Day six, Friday

I worked last night till 4 in the morning drawing a chain link fence on my boat painting from Wednesday. Time well spent, but Ive been pretty tired all day. Woke at 7 to do paperwork for the gallery, frame the works on paper and protect the panel pieces with UV varnish.

Arrived at the gallery at 11, unloaded, organized the first four to be hung in the show and the order of the remaining four for replenishing the wall if any were to sell. And then set off to find my last painting of the week.

I painted a barn window in a shingle wall. Turned out lovely given that I only had 2 hours and it was sprinkling with rain. Stripped off in the farmyard and dressed for the exhibition and arrived back at the gallery at 4.50 to see a LONG line of collectors outside the door waiting for it to open at 5. At 5.05 I had sold the two largest pieces (Day 3 and Day 5) and then Day 4, the boat with the chain link went.

At six I only had one left on the wall, and everyone went out into the courtyard for drinks while the gallery was restocked.

In the second part of the evening I sold another two.

Marvellous. The standard of work across the board amongst the 40 artists was noticeably higher. Stephen Dougherty, editor of Plein Air magazine gave an address and said that of the hundreds of plain air events he has juried and experienced, he likened the Door County event to the Masters Golf tournament at Augusta. The creme de la creme. I have to say it is humbling to be showing with these painters, and a great treat to be able to laugh and critique and share with them during the week.

Anyhow, I don't have my camera to upload todays painting because its in the car and Im too tired to go get it. Must get up  at 6 to prep and stake out my spot for tomorrows Quick paint event in Fish Creek.

Day Five, Thursday

 Up at 6 to work on last night's sunset flagpole a little from memory because i forgot to take a photograph.
Then off to Sister Bay to sit in the idyllic Beach Road community gardens, lovingly restored by the new owners who run the farm as a host to locals who wish to farm vegetables and flowers. The watertower at right is collecting rainwater. The contraption on the left is some kind of feed spreader .
This one took 9 hours.

Beach Road Community Gardens 30 x 10

I have to deliver my work to the gallery tomorrow so its a very late night for me tonight tweaking and pricing. I have the chain link fence to draw on the dock painting from yesterday, which will take most of the night. I feel very excited about my collection of work this year even though there are two paintings less than I would normally have produced by the end of day four.

Sunset painting reworked

Day four, Wednesday

ST Mary's Conquest, 24 x 12

 An exciting day that had its trials and tribulations, not least of which was the unexpected departure of the "St Mary's Conquest" from her berth in the dock, about 2 hours after I began my painting. The following four hours were spent working on the dockside and reconfiguring the idea to be focussed more on the chain link fence, which I now have to draw if I can stay awake tonight.

Masthead, Sister Bay

The evening sunset painting in Sister Bay is always a bit of a worrisome affair for me as Im not really one for a sunset. So I looked up instead of out and painted a very quick masthead with a flag before it got too dark and way too chilly. This painting gave me a neck ache like never before.

It needs more contrast and much more maple tree on the right.

Me in a field by John Gremmer

This was emailed to me today by photographer, John Gremmer. Thanks John for capturing the scale of the moment so well. I was hundreds of yards from the road (where I think this photograph was taken), and from the buildings and from any kind of shade. But what a great place to sit and soak up Wisconsin for 6 or 7 hours!

Day three, Tuesday

What a fabulous day in the sun. Actually, a bit too in the sun because to do todays painting meant sitting in the middle of a ploughed field with no shade for six hours.

Location shot. 3pm

Full size compositional drawing with notes. 9.30 am

Every painting has to start with design and decision making. I can't start a painting with a vague notion about what I am doing. I'm posting this photo of my design drawing for my students I suppose. I want them to see that its an important part of my process. The drawing is full size, 30" x 10" between the creases in the cardboard.

Finished painting drying on the easel. 3.45

I stopped painting quite a lot to chat with people who had stumbled out across the soft furrowed soil to see me. Its a big part of the week, and its always a pleasure to talk with people who are truly interested in painting. I'm not much of a multi tasker though, so I tend to just stop work.

Detail of the barn on the left 7.30pm

Which is why I didn't get quite as much time for this one as I had hoped before it was time to drive home. I shall push up the shadow play and push some values here and there tonight, but I got a lot of the information down on site.

Up in the morning to drive down to Sturgeon Bay to paint boats and then back up to Sister Bay for a sunset painting.

Day Two, Monday

Big day today, the only day this week that I don't have a scheduled event. So I got up at 5.30 to paint a bright red barn as the sun came up. Great plan. Terrible painting.
Spent the rest of the day at a dairy farm painting a grand barn

grand barn on EE 12 x 24

and a window detail.

Window

By 6pm I'd run out of water and energy so I came home to tidy up the first three and get one of them ready to take to the gallery tomorrow. Have to have something hanging on the wall by 11am

day one. Sunday

Barn on Red Cherry (I think)

I realize that Ive been talking all evening and now I've run out of things to say and this is a very boring, prosaic blog post.

Began the day with a morning at the house waiting. Reading, looking at my watch, pacing. I tried to get more sleep but I was too agitated and eager to start. At 2 o'clock the event began and I got all my blank panels and watercolor paper stamped by the organizers at the Peninsula School of Art. This is to make sure that only work done during the week is submitted for the exhibition on Friday. Got my information packet, lanyard and tee shirt (which I have to wear all day every day for a week), and signed up for three sponsored painting events. These are scheduled painting events at specific locations in Door County where the pass holders who have paid for the privellage, will be guaranteed to find us painting at a certain time, and will be able to eat muffins, pastries and be served beverages while we paint. The rest of the week I am free to paint where and when I please on the peninsula.
We had to be back at the school at 5 for a logistics meeting and for a meet and greet with collectors and hosts, so that only left me with 2 hours to paint this first afternoon. Which was frustrating but I got something largely finished, and Im pleased to have got underway.

Door County summer 2014

For the past four years Ive been invited up to Door County in Northern Wisconcin to paint, and each time I have returned to Chicago exhausted and exhilarated. This is the most adrenaline-filled, frenetic and challenging week of my professional calendar each year. A week of painting against the clock, in spite of the elements, in front of fellow artists, collectors, gallerists and the swarming throngs of vacationers in this beautiful peninsula. Up before dawn each day and on the go till after dusk each evening to produce an exhibition by Friday night. It s the closest I will ever come to an olympic event.

So I arrived at 10 this evening in the beautiful lake home of Chicago architect (and my friend) Jim Nagle.

Usually he is here too (a keen watercolorist himself) along with his partner and my longtime studio mate, Mary Ann Alexander, but for one reason and another i have the place to myself this year, which is a bit weird. And lonely. 

On my way up I stopped in to the Public Museum in Kenosha to jury the local school district High School student art competition with my colleague from the American Academy, Tom Herzberg. High school art is a lot better than it was in my day, or at least in my day in my high school. And on our way to the art competition we took in the Transparent Watercolor Society of America (TWSA) annual juried exhibition which was very good to see. Saw a lot of work that one would expect to see in such a watercolor show, and certainly a great deal of technically excellent works, but there were four or five that would have looked very handsome in the Barber Kennedy home.

Reservation Wall, Dean Mitchell

For a few years Ive heard the name Dean Mitchell, as in "You remind me of…." or "You probably know…" or "I bet you like…"
Well today I saw my first Dean Mitchell and I can say that I like and I remind me of Dean Mitchell.

So its time for bed and tomorrow the games begin.