when the word “unconstitutional” flashed on the screen the tears just poured out of me. I stumbled along the path to the cabin sobbing and into the arms of my babe. The rainbow flags filled the tv screen behind her and everyone in those crowds seemed to be crying as well.
It’s mid-afternoon now. The pie just came out of the oven. Herself has headed up to the lake for a swim. Most of the tissues have been carried to the trash bin. Our facebook family has overwhelmed the cyberworld with cheers of support. I’ve listened to my trusted commentators and read the ruling from the supremes. And I’m sitting here quietly now taking in the surprising depth of the morning’s first emotional response.
My belief has never wavered, but the torch was getting heavy and along the way it became easier to just settle for the life we had made with each other and hope for some broader equality to come for our grandchildren, both the straight and the gay ones. It’s still a very real fear to be openly gay in our neck of the woods and the scars of bigotry and hatred have not faded from my heart. So, over the last 23 years, we have kept a modest profile and done our best to be good neighbors and help where we can and kept the curtains drawn.
I think that surprising burst of emotion came in part from seeing the recent swelling of national support for gay rights and equality, and the fact that so many more somebodies stood up and said no more, this is wrong, we have made a mistake, we have caused injustice. I was expecting change, but not certain it would be in my lifetime. And then to read in the SCOTUS Ruling that they recognized how this has been so hurtful to families and stigmatized children. NOT the homosexuality mind you…but the differentiation of CIVIL rights…
writing for the majority opinion, Kennedy notes,
“…The differentiation demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the constitution protects…And it humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples. The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives. Under DOMA, same-sex married couples have their lives burdened by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways. “
What he said.
There’s more pavement to travel on this road to equality.
Pennsylvania was one of those states which couldn’t run fast enough to the capitol to pass a version of DOMA. And it’s not yet clear how the details will play out for those of us still living under such regimes. But we have the law on our side now, and a magnificent candidate now running for governor, Tom Wolf.
And we have the momentum.
As our dear friend Maureen reminded us in a note of support today,
In the words of Martin Luther King “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
As she left for the lake,
on her way out the studio kitchen door,
Pat paused and looked back
and asked, “will you marry me?”
It was one of the top five best days of my life when I first walked into the Granary Gallery…and after 12 years of partnering in art… the depth of my gratitude for the fine work that the entire staff knows no equal.
Congrats to you Chris and Sheila on being chosen, once again, as the Best Gallery on Martha’s Vineyard…and beyond !
When I settle in to work on a big painting my focus narrows, the creative energy tightens, and all the weeks of slogging through pondering compositional elements and deciding what to keep in and what to leave out, of sketching and panel prepping, and of reworking those sketches and printing out piles of detail reference photos…it all reaches a crescendo and, like the stretching of a rubber band, it suddenly snaps ! …and the first brushes hit the canvas. So it was, all that creative momentum strung taut, when I began the large painting, Severe Clear, for this summer’s Granary Gallery show.
But now, some 300 easel hours later, I am looking back and see, on my camera’s photo stream, that there were some wonderful moments in the spaces between all those long days of lifting brushes. When I paid homage to my most favorite springtime rituals. When I literally stopped to smell the roses, and to enjoy the first of the fiddleheads, and the first grilled pizza of the season, the annual pilgrimage to the Sheep and Wool Festival, to sit of an afternoon in the studio garden with loving family, and to enjoy this wonderful life we have together.
I’ll be telling you about the rest of the project, of which this painting is a keystone work, in little bit, a series of paintings which feature a Marine Hospital on Martha’s Vineyard that is about to open a new chapter in its historic life, but in the meantime…here’s a sneak peak at the big one, Severe Clear, and some of the studio highlights experienced along the way…
The panel is up and ready
The first beach rose blooms
The sky and water begin to emerge
First Reesers of the seaon
Distant details begin
The fiddleheads arrive
Tiny tiny boats
A morning in the sky chair
Deciding to reposition the ferry
First grilled pizza of the season
Couldn’t see the forest for the photos
Sheep break
Flag day came and went
Gulliver’s roses kept me company at my easel window
At four weeks the palette was inches deep
Peg and Sir Sid sit a spell
My pal John delivers the frames
The garlic scapes, the garlic scapes !!!!
In the truck for Herself to take to my other pal John, the professional photographer
The island fisherman have brought wounded vets to the MV Derby and it’s a good old American Throw Down. I’ve got my money on the Tomahawk piloted by my pal Buddy Vanderhoop…but the waters are deep out there.
