Here are some of my students on location at Hyannis Harbor yesterday. We concentrated on working small, fast, color studies.  Our ferry boat subjects moved in and out of the harbor to Nantucket. Everyone did a great job in the heat.

I have a new 6 week class beginning at the Cape Cod Art Association on Monday June 25, 2010.

Check out some class videos on Youtube.

Email any questions.

There are so many great places to paint on site in Boston, especially on a rainy Saturday. With the warmer weather,  I have put the studio work aside and am traveling around and painting on location.

This work is refreshing and a needed balance to the larger, winter, studio paintings I have been finishing recently.  I am trying to balance the existing work with these new pieces, balance the inside paintings with working outside now.

This is a photo of a roughed-in start. The third painting of a new Boston Waterfront Series  I’ve begun for my late summer show “The Bean and the Cod ” in Orleans at the Elizabeth Rowley Gallery.

Oyster River runs through Chatham Massachusetts. As a child my father and I weaved down it through the idle boats out to fish in the dark mornings. That’s what I remember most.

And for the time being I am still close enough to come down and paint along it’s banks whenever I choose. There are a lot of paintings here. The last couple weeks I have come back here to see Mrs. S. We can talk about people my parents were friends with forty years ago.  She has a garden built over her old chicken coup and the soil is like gold to this gardener. I have come by twice this June and her roses are still not open, so I painted looking back toward Oyster Pond and the town center.

I had noticed this view last week and have been painting it in my mind. She made us coffee as the fog rolled in.

There are probably a lot of artists out there that hide their art too.  There is something very refreshing about putting new work away, out of site, out of reach, out of mind, whether you are really conscious of it or not.  Before you know it you are busy on something else, then something else, and then one random morning you are holding  a new  French study that hasn’t been seen in four years. That’s what happened to me recently.

I was busy doing something in the studio and I came across this small study, and immediately I knew it was  from Sarlat in the Dordogne  region.  It’s funny how you can lose a whole painting for four years but remember precisely how you painted it that morning. It was misty and damp. I headed right out to paint first thing, finding a view,  working just off of one of the main roads leading into this Medieval town.  It was beautiful out, distant smoke and  rolling small farms.

But my study did not go so well. When your work doesn’t go well it usually means you don’t know what you are doing or you just can’t fix it  then. Sometimes it can be hard to paint on location when the view in front of you, everywhere around you looks so foreign and rich. When I came back to Massachusetts from France I put it away out of view.

So it was very cool to find this hidden study left in its state of discontent.

This was painted in France on a historic morning in my life. This day I realized granola tastes just fine without the milk. You can eat it right out of the box driving down the road looking for a strong place to work. When I found this small oil waiting patiently,  I immediately wanted to paint back into it.  It came together quickly.  It’s probably been percolating in the back of my mind over many  breakfasts.

Feeney,  “Salat France”  9×12 Started on location.

Available at the Rowley Gallery.

A  highlight-dot of color, is how I began to insert  figures into my landscapes as a focal point.  They were so vague and uncommitted, people  would ask, “is that light spot  a figure back there?”

Over the years as my oils changed to become more comfortable depicting people, the single figure is now often a part of the crowd. This has opened up interesting  subjects for me, to the point where I am a dedicated urban painter.

I like standing in the middle of a busy street taking my shots. I do. The funny thing is though, these anonymous faces are starting to feel familiar  now.I know them. When I paint my people I think about whether that  business man’s brief-case is heavy as he is  hurries to get home, trying to make that train.  I consider the window shopper and what day of the week it might be that  I am trying to capture with each piece. Your peeps will have a different vibe when you take your reference pictures on a Saturday rather than a Monday morning commute. These are all elements that are fun to consider as you work in the studio where the imagination runs away with you.

The business man that was catching the train in Paris twenty paintings ago is now following behind a woman in red, looking in vain for that particular shop on Fifth Avenue.

Paris Figures After the Rain

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Fifth Avenue Shoppers,  New York  (partial closeup)

The wind, the bugs, the tourists; what fun!  The days where your canvas focal point sails away from the pier mid- painting.  The days where your painting goes bad with the enthralled crowd behind you wondering where is she looking?

But you keep working, scraping down, rubbing out, wiping,  fighting with the oils till finally…  you think, to heck with it. Why don’t I just wipe it out right here? Save this canvas for another day.

But don’t.

Never, ever, wipe your painting out while on location. Because, your art will never compare while you are still outside. Nature will always win. Wait, and take it home to the studio. I guarantee it will look better.  Take it inside and study it then. Often times you will be pleasantly surprised with the days efforts.

Boston: Charles River Study on location.

I met  tourists from South Korea, avoided joggers and watched MIT students lunch.  Boston, it’s all there.

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Because there are so many ways to go wrong, and look foolish. It’s like standing on the first tee trying to keep your shot in the fairway with a crowd watching.

As I set my press the other day, lining up my sheet of paper to press into a mono print, I noticed my heart pounding and a slight shake to my hands and it felt like I was teeing up… thinking to myself, talking to myself, now don’t pick your head up Loretta, don’t try and kill it. Just nice and easy like Freddy Couples, right down the fairway. Only I was not on the fairway. I was hovering over a sheet of paper and plate. Taking my time, lining everything up as well as I could, guessing on the press setting, guessing on everything…like picking the right club and the yardage to the green.

Only I am an awful golfer.

To three-putt the green is not unusual to me. To lose a few balls to a neighbors yard along the fairway is par for the course so to speak. So this printmaking to golf analogy makes me uncomfortable, it makes me edgy. For a painter, so comfortable in the studio or on location, confident and self assured, it’s been a long time since my heart pounded with fear as I readied myself for creating. Maybe this is why I love printmaking so.

Someone told me recently that in China they use the same symbol for success and failure, because that line is so thin most of time. If you are creating art and you are not sure of how it will come out, than that is an exciting and dangerous way to work. That is the arena I want to create in. Let the paint drip. Let the paper slip. Turn the music up and take a chance.

This new monotype “Le Deux Margots, Paris” is one of two new prints selected for the

20th National Print &  Drawing Exhibition at The College of Notre Dame, Maryland, March 24-April 23, 2009.

The other day I was at Craigville mid-day in the rain.  I could see paintings in several directions. Sometimes the light is right, the weather enhancing  and the art so obvious.  Sometimes as a artist you get around to painting a scene you have been watching for years without realizing it.  You know what size to paint it.  How to lay it in, and it all comes so easy.

Now I did notice the tide was coming in but I just figured I would keep an eye on it. Starting my own study quickly so I could get an example on canvas for them. Within fifteen minutes I had covered my small canvas and went to start checking on the students. Make sure everyone chose a strong composition and had their easels set up sufficiently.

Quickly I realized the tide was not bad near me but it was swiftly moving in surrounding some cars and painters. “Everybody pick up and move out!” I shouted. “Quick quick.” I was impressed how fast everyone moved back up the dirt road to higher ground. They scrambled. I caught my breath and turned around to see that one student had forgot his easel and within seconds it was sitting in the salty water.

I went back and retrieved the easel and reset the class on safe ground nearby.

This gave me a chance to expound on the beauty of painting from memory. “Remember the clouds rolling past. Remember the distant dunes and the hint of color changes in the large marshland.” And they did.

All good studies produced from memory. Next time I could check the tide chart. Na, I would rather keep it exciting.

As soon as I got to our site today the students were all over me asking, “are we  still painting outside today in these winds?” A mutiny on my hands. It was indeed windy.

I listened to my weather radio after class and it said the winds hit 32 Miles an hour or 30 knots this afternoon October 4,2008. It just came out of nowhere. But considering last week we canceled due to a tropical rain storm I was somewhat determined in the second week of our eight week class to get working in the elements.

So if I cannot get them to paint in the difficult elements, then I would show them it could be done, that it should be done. Because it is only on days like today that an artist sees the trees rocking, the clouds souring across the sky, coming from the southeast. The noise was what struck me. The leaves and branches battering against each other. Debris flying through the air. But mainly the clouds roaring overhead in big billows of layers in a hurry to the bay.

I compromised and said we would stay while I demo-ed some important things and then we head back to the Conservatory to paint inside the rest of our class time.

They were all over that.

I set up to do a simple demonstration and it ended up taking two paint boxes to keep my easel in place to work. I painted quickly explaining what I wanted to capture today. A day like this there are no hard lines, no hard edges because everything is moving in the breeze. It is all blurred. The landscape is soft in the movement.

I finished quickly getting a solid study done and they hurried off quickly, driving to the classroom.

But I cannot help thinking of the missed opportunity today for them. As a teacher I failed to get them to work in the tough circumstances. Failed to get them to take the risk of a fallen easel or of learning how to weight one’s easel against the wind and take the extra five minutes to secure the canvas for painting.

Because it’s only when you step up to the challenge, that art is rewarding.