Ode to a Dexter Mat Cutter

My trusty Dexter Mat Cutter has been with me for more that forty years now. There is a real, err, art to using this sleek, heavy, ergonomic piece of streamlined chrome without destroying lots of mat board. It's certainly one of those instances where "practice makes perfect" - or close enough. A bit like bike riding, you never quite forget how it's done.

The blade hides in that central gap and can be tilted to several angles. But once you get ready to cut, with the left edge flush against a straight edge or T-square, the blade is hiding out of view under your thumb. The pointy end does you no good at all when it comes to aligning your cut. A Lefty would find it a very difficult thing to use. Still, cutting mats is a slow, delicate and dangerous process that takes an extremely steady hand (at least with one of these). A constant recitation of the old carpenter's mantra "measure twice, cut once" is a good policy. These really are one of the classic tools of all time.

Over the last few weeks I've cut nearly fifty mats, mounted my paintings on a foam backing behind the mat and then gently slipped each one into an archival acetate envelope. There are more to come as I get ready for Jamaica Plain Open Studios. Each one is a little seed of hope and joy, presented as efficiently as possible.

Plein Air Watercolor Sketching

 Painting rapidly outdoors on a relatively small scale - say, 6" x 10" - can be a highly satisfying way to paint on most days. The materials are not overly expensive or, consequently, intimidating and I've developed a loose, sketchy style that allows me to translate directly from my eye to the page with very little intervention or distraction.

I've often been using a small and soft 3/0 Squirrel Quill brush that allows for very loose flow of paint. Good paper (Arches 140lb cold press cotton rag when possible) makes a huge difference compared to the student grade wood pulp stuff I sometimes use for these. That brush offers a kind of freedom that's a bit like Chinese calligraphy, I reckon: it takes confidence, practice and discipline to do it well and all three of those traits are intertwined, one flowing from the other. As with most things: the more you do, the better you get. Or perhaps it's just the more of them I do, the higher my chances of achieving a satisfying result every once in a while.

This seems to be my most "natural" style, and it's sometimes a bit of a struggle to paint in other ways. Somehow it's very easy for me to edit out the detail in my mind's eye and depict the 'feel' of a place, but very hard to metiuclously replicate every little nuance of a scene before me.

So... I'm going with the 'flow' when possible.

Here are two from a beautiful warm, bright and very dry day at our favorite haunt: Crane Beach in Ipswich. With that much sun and a slight breeze holding back the Greenhead flies it's very hard to judge the wetness of the paper and paint, difficult to add things and make ammendments. You can see that in the top edge of the clouds on the first one: the initial outline to define the white space was dry by the time I put in the rest of the sky wash and the two didn't blend together as I'd hoped:

 

Here's a view of the same day looking South towards the huge sandbar we had walked at low tide. I was trying to work on the clouds and sky this day, but it was not as cloudy as this looks. Wearing brown-tinted sunglasses can sometimes alter your perception in uninvited ways!

 

Here are two quick ones from last week at Jamaica Pond while the boys were fishing with their cousins. During the summer weekdays, the Courageous Sailing group hosts a sailing camp on the pond and the five boats were out for a little good-hearted racing.

This wood pulp paper is not very good - it has a "harder" and more smooth surface that doesn't behave in the same way as cotton rag does... too many 'blooms' in the color mixing, and tilting the paper makes it all run together more than usual, but sometimes that's fun to work around.

Almendres Cromlech Meets Manet

One of the most magical lunches I ever had was a cheese and cracker picnic in an islolated part of the Alentejo in Portugal in about April of 1992 or so. Four friends and I were traveling throughout central and southern Portugal for a couple of weeks, and near Evora we decided to track down the Almendres Cromlech, a four thousand year-old megalithic site several miles down a dirt road.

 

This photo always reminds me of Manet's famous picnic scene in  Le Déjeuner sur l'

Herbe "The Luncheon on the Grass", even though we're all wearing clothes. As peaceful and beautiful as that place was that day, there's something just a little disconcerting about casually eating cheese next to a truly ancient and mysterious construction of stones. Disconcerting in perhaps a similar way to Manet's ladies.

So, taking a few liberties, I've started some sketches toward what will be, for me, a rather ambitious painting. I started with a quick, amended drawing of the scene (sorry Martha!):

... and I quickly discovered I had a few composition issues to work out, so I tried another version using a different photo of the stones from that day:

And then one in color just for kicks:

I'm still not "there" yet, but I decided to move on and do some more paint studies to see if I could capture the feel of the stones and the place without the picnic (for now):

And then... back to another compositional study, mostly to see if I would have trouble painting the figures:

I think I'm getting closer to what I wanted, but I'm not quite ready to tackle integrating the whole scene in a large format just yet... but stay tuned! This part of the process is fun, a traditional painterly approach and ultimately important to the final result.

Here are my photos of the stones used for painting reference:

Return to Secret Beach

Good friends have enriched our lives by taking us to a fabulous hideaway they call "Secret Beach". It's an idyllic and mostly private stretch of sand where Sage Lot Pond empties into Waquoit Bay, in Mashpee on Cape Cod. Last year I did a very quick plein air sketch for our host and then took lots of photos:

 

Over the winter, I did a more refined painting as a Christmas present for our friends:

 

Later still I returned to my photo references and did this one:

 Last weekend we got a chance to go back again and I did two more plein air paintings while the dogs raced by kicking up sand and the boys hung over my shoulder asking questions:

Sure is a great place!

Neponset Falling Tide

The day turned gray on me before I could get my paper stretched and out the door, but there's a pretty spot along the Neponset River not far from where Granite Ave meets I-93 that I've been meaning to try and paint.

First a 9" x 12" sketch to test my colors... and resolve...

Then a much bigger half-sheet, 15"x 22"

Here's the scene...

Lots of red-winged blackbirds chattering, and with the warblers almost drowning out the nearby highway noise it was easy to forget that this is sort of an urban wild. The water and sky seemed almost flat today, and the subtleties of the silvery brown marsh grass tops in the distance eluded me.

Back home, I considered what I'd done carefully and decided to risk ammending the sky and water:

That helped it, but the decision to ignore the sort of unconvincing boats and the foreground grass when I was on site has, I think, contributed to a weak composition.

So... I've been reading about an influential American painter/teacher Edgar Whitney who was a stickler for doing value sketches before picking up the brush, for paying close attention to the princples of design in trying to Transform & Translate nature rather than attempting to Transcribe it. Paintings need a Center of Interest/Attention, and the design needs to serve it... all the old saws about line, shape, value, direction, rhythm, etc are absolutely important and you ignore them at your peril.

I think I need to learn the difference between a wonderful place to sit looking at the view and the elments of a wonderful painting.

And I might go back into this painting and try and beef up the interest, detail, contrast at the bend in the river in the middle distance to that end.

Wellfleet Memorial Day

This memorial Day weekend was the third in a row spent at one of the most magical locations I know, The Elephant House on Mayo Beach, Wellfleet, Massachusetts. It's a huge place, built by the son of Lorenzo Dow Baker - a pioneering banana importer (his company is now Chiquita), and a pioneer of the Wellfleet tourist industry (he built a massive hotel on a Wellfleet's Commercial Wharf called the Chequessett Inn that was demolished by wind-driven ice in the 1930s). The house is on the left:

The views of Great Island, Mayo Beach, Lieutenant Island and Wellfleet Harbor are spectacular. And The four cottages of Edward Hopper's famous watercolor "Cottages at Wellfleet" are just three houses down the beach (on the right above). These days, they are more traditional Cape Cod colors - weathered grey shingle and white.

I had a generous opportunity to paint many 6 x 10 plein air sketches.

Great Island in the Fog

Great Island at Half Tide

Great Island Sunset

Lieutenant Island in the Fog

Mayo Beach Marsh

Mayo Beach Sunset

Mayo Beach Fog

 I also got a chance to try my hand at three larger plein air paintings. These are about 16" x 22".

Great Island, Wellfleet

Hopper's Cottages, Mayo Beach

Mayo Beach and Great Island

 

Somehow I knew the Hopper cottages were going to defeat me. But the weekend also included a pilgrimage up to South Truro seeking Hopper's cottage studio building, still visible from the beach. Took me a while - and a long walk south along Ryder Beach - to find it. But his small cottage with a massive north-facing window is easy to spot amongst the properties approaching McMansion size.

 

Good times, productive painting, good cheer, and mighty fine seafood with very good friends and their wonderfully creative kids made for one heck of a weekend. Twelve dozen raw oysters, five dozen clams for linguine, a massive amount of grilled swordfish and a goodly portion of smoked bluefish made for a heckuva lot of seafood feasting in just three days!

Pondside Plein Air

My larger paintings seem to be suffering from something like me tightening up when faced with a vast white "high risk"space. I thought the remedy might be some cheap paper and some speed painting down by the pond: