The Okefenokee Swamp

We left for Florida a day early so that we could spend the extra day at the Okefenokee Swamp, a place I'd always wanted to see and paint. After an overnight stop in Savannah, we awakened to a light drizzle, which became heavier on the way to breakfast by the Savannah River waterfront. I was afraid it would rain all day and we'd have to call our outing off. Luckily, it gradually cleared during our meal, and by the time we got on the road, it was sunny and getting warmer--a beautiful day.

We drove to the eastern entrance, the most easily accessible from I-95, and stopped at the visitor center for directions, selecting the Swamp Walk Trail as best for my purpose. A 4,000-foot boardwalk culminates in an observation tower overlooking the swamp.

I loaded my gear onto my latest plein air aid--a rolling cart--and set off, but my cart made an awful racket rolling over the boardwalk. There were many interesting side trails, but I was sure the rattle of my cart would scare any wildlife along the way, so I was surprised to see a small alligator sunning in a hole by the boardwalk. We saw some cranes far off in the distance, and finally stopped by a large pond with cypresses in the distance. It was getting on to three in the afternoon when I finally started painting, keenly aware that the refuge would close at sundown, only a couple of hours away now.

My painting is a bit rough, but considering the time limit, I think my val-hues are close and the painting "reads". There were so many unusual colors in this landscape at this time of the year, it was hard to figure out how to mix them: the Spanish moss, the grasses and shrubs, the swamp water... all in such wonderful harmonies! Herb admitted he enjoyed the day far more than he expected, and we managed to drive out just as the sun was sinking below the slash pines.

South of the Border

Driving to Florida on I-95, you know you've crossed the South Carolina state line when you come across this landmark: the South of the Border rest stop. It has a Mexican theme, a very amusing, can't-miss-it logo and concessions with all kinds of merchandise, all themed. Herb chose the big sombrero tower as the setting for the hair-raising climax of his most recent novel, "Three Out of Four Heroes." The novel hasn't been published yet (we're working on it) but I love this photo of Herb sitting in our car at dusk during our drive down.

Marshall Hall on a Warm Winter Day

Marshall Hall, oils on canvas board, 11" x 14"

The day after Christmas (Boxing Day) I headed down to visit my friends in Southern Maryland. We'd planned to do an art share: a show and tell about what we have learned and done in our art classes this year, and I hoped to get in a little painting too.

Sadly, Marguerite was too sick to join us, but we three had fun in the studio sharing our art. Looking at it all together I was surprised to see how much it added up to. It was wonderful to see how each of us had grown in our chosen areas of interest this past year: Patrise in her studies of the face and figure for her illustrations, Linda in her narrative painting and myself in plein air with oils. In the evening we joined other friends in their circle for a dinner of delicious Christmas leftovers.

Getting up the next morning, it was cloudy--would it rain, drizzle or clear? Patrise had suggested we paint at Marshall Hall, at the southern end of Piscataway Park, where there is an old ruined manor house dating from the 1720's. The idea of painting ruins has always appealed to me--I think of the romantic painters' fabulous drawings and paintings of ruins--Linda wasn't so keen on that, so she decided to go to the familiar north end of the park while we packed our gear and Patrise's two dogs and headed out to Marshall Hall.

I remember that in the 60s' when we lived in Arlington, there was an old amusement park there that I think we visited once, but I have no specific recollection of it. The sun began to burn through the clouds on our drive down, and by the time we'd walked around a bit with the dogs and found where we wanted to set up, it was sunny and so warm that I had to shed my parka (on the way back I saw the thermometer in my car registered 63 degrees Fahrenheit).

The ruined house was a challenge to paint--I selected this view because I thought the shadows would help us articulate the architecture better, but the ugly chain link fence needed to be edited out. Patrise invented a broken-down picket fence for her painting which I thought added a great fantasy element to her piece, while mine is far more austere, maybe Hopperesque. There is a stark and austere beauty about this season, and the ruined house in light of the wintry sun seemed to complement it perfectly.

Painting a Still Life on a Dark Day

Still Life with Red Onions, oils on canvas board, 9" x 12"

It was dreary as I headed to Lee's studio for our afternoon session of painting: one of our typical rainy winter days. Lee had set up two still lives for us. The ginger jar and the red onions in this one appealed to me, but I knew the colors were going to be tough to bring off.

We didn't want to use the overhead fluorescent lights, as these tend to distort the colors too much, but it was so dark in the studio I really had no idea what colors I was mixing. We opened the shutters and I kept walking over to the window with my palette to mix colors. That was marginally better. Seeing my struggles, Lee offered me a tiny light with two LED's that I could clip on to the palette, which helped quite a bit. I still couldn't see my painting very well, but the colors on my palette were more visible.

I may look for a light like this to add to my kit--it could prove useful in the future. Last summer when I tried night painting, the miner's lamp with LED's proved to be too bright for the job. This might work better.

I don't know that my colors are terribly accurate, but I think at least my values are close to true. The blue bottle was the most challenging. I am developing a greater appreciation for still life painting now that I understand how challenging it can be.

Ghosts of Christmas

Today as I was working on a piece for Cubanology Biweekly about old Cubans, that is to say my parents' generation, I was transported back to our early days of exile in Arlington. After I finished my piece I began looking through my collection of old family photos but could not find any with all of us (somebody has to take the picture).

I did find this wonderful photo of my sisters and I by the Christmas tree... thanks to the magic of Kodak I can tell by the furniture and the window that this was taken in the house on 11th Street we rented when I was in high school. The hair and clothes say this was the heyday of Mod London: the Beatles were all the rage, and every girl tried for the Jean Shrimpton look--the long straight hair, big eyes and pale lips--Shrimpton was the first supermodel. It must have been 1965 or so, the year I graduated.

My older sister Beatriz (standing) was in college by then. The youngest, Cecilia is on the left, Silvia in the middle and I'm on the right, with the far-away look. Desperately wanting to amount to something, wondering if I would. I'm still wondering, after all these years...

I feel so lucky to have grown up with three sisters, through all our small tiffs and teasing, rivalries and camaraderie. With less than two year's difference in ages between each of us, we four Maza girls were a tight-knit bunch. We had our own friends in school, but we tended to be herded together so everything we did, we did together. It gave us a sense of how to deal with others.

It's hard to believe it's been twenty-five years since Cecilia died. Bea, Silvia, and I have our own families and we get together but only a few times a year, on family occasions like Christmas. The children, some of them now married and in other cities, are numerous, and we add up to around twenty on Christmas for dinner. Mom and Dad, all of their generation, are gone now, and it is we who are the elders of the clan. The torch passes on. I wonder what our kids will remember of our Christmases together, if it'll be the same for them as the way we remember Nochebuena in Cuba.

A Challenging Week

Still Life #2, oils on canvas board, 12" x 9"

After a very challenging week at work, I headed over to Lee's studio for an afternoon painting session. He'd set up two still lives for four of us students to work on, both using challenging colors. I picked the one with the purple cloth backdrop, not only because it was closest to where I'd set up, but because these were colors I rarely see in nature, much less paint.

This painting isn't one of my best. I had a particularly hard time articulating the difference between the purple cloth in the light and in shadow--it doesn't even look like it's deep purple, does it? Dealing with the reflections in the shadows of the bowl and pitcher were equally difficult. Looking at Lee's demo piece and how he dealt with these areas was helpful, but with the best will in the world, I was too worn down and distracted. In the middle of the session, my office called on my cell phone--that broke what little concentration I'd been able to muster!

By four o'clock the light was fading fast, so this was as far as I got. I lingered a bit talking to Lee about the state of art in our current cultural climate. He brought up an interesting point: what eclipsed the impresionists at a time when they were at their peak was the modernist movement, which dealt with abstraction from nature and breaking down of all the "rules". Now that the "contemporary" artists deal with abstractions of an abstraction and there are no rules--where exactly does that get us? Other than the current ego marketing, that is, where the artist becomes his own creation to sell because he really has no other actual commodity such as "art" to market--those are merely pieces of any old junk passed off as art (because the artist says so). Is it any wonder the public is confused?

Which is why we really need to get back to having standards and actually learning to draw, paint, sculpt, or whatever by going through a process of practical training in an apprenticeship. And why Lee believes that the plein air movement is reinvigorating American art at this moment. I agree with him, or I wouldn't be there, of course. Looking at the light teaches us how to see color in all its infinitely rich possibilities, and yet make it new.

To my dismay, I came home to open my Artist magazine yesterday and read among the predictions in "The Future of Art", the writer believes the plein air movement, "which has been going gangbusters since the 1990's, will wane as a marketing genre." How about it, fellow artists, do you agree?

Extreme Painting in the First Snow

First Snow, oils on canvas board, 11" x 14," at Gallery 1683 in December.

I'd signed up to go painting on Friday with Lee Boynton and a few students. We were to meet at Jerusalem Mill, a historic village from colonial times that is part of Gunpowder Falls State Park a bit north of Baltimore. In addition to the restored buildings and the mill there is a very pretty covered bridge that Lee had painted a few weeks earlier and had really appealed to me.

The weather wasn't very promising: the temperature hovered just above freezing and they were predicting snow flurries, but we agreed to meet as planned. The sun was shining when I left the house but by the time I arrived at our site the sky was getting that leaden look. The others were already setting up their easels by the old general store. I was glad I'd brought an extra polartec jacket to wear underneath my lighter nylon shell, but regretted that all I'd brought was my baseball cap.

Fortunately, one of the other ladies had an extra winter hat she loaned me--I wouldn't have lasted long without it. I had just set up my gear, loaded my palette, and was ready to roll, when here came the flurries: thick, wet flakes. The background trees became faint shadows, whited out by the snow. The snow began to stick, even to our palettes, the ice crystals mixing with the oil paint made one lumpy mess. Lee said to use more medium to keep the paint fluid, but after a while it was useless. This was really more like an ordeal: extreme painting!

Two of the ladies retreated to the porch of the store, and eventually we all ended up there (by that time my gloved hands were frozen stiff). We decided it would be a good idea to take our lunch break inside the store. Even unheated, the inside was much warmer by comparison. The flurries had stopped, and a feeble sun emerged from behind the clouds. After lunch we walked a short distance over to the covered bridge to scout our the location. Two of the ladies didn't want to chance the slippery footing at the banks of the stream; they opted to stay in the village for their afternoon painting, while the rest thought the stream, rather than the bridge, was the better view.

There was a road crew cutting down tree branches along that stretch, taking up more than half of the two-lane road, so rather than driving, we decided to walk. Along the way, my new hand-made palette somehow slipped out of its case and fell on the ground face down--isn't that the way buttered toast always lands? That did it--cleaning the palette would take time, if I didn't drive I might not make it there at all. I walked back to the car, put my stuff in, and drove over to the bridge.

The others were painting away by the time I was set up, and as I was laying in the sky, Lee exclaims, "Look, here comes the snow again!" Again our background disappeared in a fog, but the scene was beautiful with its muted colors. Again we struggled with the snow crystals sticking to our palettes, making it all but impossible to see the colors we were mixing. I managed to record the scene with incredible speed while the others, working at a smaller size, did a second painting. We packed up and went back to the porch of the now-closed store to end our day with a critique. I was surprised at how well this second painting turned out.

Lee showed us some gorgeous winter scenes painted by Emile Gruppe, a New England artist working in the first half of the twentieth century, and we talked about his paintings. He must have been one hearty artist to have endured the outdoors painting Vermont winters! As we were able to observe first-hand, at low temperatures oil paint becomes very viscous and hard to work with.

It took hours and lots of hot tea to thaw out once I got back home. If I'm going to do this again, I'll need to invest in warmer clothing. Despite the cold, I enjoyed our extreme painting experience.

Rainy Day in the Studio

Last Class, Still Life with Oranges, oils, 9" x 12"

It was very rainy the day before our last class, so our teacher E-mailed the evening before that we would meet at Maryand Hall and work on a still life in the studio rather than go out to paint in the wet outdoors. I have to confess that still life painting has never thrilled me much, so I wasn't very enthused with the idea. But I recognize that there is a great deal to be learned from the study of still life, so I was curious to see Lee's demo and try a painting with the new insights about color I've gained.

I was a bit late getting there due to the slow traffic, and the class was starting so I had no time to set up before Lee began his demo. Verbalizing his thought process was wonderful, as usual: how and why he "edited" to select his particular composition, how he put in his main blocks of color and only after these were down and the white surface mostly covered did he begin to refine the color and shapes.

Since we were doing longer critiques for this last class and I had to lay out my palette, I didn't have as much time to actually paint as I would have liked. I struggled finding the right "val-hues," particularly for the green bowl and the blue bottle, and my shapes are not very refined, but it is amazing to see the theories translate into this painting. Strange how just the right val-hues can convey the shapes even at this primitive stage in the painting!