A Perfect Lotus Day

Lotus at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, oils on canvasboard, 14" x 11," $200

Yesterday I left the house early to get down to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in time to take advantage of the morning light. The day was delightfully cool and clear, a rarity for August in DC, when the phrase "dog days" seems to have been coined with our area in mind. By a quarter to nine there were quite a few photographers and a couple of painters there already. I walked around the nearest ponds overflowing with Asian lotus and set up my easel in a shady spot under a Bald Cypress, where I had one perfect flower in sight for a focal point.

The painting went quickly and was finished around eleven. I left my gear in place and walked around the other ponds to take photos of some of the other blossoms, but the light overhead was not great, so I stopped to chat with another painter I'd seen earlier. I'd noticed she had the exact same type of Guerrilla Painter box as mine, and it turned out she was a member of the Mid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association (MAPAPA, which I joined just last week) so we shared information about the Annapolis Plein Air event coming up in September. We were both interested in the Dueling Brushes competition, for which our morning session is great practice, and the street sale afterwards, similar to the Easton Quick Draw event.

After taking more photos I packed up, trundled to my car and drove on towards Southern Maryland, where my friend Linda lives. She had told me earlier that she'd found a large stand of the native American Lotus at Mattawoman Creek, an extensive Potomac River watershed some miles from her home. The American lotus is slightly smaller than the Asian, and the flowers are creamy light yellow.We'd agreed to take a two-person kayak she owns so we could sketch them up close, and this was the perfect day for it.

It was a bit work to get the kayak secured to the top of my car, and Linda was kind enough to lend me some extra gear: water shoes and a pair of shorts (I'd worn pants for painting, forgotten I'd need to wade) plus lots of drinking water and sunscreen. We stopped off at Safeway to pick up some sandwiches along the way and reached Mattawoman around two. I was starving by then, so we ate lunch before setting out in the kayak.

To be continued: Painting at Mattawoman Creek.

A Little Night Painting

Moonlight on Black Walnut Point, oils on canvas board, 12" x 16"

This was my night painting from Walt Bartman's workshop. There is something mysterious--perhaps eerie--about this historic colonial house surrounded by ancient walnut trees on the last point of land of Tilghman Island. In the light of the full moon, with the stiff breeze stirring the leaves, it seemed magical. I liked the way the soft glow of lights from the house was reflected in the swimming pool and echoed by the moonlight on the bay.

It's now framed and is priced at $450. If you are interested in buying, please contact me at elemaza@verizon.net.

Yesteryear's Sunsets Today

Sunset at Bar Neck Cove, oils on canvas, 14" x 11" $150

As toddlers in Cuba, my mother initiated my sisters and I into the ritual of seeing the sunset by the sea. Every evening as the sun started to descend we would walk the block from our house in Miramar to what we called la playita (the little beach) though it was really the farthest thing from a beach. Actually a rocky shoreline made up of the dead corals commonly called dientes de perro (dog's teeth) in Cuba, we children would while away the time playing in the tidal pools and pause to watch the final dramatic moments as the sun dipped into the sea. Every day we watched intently to see if the legendary "green ray" would appear: an unusual phenomenon that occurs once in a great while when the light of the sun's rays is refracted through the water.

The sea would be furious, foaming froth in January when the Nor'easters blew, strewing Man-of-War jellyfish with their long poisonous tentacles onto to the rocks, and we'd play tag with the spray from the waves. On lazy summer days it could be so calm we'd be tempted to go in for a swim and only the grownups' cautionary tales of the many eaten by sharks at that spot would keep us out of the water. The light on the clouds projected marvelous images of castles, epic battles, and beasts to fill our imagination.

I cherish those memories now as the sum of all my childhood sunsets--it was not until much later I realized: while I played, I was being imprinted with a sense of nature's timeless beauty that would form the ground for my artistic impulse. Who could have known a few years later we'd have to leave Cuba and never see our Playita again?

Sunsets on the Chesapeake Bay have a very different flavor, but they share the same enchantment of the clouds and sun over the water. Bar Neck Cove on Tilghman Island is the site of Walt Bartman's Summer Duck Studio where we painted. It was hard to find a spot where the glare wouldn't be blinding, so I picked this place behind a tall cypress. The reflections on the water were still so strong I had to close my eyes and rest for periods of time to get rid of the retinal after-images. I wasn't sure exactly what I had painted until the next day, but oddly enough, the painting communicates the heat and the hazy atmosphere of the day in the intimacy of the small cove.

The Value of a Sketch

One assignment from the Tilghman Island workshop was to do about ten value sketches, a term used in art for a simple drawing in black and white to study light and shadow. One sketches with single lines and then connects the lines into blocks of shadow, to analyze the design on paper.

I sketched this with two Sharpie pens--one thin point and one thick--while sitting in an Adirondack chair in a shady spot on the grounds of Black Walnut Point Inn at the southern tip of the island. Doing this loosened me up and got me thinking in terms of abstract design rather than drawing individual objects. The lesson then hopefully carries through into your actual painting in oils later.

Tilghman Island Workshop

I had a great time at Walt Bartman's Tilghman Island workshop this past weekend. Walt is an inspiring teacher; his range of knowledge and thought is amazing. The workshop started Friday with a lecture at his Summer Duck Studio, and these photos are of the first demo he did that afternoon. The heat made it difficult to work except in the shade. We painted until sunset, then went out as a group of 18-22 for a late dinner. There was a full moon: I had just enough energy after dinner to wander about the moonlit grounds of the Black Walnut Point B&B where I was staying. The stiff breeze from the south was delightful, the point of land giving one the feeling of standing on the prow of an enormous ship, with a large wooden cross at the very tip of the land's end.

On Saturday morning Walt gave a lecture on color, then we were free to paint anywhere around the island we wanted. We came back to the studio for critiques around 3:30, and enjoyed a fabulous crab feast afterwards. After dinner we drove out to Knapp's Narrows inlet to paint the sunset, and then do a night painting. For my night painting, I figured being a guest at the Black Walnut Point B&B afforded a unique opportunity to paint this unusual location, so I went back there to paint alone in the total darkness with the aid of a miner's headlamp. As I was getting ready to set up, the moon rose from the water, so orange it seemed like the just-set sun rising anew. I sat down with a glass of wine and looked at the moon for a while, then got up to paint. After spending most of the day standing, my feet were killing me but I became so absorbed in my painting, I was totally oblivious to the mosquitoes flying up my shorts, biting the parts of my legs where the spray hadn't reached, until the next day. I packed up around eleven-thirty and collapsed onto bed.

Sunday morning we met at the inlet for painting. Camille, another student who lives on the island, had a wonderful canopy and was so kind to offer me its shade--I couldn't have lasted even an hour in that heat if it hadn't been for that. Walt worked on quite a large painting standing completely in the sun for several hours--incredible stamina and dedication!

Time went by so fast, I was surprised to come back with seven paintings, some in nearly complete condition (though in need of "fixing"). I headed home after our final crits totally exhausted, sunburned and grubby, yet full of new ideas and insights. Even the traffic cooperated and didn't come to a standstill until I reached the Bay Bridge, speeding me home as I gazed upon the distant skies with new eyes.

Gorilla Painter

The truth can now be told--I really am not one of the Gorilla Girls! I'm reluctant to designate myself as a "guerrilla" because to me that term has such an awful connotation, and I mean that in the original sense of the word of "filling one with awe." But I happen to have collected quite a bit of Guerrilla Painter equipment and accessories for my next plein air workshop coming up tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to having more compact, portable gear. Less time to set up, more time to paint.

I often think about why the figure of the unwashed, violent guerrilla has been so romanticized here in America... starting with Herbert Matthews as Fidel Castro's first groupie on through to Che Guevara's murderous, beretted mug for sale on T-shirts, Americans have just loved the image of these idiots, if not the men themselves. I can understand a certain appeal for the young, their rebellious adolescence finds in these men the ultimate anti-authority figure, while forgetting that they end up becoming worse dictators that the ones they replaced. The older unrepentant leftists should know better, but they will never admit it.

In any case, I'd never want to self-identify as a guerrilla, it's better to be a gorilla painter. What next? Whale painter? Tomorrow I'm off to Tilghman Island.

Sunset at Fishing Creek

Sunset at Fishing Creek, oils on canvas, 16" x 20", $400

While getting my gear ready for next weekend's painting workshop on Tilghman Island I found this painting from last year. It was done from photos I took at Hooper Island in the fall a few years back, but its watery landscape is very typical of Maryland's eastern shore. Hooper Island, like Tilghman and others in this area, are only technically islands. Actually, they are more like long peninsulas separated from the eastern shore by creeks and wetlands. I would dearly love to own what I like to call a "painting shack" anywhere in this area--it would be wonderful to spend wintry weekends here painting the amazing skies and water as well as the good old summertime when we city and suburban folk flock outdoors.

If you are interested in buying the painting, please contact me at elemaza@verizon.net.

My First Portrait Commission

Mirna Suyapa con su hijo Cristofer, pastel, 17-1/2" x 11-1/2"

Today I completed my first portrait commission, and a really difficult one at that! I've struggled with it for several months, working only from photographs because my subject lives in Central America and I've never met the lady-- a friend who lives there commissioned the portrait of her with her infant son and sent me the photos.

It is a beautiful pose: a tender and intimate image of motherhood, but as most of us artists know, babies are difficult to draw convincingly, and the details of the two together were quite challenging. I actually did two other versions of the portrait before settling on this third one as the closest in likeness. It definitely furthered my education on portraiture; I couldn't have accomplished it without the portrait classes I've been taking at the Columbia Arts Center. I'll be going back for more classes this fall, it's great fun for me.

I hope my next portrait commission may be a bit easier, at least to the extent of being able to work with my subject posed in front of me, but I'm game for whatever may come. If any of you want your portrait or a loved one's painted, please contact me at elemaza@verizon.net.