My Love of Landscape – Part 7

Part 7 of My Love of Landscape: Y2K and the Escape to the Southwest

Like a Desert Spring 12x16 Pastel
One of the early paintings.

It was 1999, and the year 2000 sat on the horizon like an ugly stormcloud.  If you worked in IT at the time, you'll remember the apocalyptic predictions for Y2K.  Thanks to shortsighted computer programming, once the clock hit midnight on New Year's Day, planes would fall out of the sky, power grids would shut down, nuclear power plants would go critical.  Fortunately, there was plenty of time to apply patches before anything dire happened, but CEOs were uneasy.  At the time, I was working for a law firm, and we had things under control.  Having patched systems and tested them, we in IT had a high degree of confidence.  Yet still uneasy, the firm offered us a big bonus if we saw Y2K through into the New Year—just in case.

But Trina and I had other plans.  Vermont winters and the 8-to-5 life (or longer, if you were on salary and worked in IT) had ground us down.  We already had sold our house and had set aside some money.  For some time, Trina had been subscribing to something called "The Caretaker's Gazette," and in it, she found an ad for a small ranch in New Mexico seeking a caretaker for a short-term position.  We'd had no experience other than doing simple house repairs on our succession of farm houses, and I doubted that would qualify us.  Surprisingly, we landed the job.

I'll never forget getting off the plane in Albuquerque where David picked us up.  It was June, and the oven had been turned to "broil."  That, plus the long plane ride and the the 5000-foot elevation, made me feel like I'd entered a dreamland for most of our drive to Grants.  From there, the curvy road ascended to 7000 feet and took us into the El Malpais National Monument—or the "badlands" as the early Spanish explorers called this vastness of broken-up, black lava.  (Much of it looked like a bulldozed parking lot.)  But beyond the lava, the landscape opened up into rolling hills made of pink Precambrian granite, dotted with ponderosa pine, and interspersed with grassland.  David and Betsy's ranch occupied a little pocket of private land tucked up against these hills in national forest.

Chaco the Goat

For a few weeks, we occupied a 24-foot travel trailer while our hosts traveled.  "Ranch" is a misnomer; if anything, it was a hobby farm, with six goats, a dozen chickens, a couple of lovebirds, two cats, a cockatiel named Jackson, and a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Molly. It was a sweet, easy job:  We watered and fed the animals, made an occasional trip to Gallup to get hay for the goats, and kept a general eye on things.  We also had a Volvo station wagon and a van at our disposal.  We made good use of our time by exploring the hills behind us, which had been mined for fluorite back in World War II.  A couple of the head frames still stood over seemingly-bottomless holes, and there were old cart roads down upon which the mineral had been hauled.  (The ranch was an old miners' camp, and the main house had belonged to the mine superintendent.)  I especially enjoyed sunset hikes into the hills, because from a high place I could look across the flat lava fields to the sandstone Narrows and even to the Datil Mountains, which glowed orange with the low sun.

Section 27 head frame

Summertime is monsoon time in New Mexico.  Mornings start cool and clear, but by noon, great, cauliflower-shaped clouds build up over the mesas, always accompanied by surprisingly bright bolts of lightning and deafening cracks of thunder.  These daily storm clouds are beautiful to behold, but the lightning and downpours are to be avoided.

A dangerous hike - I'm the tallest thing on the ridge

One morning, we hiked up a sandstone ridge to get a view of the lava flows, and by the time we reached the highest point, the lightning had begun; knowing we were the tallest objects on the ridge, we raced down, triple-time.  The storms also turn the back roads, which vary from sand to silt to lava, to deep mud.  One road, innocently named "County Road 42," displayed at the time an inviting sign labeling it as a beautiful "Backcountry Byway" and offered to take you past scenic cinder cones and lava fields.  We were advised by the locals not to take the road unless we'd had seven days of  no rain.

After waiting the advised period, we drove the Volvo wagon out.  The single-track road, hemmed in by blocks of lava, got even narrower the farther we went.  Then we began to encounter puddles, some of which spanned the entire width of the road.  Lava can be very sharp, and puddles can hide deep mud.  Trina got out a few times to move some of the smaller lava blocks so I could steer around some of puddles.  Finally, we reached a point where we couldn't even turn around if we wanted to, so we had to keep going.  And then we arrived unexpectedly at a fork in the road, but with no sign to tell us which was the right way.  But suddenly—deus ex machina!  A rancher arrived on an ATV and pointed the way out.

Later, after talking to a Park ranger, we learned that this 36-mile "Backcountry Byway" had lured many visitors into its trap.  One night, a couple with an infant got stuck and had to spend the night; it cost them $400 to be towed out.  Since then, the "Backcountry Byway" sign has been replaced with a warning sign.

Even though driving County Road 42 was difficult, it was indeed a beautiful trip.  Our other explorations were no less inspirational:  Zuni Canyon, Bonita Canyon, El Morro National Monument—I compiled a long list of favorite spots.  And it got even longer, because after our hosts returned, they decided it might be good to keep us around.  So, we moved from the travel trailer to a single-wide and stayed "on call."  We ended up living there almost a full two years, and explored much of New Mexico and the Four Corners area.

Mt Taylor - one of the four mountains sacred to the Navajo,
and one of our favorite hikes

The Ventana Arch - just off the Acoma reservation; at
the right time of day, light spills down into the window from behind

While there, we joined the local art association.  The El Morro Area Arts Council was relatively new, and it wasn't long before I'd joined the board of directors.  (To this day, EMAAC is a very active group.)  Trina and I sampled a number of workshops:  high desert gardening, building a straw bale structure, introduction to watercolor.   Although I'd been working on a novel while on this sabbatical, I felt I hadn't quite found the right outlet for my creative impulse, so I was eager to try different things.

One day, I took a pastel workshop that was taught by Jane Schoenfeld, an artist from Santa Fe.  It's difficult to describe the feeling I had when I first put pastel to paper.  The immediacy of effect, the brilliant color, the tactile nature of the medium—and what's more, Jane had us working from life, en plein air.  The moment was as if I'd discovered my long-lost child, and I wanted to take this medium, this process, and embrace it.  The paintings I did that day, of course, were a beginner's effort, but after that day, I knew I wanted to paint again, seriously.

Two things became clear to me.  First, painting heightened my awareness.  It was like some drug that made color more vivid and the world, more fascinating; it permitted, no, invoked a communion with Nature, something I sought daily on my walks but did not always find.  Second, whatever I painted drew an immediate reaction from the viewer.  I had grown weary of waiting for feedback on my writing.  In order to get feedback, the reader had to read what you'd written, and that might take a very long time, especially where a novel was concerned.  But with a painting!  One well-considered look was all it took.  As a result, I felt I could improve as a painter faster than I could as a writer.  Not to sound fickle, but at that moment I gave up writing to paint.

My first studio in New Mexico

Another early one - Green Soldier 12x16 Pastel

And another - Winter Holdout 12x9 Pastel

We stayed on at the ranch after that for a little while longer.  I painted and painted, and if I wasn't painting, I painted in my mind.  During that time, I also took a six-week pastel class in Albuquerque—a good hundred miles away—with artist Deborah Secor and learned all the basics.  I was so determined I even drove out in a snow storm, only to learn class had been cancelled.  We also went to Santa Fe, where we checked out every gallery that showed pastel.  This was also where I discovered my first issue of Pastel Journal, for which I began writing not long after, thus marrying my love of writing and my love of painting.  I also began to design websites part-time for a local developer, and at the same time, made a website for myself as a serious painter.

Finally, when a local gallery invited me to join its roster of artists, I was in heaven.

One day, a call came from my old law firm in Vermont.  They wanted to know if I'd be interested in returning on a one-year contract for a special project.  Because we didn't yet have any solid ties to New Mexico, but mostly because it would mean a lot of money, I said yes.  I decided I could commit to one year—so long as I also committed myself to painting as much as possible.  I flew out in March to look at real estate.  I remember it snowed every day while I was there.  But I found a beautiful old Cape in the little village of Burke Hollow, in Vermont's frigid Northeast Kingdom.  Come June, we were on our way to Vermont in a rental truck with our new dog, Saba. (To be continued.)

Somewhere, on the road to Vermont

My Love of Landscape – Part 8

Part 8 of My Love of Landscape: A Return to Vermont

Barn 9x12 Pastel
I loved this barn

The law firm that asked me back had several offices, and I was told I could choose among them.  I chose the St Johnsbury office.  Housing was cheaper in the Northeast Kingdom, and because the St Johnsbury office was more casual, I wouldn't have to wear a tie.  We'd also exhausted our interest in the Champlain Valley; the Northeast Kingdom would be a new adventure for us.  Some romantic notion of the tumbledown landscape, broken up with streams and ponds, beckoned me.  Now that I was a painter and seeing the landscape with fresh eyes, I looked forward to exploring this new territory.

The Northeast Kingdom could look like this...

...or like this!

Vermont's Northeast Kingdom feels like a very remote place as you drive through it, especially in winter.  Sandwiched between the Connecticut River to the east, the Green Mountains to the west, and Canada to the north, it's a region of hills, carved out by small rivers.  Two Interstates run through it—91 and 93—but there's very little traffic on them.  You wonder why they are even there.  Partly, it has to do with the now-gone hopes of St Johnsbury being a major trucking center; unfortunately, St Johnsbury Trucking drove its last load in 1993.  Today, 80% of the area is covered in forest, and its major industries are maple syrup, dairy farming and, not surprisingly, tourism.  When we moved there, the ski area at Burke Mountain was going through a rough patch; the Kingdom Trails, a network of mountain biking routes, was just getting started.  Today, though, both are thriving.

Church in Burke

Burke Mountain

We moved to Burke Hollow, a tiny, historic village with a classic New England feeling.  Indeed, it has a little white church with a steeple, and many of the houses, mostly versions of the Cape, were built well before 1900.  The Hollow is created by two streams that run through it, Roundy Brook and the west branch of the Passumpsic River.  Just down the hill from us, along the brook, was a hobby farm with a couple of Arabian horses; through our upstairs window, we could see them grazing in a pasture adjacent to us.  Behind us, and just up the hill, was an old barn with hayfields, which were edged with sugar maples that glowed in the fall with red and orange.  From our house, we could walk easily to snowmobile trails that opened up miles of country for hiking in summer or skiing in winter.  A little farther out, we had the Kingdom Trails and Burke Mountain for skiing and hiking.  And all of this was close to Lyndonville, where there was a college, restaurants and a video store, but more importantly, not one but two used bookstores, which will play a role later in this story.

Our house had been built in 1820.  Although it had started as a Cape, a porch and an ell had been added, and a one-car garage attached.  The original foundation was still intact (somewhat) and consisted of a series of granite blocks a yard long.  Inside, the house was simply designed with a very comfortable feeling.  The upstairs had been renovated by the previous owner to make a master bedroom suite.  It was from here we could watch the horses.  A "dug" well in the backyard provided water.  This well was only a few feet deep with four inches of water in it, but surprisingly, during our one summer there, we never lost our water—although it was a very, very dry summer and two neighbors lost theirs, one of whom had to drill and hydrofracture to get water again.   Although our lot was small, much of the land around us was pasture or woodlot, so it felt quite private.  Many trees, maples and locust, edged the property.  We had a beautiful old sugar maple where our short driveway met the road.  The tree became a hazard, and we ended up having to take it down.  Worse yet, we discovered hornets had built a nest the size of a large wastebasket in it, and that had to be dealt with first.  We were sad to lose the tree, but not the hornets.

My favorite barn again

Fall in Burke

Painting near the Kingdom Trails

I made one room in the house my studio.  It was the darkest room, but it sufficed.  Mostly, I was trying to make the outdoors my studio.  I purchased a used Stanrite 100 easel, a delicate, aluminum thing, that had a problem with one of its legs.  I also got an ArtBin case for my pastels, which at the time were mostly NuPastels and a selection of Rembrandts.  I could place the case on the easel's three-part center hinge, which made a kind of shelf and also held the legs apart.  When the weather was good, I'd hike this kit out to the West Branch of the Passumpsic, where I'd fight my way through the willows and other brush at the water's edge to get a view.  Or, I'd take it up to Burke Mountain, where I could paint the vista of the Northeast Kingdom hills.  I shot countless photos of the landscape.  Although I painted outdoors as much as I could, I worked from the photos in my studio when the snow was too deep or the weather, too cold.

I was dedicated to my job at the law firm, but I was more dedicated to my progress as a painter.   Although Trina and I explored much of the Northeast Kingdom—viewing the spring flowers near Newark Pond, hiking the shore along Lake Willoughby, snowshoeing in the Victory Basin, visiting Stephen Huneck's "Dog Chapel" on Dog Mountain—I tried to get out most weekends to paint.  I also looked at going more "professional" by joining the local arts group, Catamount Arts, and the Vermont Pastel Society.  I even had a one-man exhibit in St Johnsbury.  (When I went to get the work framed locally, the framer asked if I would be interested in buying a frame shop; I said no, but I wonder where the path would have led had I said yes?)  I began also to focus on my resumé, looking at joining other art organizations and entering shows—I may have already joined the Pastel Society of New Mexico but can't recall exactly—and to continue to generate ideas for Pastel Journal.

During that time, I won a scholarship for a special residency for Vermont artists at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson.  For me, that was a big step forward, partly because it was an honor to receive that so early in my career, but also because it gave me time to focus entirely on my craft.  In exchange for a little work—the task assigned to me was painting the floors of a couple of rooms—I was given two weeks at VSC,  my own studio room plus lodging and all my meals.  Painters weren't the only artists in residence, but potters, sculptors, installation artists and writers were there, too.  Not all of the painters worked in a representational way, either; some of them were die-hard abstract expressionists.    I enjoyed meeting them all, and especially at mealtimes I felt the creative energy that surrounded me.  Although I was assigned a spacious studio in an old, desanctified church VSC owned, I spent most of my time outdoors, painting.  (I loved the gentle landscape around Johnson and particularly the Gihon River.)  I reserved the studio for looking at and adjusting my plein air work and the occasional large painting.  I even sold one of my large studio pieces to another resident artist.

My studio at Vermont Studio Center
(I was in the church studio)

Bold Coast 24x24 Pastel
One of the large studio paintings I made at VSC.
A fellow resident artist purchased it.

Gihon River 9x12 Pastel

As much as we loved the landscape of the Northeast Kingdom, the winter was hard.  It seemed a good ten degrees colder than the Champlain Valley and lasted a good two months longer.  When I finished my project for the law firm, we knew it was time to head west again.  We were fortunate in selling our house quickly and to locate one in New Mexico.  After having six yard sales, back-to-back over the weekends, we were able to squeeze everything that didn't sell into a 15-foot truck.  Oh, and about those used bookstores—they took most of my collection of thousands of books, and I shipped my beloved LP collection to a buyer in Arizona.

This time, we were headed for the southern Sacramento Mountains and a community with the odd name of Timberon.

Our final yard sale before heading west

My Love of Landscape – Part 9

Part 9 of My Love of Landscape:  The Return to New Mexico

An Unexpected Spring Snow 12x16 Oil
Outside my studio in Timberon

Traveling from one beautiful landscape to another equally beautiful is the common thread that stitches together my years.  I don't think I've ever lived in an "ugly" place.   Of course, there are plenty of places I travel through that are ugly.  How would I define "ugly"?  Let me start by defining "beautiful."  A beautiful landscape to me is rich with a variety of terrain:  hills but also flats, woods but also open land, streams but also perpetually dry patches.  The beautiful landscape possesses an engaging and perhaps unexpected texture that invites exploration.  To use a few art history terms, I enjoy the picturesque, the pastoral and the sublime.  (Here's a good article on what these terms mean.)  As for signs of human activity, the beautiful landscape might include a few, perhaps a road, a barn or a utility pole, but they are only accents to the landscape and not the focus.

Now to define the "ugly" landscape.  It is what remains when you remove the beautiful.  Think wind turbines, skyscrapers, dumpsters, six-lane highways, traffic crossings.  Of course, I may choose to paint these, but for me the subject then is the abstraction of pattern, color and value, which can be beautiful, and not the thing itself, which cannot be.  Much of the landscape I pass through on my travels—cities, urban sprawl and the industrialized farmland—is like this.  But I learned something from teaching workshops on the road:  The inhabitants of these landscapes are always proud of the places they take me to paint.  Beauty is a personal thing, and you seek it where you live.

Carissa Springs in Timberon

Timberon, in the southern Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, is where we ended up after Burke Hollow, Vermont.  Not many people, even in New Mexico, have heard of it, and with good reason, as it is far into the mountains.  To get there, start at Cloudcroft (8600 feet elevation), follow the road south 17 miles to Sunspot (9200 feet) and the Sunspot Solar Observatory, and then continue another 16 miles to Timberon (6900 feet.)  Near Sunspot, the road passes broad parks of grassland and thick stands of Douglas fir, and from the road you can catch views of White Sands National Monument, the distant San Andres mountains and, sometimes at dusk, herds of elk.  Toward Timberon, fir gives way to ponderosa, and the road follows the Sacramento River; at one spot, in monsoon season, a seasonal waterfall cascades over walls of crusty travertine.

Timberon was originally a vast ranch.  Back in 1969, it was bought by a developer who put in an airstrip, a golf course, many miles of gravel road and a water system.  Because the development was difficult to access, A-frame homes were flown in by helicopter; prospective buyers arrived via airplane to view what was being sold as an exclusive community.  I suppose it was a little too exclusive, as the developer went bankrupt, and a water district was formed to take over the water system and roads.  By the time we arrived, the community had a restaurant, two small convenience stores, a post office and a golf course.  The last 16 miles were still unpaved, and it took a good hour for us to get to the grocery store in Alamogordo, for a total of 45 miles.

Jeffries Peak in summer...

...and winter

Strangely, our house had been previously owned by a prepper who was worried about Y2K; or so the Realtor said, by way of explaining the cabinets filled with #10 cans of salmon and other staples.  But since my restaurant days were long over, we donated the canned goods to the local Lions Club.  The house also had an attached guest house, which prompted us to start our first "Pastel Intensive" workshop, where a student could live with us for a time and receive instruction.  A one-car garage we converted into a studio with lots of windows to let in the strong New Mexico sun.  From our front porch, we had a spectacular view of 8600-foot Jeffries Peak.  (I painted this so many times that I began to consider it Timberon's answer to Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire.)   Beyond our house, we enjoyed many quiet roads for walking, and one that we especially liked, at the far end of the community, that overlooked the Otero Mesa and the Cornudas Mountains to the southeast.  The violets and pinks and oranges of that distant, desert landscape provided a welcome contrast to the green of the Sacramentos.

My studio

I didn't have much to do in Timberon but paint, write and explore.  But I needed to make a living.  Even with the cash infusion from my law firm job and the house sale, we were at a point where we needed to consider our financial future.  Although I continued to do web design for the developer in Grants and even had a few clients of my own, I felt that painting and writing would be my true path.  I have to admit, as organized as I am and as much a planner as I am, I've always taken the intuitive approach when it comes to making a living.  I first feel my way toward figuring out a goal; and only then do I construct a plan to get there.  I allow a certain amount of serendipity in my life.

Several events occurred in Timberon that sent me on my way to where I am today:

• I connected with Cloudcroft Art Workshops.  They invited me to sit on a workshop being taught by artist Ann Templeton, who lived in nearby Ruidoso.  During the day, I had lunch with Ann—and when she learned I wrote for Pastel Journal, she asked, "Would you like to write an article on me?"  Thus began a long relationship with a dear lady who became my mentor, a friendship that included writing her 30-year retrospective, The Art of Ann Templeton.   
• The Hubbard Museum of the American West in Ruidoso invited me to have a one-man show and to teach a workshop for them; this lead to a commission for a local architect and more workshops. 
• Pastel Journal passed on a request to me from an arts group in Michigan, which asked if I would be interested in teaching a workshop in Traverse City.  I'd never thought of teaching more than just locally.  But I accepted, this prompted me to approach other groups to teach.  Thus began my traveling for workshops all over the US and in Canada.
• Trina and I helped start a co-op gallery in Cloudcroft.  This was our first (and last) co-op gallery experience.  The gallery ended up having managerial issues, but thanks to it, we met other fine artists who lived in the area.  It also made us wary of ever joining a co-op again.
• Thanks to Ann, I got into two galleries, one in Ruidoso and the other, in San Patricio.  The Bensons of Benson Fine Art in San Patricio truly loved art—their personal collection included Edgar Payne and Maynard Dixon—and their love showed in the way they handled their artists.  I was saddened when Peter died and Judy needed to close the gallery.  Such a strong, two-way relationship with a gallery is uncommon today.
• I  became friends with artist Bob Rohm after taking his workshops at both Ghost Ranch and Cloudcroft, and I also helped him on his book.
• I met master painter Albert Handell for the first time at a workshop I took from him in Sedona.  Since Ann passed away, Albert has become both mentor and close friend.  I am honored that he has such confidence in me that he has asked me to assist him in some of his workshops.

My show at the Hubbard Museum of the American West

Location for the co-op gallery

Ann Templeton in her studio

And as always, Trina and I explored the local landscape—Monjeau Peak, Sierra Blanca, White Sands, Cloudcroft, Ruidoso and the Capitans—as well as further afield in the Four Corners, including southern Colorado (Pagosa Springs, the San Juan Mountains), which we would like to spend more time in.

I will leave off writing this memoir here with Timberon.  Of course, my love of landscape continued and lives on today, but there is so much more I could write, and perhaps some day I will.  But I suppose I should offer a summary before closing.

Not long after settling in Timberon, we purchased a home by the ocean on Campobello Island, in New Brunswick, Canada.  Then we sold the one in Timberon, and—still loving the Southwest—bought another near Sedona, but finally sold that one after several years, too.  Today, we live again in New Mexico, not far at all from where we landed when we first came west to live.  In fact, the other day we took a nostalgic hike among the pink granite hills near the ranch and up to the fluorite mines.  From the top of the ridge, I could see again the broad, beautiful vista, the one I'd first seen nearly 20 years ago, the vista that includes the Narrows, the sandstone mesa that rises up from the lava fields, and the Datil Mountains, which still glow in the evening sun.  This is a beautiful landscape, which I share with the many people, including the Zuni and Navajo, who live nearby.

Walking in Beauty: Closing Prayer from the Navajo Way Blessing Ceremony 

In beauty I walk.
With beauty before me I walk.
With beauty behind me I walk.
With beauty above me I walk.
With beauty around me I walk.
It has become beauty again.
Today I will walk out, today everything negative will leave me.
I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.
I will have a light body, I will be happy forever, nothing will hinder me.
I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.
I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me.
I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.
In beauty all day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons, may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With dew about my feet, may I walk.
With beauty before me may I walk.
With beauty behind me may I walk.
With beauty below me may I walk.
With beauty above me may I walk.
With beauty all around me may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
My words will be beautiful.

And so my love of landscape continues.  Every day, I enjoy a communion with it.

Evening Light 8x10 Oil
Part of our property in Timberon

Fallen Hero 6x9 Pastel
Lots of these on our property

In the San Juans 12x16 Pastel

My Love of Landscape - Part 10

Part 10 of My Love of Landscape:  Exploring the Maine and New Brunswick Coast

Sunrise at Campobello 12x14 Oil - Available
President Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt's Cottage

I know I claimed my previous entry of "My Love of Landscape" would be my last, but enough readers seemed to enjoy the tale that I've decided to resume it, though not, perhaps, with such regularity.  Here, then is the next installment of the serial.

As much as we enjoyed New Mexico, we still had a hunger for the landscapes back east, especially along the coast.  At the 7000-foot elevation of our home, summers were pleasant enough.  Although the sun could be intense and warm, the shade of a ponderosa pine was like natural air-conditioning, and nights cooled down quickly.  Also, I enjoyed the summer monsoon storms—great, billowing thunderheads that always delivered drama—but there weren't any bodies of water nearby to enjoy, and we missed that.  We had a so-called river, the Sacramento, but it was an unreliable thread of water that came and went, depending on storms.

McCurdy Smoke House complex in Lubec

Lubec's fishing fleet

We still had family in Vermont, so on one of our visits, we continued on up to Maine.  We'd been to the coast there many times over the years, but now we went with an eye toward real estate.  We avoided Bar Harbor and points south.  Although an artist might easily find more patrons in those populous areas, that crush of population was exactly what drove us to Downeast Maine, where the population of Washington County is a scant 32,000.  We explored several locations, but we loved most Lubec, the eastern-most point in the U.S.  This small fishing community has a year-round population of around 1300, increased only slightly by summer residents and tourists.  For me as a painter, I fell in love with its historic waterfront and homes and also nearby Quoddy Head State Park, which features tremendous black cliffs, thunderous waves during storms and trails that provide many scenic opportunities for the painter.  (By the way, I'm leading a painting retreat this August in Lubec; for a detailed PDF, click here.)

View of Quoddy Head (and Trina and Saba)...

...Looking at this very paintable view

But then we re-discovered Campobello Island.

If you're over a certain age, you'll remember that Campobello Island, in New Brunswick, Canada, was the vacation home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for many years.  It was made famous by "Sunrise at Campobello," a movie about the Roosevelts, based on a play of the same name, that came out in 1960.  We didn't go to Campobello because of that, as I believe I was hardly aware of the history.  We went because it has not one but two large parks, which are threaded with many trails that lead to beautiful natural areas.  Also, it is connected by a bridge to Lubec, and it's an easy border crossing.

You can walk this beach on Campobello for a very long distance

I say "re-discovered," because we'd been there once before and had hiked one of the longest trails in the Roosevelt-Campobello International Park, out to lonely, rugged Liberty Point and back.  But we'd forgotten how beautiful the island is:  bogs with twisted little fir trees and pitcher plants, freshwater ponds fenced in by thickets of spruce, woodland trails that suddenly thrust one out onto a rocky perch dozens of feet above the sea, and beaches, beaches that are empty in what would be the busiest summer weekend down in Acadia National Park, just three hours away.  Beaches that are tiled with cobblestones as different as snowflakes.  Beaches, where at low tide, you can walk to many wild places.

Our Campobello house during repairs...

...and after.  Saba supervises from the porch.

Later, when three acres of oceanfront property with an 1867 Cape went up for sale at a very reasonable price, we bought it.  (We purchased it as a "life estate," and it was owned by another artist, which sealed the deal.) That summer, we arrived on the island from New Mexico and spent the season doing house repairs and exploring the island and the parks.  (The second is the Herring Cove Provincial Park.)  I don't recall painting the landscape that summer, probably because we had plenty of projects to make the house ours.  It became a lovely home, and we truly wished we could stay longer, but of course, not being Canadian, we had to return to the U.S. at the season's end.

But while back in New Mexico for the winter, a thought occurred to us:  Could we possibly get a work permit and stay on Campobello longer?  Wouldn't it be nice to stay...all year?

(to be continued)

My Love of Landscape - Part 11

Part 11 of My Love of Landscape: Living in Canada

Friar's Bay, Sunrise

Research showed that, yes, I could apply for a work permit that would allow us to work and live on Campobello year-round, so long as there was no Canadian who could fill the job.  There were few artists close by to speak of, and as an artist, I am unique in what I do.  (And so it is with all artists, I would argue; no one paints like you.)  I suppose my application was also approved because of what I could do for the local economy.  Campobello has been, since the crash of the fishing industry, economically depressed, and I thought that if I ran a small gallery and taught plein air painting workshops, I could boost the economy in a small but meaningful way.

Winter painting on Campobello

Eastport View, Blackberry Canes 6x8 Oil
(view from our field, to the west)

Our first full year on Campobello involved a winter.  I didn't want to teach winter painting workshops—who would come?—so I decided to write my first book.  Through a Painter's Brush: A Year on Campobello Island was a real labor of love, since it required me to explore the island with a paint brush (or pastel box.)  This, our first winter, was glorious.  I remember hiking with just a fleece jacket right through Christmas.  I hauled my paintbox over trails to rocky cliffs to paint the headland views.  And, when we had snow, I stayed closer to home, going into our big field along Friar's Bay.  This field hosted a dozen or so apple trees, gnarled and twisted, plus large patches of blackberry and raspberry.  The blackberry canes made a stunning accent of hot red against the blue shadows of snow.  I also discovered night painting, and I learned that painting in the wee hours before dawn in pastel was more difficult than I had expected; the little pastels, so neatly laid down in color wheel order as I worked with them, rolled around and got confused, and under my headlamp's light I had a great deal of trouble telling the dark colors apart.  I decided oil was a smarter choice for nighttime painting since oil paint stays put.

Friar's Bay Gallery, open for business

By summer, we were ready to launch Friar's Bay Studio Gallery.  A home gallery made the most sense, since obviously there'd be no rent to pay or separate building to maintain; also, we'd be able to do laundry, cook a meal, finish up paperwork and even work in the studio while waiting for the doorbell to ring.  The gallery was small, just the living room at first, but over the years it came to expand into the front doorway, up the stairs and into nearly all the upstairs rooms.  We did well, as it seemed that visitors to the island always wanted to take home a memento.  We enjoyed running it, as many of the customers became good friends—and repeat patrons—over the years.

At the same time, I opened up my schedule for teaching small workshops on the island.  Up to four students at a time would meet the night before at the gallery for an ice-breaker and orientation session. The next morning, we'd meet again at the studio, where I'd lecture and critique, and then we'd all head off to one of my favorite painting locations.  I truly enjoyed showing students the secret spots I'd discovered; each week, it was as if I were seeing the landscape for the first time.  What's more, students would bring friends and family to the island, many of them new to the area.  As with the gallery patrons, some of my students became good friends, and we saw them summer after summer.  Students came to me from all over the U.S. and Canada and also from Europe.

Painting here...

...and there...

and here.

Of course, all this living full-time on the island meant giving up the house in New Mexico.  Our lives are like that.  One adventure ends but another begins, and you can be sure that the current one will end, too, but the cycle of adventures will also continue.  As I write these little essays on my life, I think over how major life decisions—such as choosing to move to Canada—are made.  When we bought the house on Campobello, for example, we had not yet thought of teaching workshops or selling art, and certainly not living there full-time.  We just wanted a nice place by the ocean, and we had the money to do so.  But if we hadn't followed that urge, how would our lives have been different today?

Over time, I got involved with the local art scene—Sunbury Shores Art and Nature Centre in St Andrews, the Saint John Arts Centre in Saint John, the New Brunswick Museum and, well, you can read my curriculum vitae to get all the details.  I also started Plein Air Painters of the Bay of Fundy that included artists from Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and hosted exhibits alternating between the U.S. and Canada each year.  We'd always have a paintout in conjunction with the annual exhibit.  It was a great way to connect with other like-minded outdoor painters in a place filled with breath-taking scenery.

But I found that the maritime landscape, though beautifully scenic for the painter, was daunting for travelers.  The Canadian Maritimes and Downeast Maine comprise a vast area of small islands connected by ferries and, sometimes, by bridges, and possess a coastline so jagged it looks like a mad child had gone after a sheet of paper with scissors.  Artists were scattered throughout this broken-up landscape, hunkered down in their studios and working locally.  What they needed, we artists all agreed, was a studio tour that would give us more exposure, using ferries, bridges and highways to connect us.  So, with the help of the Tides Institute and Museum in Eastport, Maine, I started the Two Countries, One Bay, Open Studio Tour, which included the artists around Passamaquoddy Bay, from Washington County, Maine through Charlotte County, New Brunswick.   Educational in nature, the tour had artists demonstrating their craft and, of course, selling their wares.  The tour ran successfully for several years—at its height, we had over 50 artists participating—and then I felt the time was right to leave the project to others.

Lifting Fog at Dawn, 9x12 Oil

Noon Glare 9x12 Oil

Ready to Paint 8x8 Oil

About this time, I also began to engage in another aspect of painting that I've grown to love.  One fall, I flew out to to Sedona, Arizona, as an invited artist for the Sedona Plein Air Festival.  I'd seen Sedona, having been there first on my whirlwind tour of the Four Corners states several years ago, but that was just for an afternoon; more recently, I'd gone from our home in Timberon, New Mexico, with my mentor from Ruidoso, Ann Templeton, to help her at a workshop there and also to gather material for the retrospective I was helping her write.  During that workshop, I came to know Sedona better, and liked it well enough to wrangle an invitation to the festival.  This ultimately led to a long career of invitationals, including the Grand Canyon Celebration of Art, the Zion National Park Plein Air Festival and the very first Plein Air Convention in Las Vegas.

To step back in time a bit, our second winter was much different from the first.  Snow and ice and bitterly cold wind off Friar's Bay made us yearn for the sunnier winters of the Southwest again.  But we were making a new life for ourselves on Campobello, so any return would need to be seasonal.  Summers were my most productive time of year with painting, teaching workshops and running the gallery; winters were more for writing books and magazine articles.  (Although I had a wonderful studio, I've never been much of a studio painter.)  But writing I didn't have to do on Campobello; I could go anywhere and write.  Sedona, for example.

And Sedona was warm enough in winter—and scenic enough—that I could also teach workshops and even get out to paint.  But better yet, we thought, if we rented a place large enough, we could have students stay with us to help pay the rent.

(to be continued)