Where in the World is Plein Air – Day 3

"Incoming Weather" 9x12 oil/panel

View the videos and buy the painting here:  
http://www.whereintheworldispleinair.com/2015-artist/michael-chesley-johnson/

(If it's not online yet, it will be soon, so keep checking back!)

Above is my finished piece for the third and final day of the "Where in the World is Plein Air?" outdoor painting event.  For this day, I again went to the other side of the border, in Lubec, Maine, to the waterfront.

My goal was to paint some boats!  As difficult as they are to paint or draw, fishing boats are beautiful.  They come in many colors and have pleasing curves.  But they also speak to a way of life that is quickly vanishing.  The fishing industry in Downeast Maine and the Canadian Maritimes isn't what it used to be, partly because of overfishing, but also because of large corporations taking things over.  The little guy, who has to take out a house-sized mortgage for a boat, has to work hard to pay off that loan.  I know one fisherman from Campobello Island who has to take his boat all the way to Nova Scotia to make a living at fishing.

For the first time in three days, I finally had some visitors at my easel.  Three fellows sauntered up to take a look. When a fisherman says, "You got that boat just right," that's high praise indeed.   They also told me that they work on my central boat.  That was good news.  Because they weren't on the boat, it meant the boat wouldn't be leaving anytime soon.  That's one of the dangers in painting working boats – they tend to go out to sea.

Just as a reminder, Where in the World is Plein Air? consists of a hundred artists painting for three days wherever they happen to be in the world.  Each day, the artists post three videos – beginning, middle and end – of that day's painting efforts, plus a photo of the finished painting.  The paintings will be for sale that very same day and can be purchased immediately online.  The paintings, whether sold or unsold, will then be shipped to the event's sponsor, Illume Gallery of Fine Art in St George, Utah, for an exhibit that will run for the month of July.  Following the event, purchased paintings will be shipped to their happy owners.

So as they say, that's a wrap!  I now need to let the paintings dry a bit, frame them up, and ship them off to Utah.  You'll be able to see and buy the paintings online for a few more weeks.  As I mentioned in my videos, I'm really pleased with the way my paintings turned out, and I think they are some of my best maritime plein air paintings.

By the way, I still have a very few spots left in my Paint Campobello workshops this summer.  To find out more, please visit www.PaintCampobello.com.

Here are more photos from this last day.