Nov 21, 2019 | Grateful Joy in the Garden, Peter's Musings, Photography as Art
Lewis Carroll’s Alice ends up on and in a chessboard, making a journey as a pawn to become a queen at the far end. At one point she sees the palace gardeners painting the white roses red, to please the Red Queen. So my question is, “why paint a garden at all?” Pause....
Oct 27, 2019 | Art Teachings, Peter's Musings
Although I use a digital camera to record what I think of as “notes” in long shots and close ups, I am a mental camera that stores an infinite amount of data. In my university and college lectures, I used to pretend that I was a camera taking stills, by...
Mar 29, 2016 | Art Teachings, Peter's Musings
Let’s just say for fun that most artists, like me, think of doing paintings in terms of the length of your arm. The smaller the painting, the less body movement occurs when executing brush strokes. The larger paintings require a stable floor or scaffold from...
Jan 6, 2016 | Peter's Musings
Marcel Proust wrote quite a long time ago that various scents would trigger a connection to things in our past…that a particular perfume or fragrance could connect us to a forgotten experience. This is also true of visual “reminders” as well....
Oct 20, 2015 | Peter's Musings
For some reason, I kept thinking of the mid 19th century Hudson River painters these last few days. After all, it was Thomas Cole ( whose panoramic “Voyage of Life” captivated me years ago, and still does), who really made Mt. Desert and Acadia known to...
Oct 13, 2015 | Art Teachings, Peter's Musings
Well, Jack Frost really messed me up more than I thought. If you remember one of the first posts I wrote when I moved down east in June– I was fascinated with the Schoodic rocks. And I was focused on “line.” Remember the black snake, the black...
Oct 10, 2015 | Down East Maine, Peter's Musings
O.K. I have waited for several years to spend the months of September and October up here in Maine. Even during the years when we could travel wherever and whenever we wanted to, we only had a few weeks. But now I’m wondering how to “fast...
Aug 17, 2015 | Down East Maine, Peter's Musings
In the few weeks we have been “settling in” to our c. 1880 farmhouse down east, we have had to rely on Home Depot and Walmart in nearby Ellsworth for many necessities to make everything work. As we begin to discover local businesses, such as Viking lumber...
Aug 11, 2015 | Peter's Musings
I moved to Maine thinking I would be able to paint. Well, my “canvas” has been the house and the barn more than canvas, paper, and panel. But my focus has been on “infinity,” and in particular, the infinity of God’s goodness. Last night,...
