The Old Timer (pastel, 2011)

(Private Collection)
I realize that I haven't been very diligent about posting images here lately. It's not because I haven't been busy working; on the contrary, I've been too busy working to keep up with photographing everything and posting it here. This is one of three drawings that I did of an old potato house, which looks as though it hasn't been in use for quite some time, on a farm in Presque Isle back in August. I had to walk quite a way from my car, through potato fields and woods, to get to this building, at least two miles, probably more. I always enjoy finding these subjects this way, after a long walk into unknown territory, rather than simply driving up to something with my car and I like to think that, somehow, the experience of the journey there ends up in the final artwork.

View From Keirstead Farm (2011, oil on canvas)

(Private Collection)
I made four or five trips up to the Keirstead's potato farm in Presque Isle back in July, where I roamed around their 1200 acres of fields and woods with my back pack full of pastels, making two or three pastel drawings on each trip. I then spent most of the month of August working on this large painting which is based on three different drawings from the same view, looking south with the twin peaks of Quoggy Jo mountain in the distance, beyond the city of Presque Isle. On the first day that I was up there drawing, there was a big barn over towards the left. In fact, the first drawing that I did was of that barn, from much closer. When I returned for the second time, the barn was gone. Apparently, it got taken down by one of the severe wind storms that we had up here this past summer.

Road to Bernard II (pastel on paper, 2011)

I did a small pastel drawing of this subject on location while in Southwest Harbor back in late June. I recently did this bigger version here in my studio and I've recently begun a large painting based on the same subject.

Presque Isle from Quoggy Joe North Peak (pastel on paper, 2011)

(Private Collection)
This pastel drawing was also done for the Paint Presque Isle event at the end of August (see previous post). Quoggy Joe is a twin peaked mountain in Aroostook State Park. There are trails to both the north and south peaks from the parking lot, as well a trail that runs across the top, connecting both peaks, I hiked up the north peak trail with pastel gear and made this drawing looking out north towards the city of Presque Isle with the road leading into the park visible in the lower right corner. It was a bit of a challenge hiking up with all of my gear, but it was certainly more difficult coming back down while trying to protect the drawing from getting scratched by the multitude of branches that line the trail on both sides.

Houses on Chapman Street (oil on canvas, 2011)

(Private Collection)
This was painted for the annual "Paint Presque Isle" event sponsored by the Aroostook Partners for the Arts. Artists create work in the city of Presque isle during the day and then the work is auctioned off in the evening to raise money for arts programs in local schools. I parked my car behind Maine Street, on the river side, and wandered around until I found this row of houses on Chapman Street, just behind the courthouse. At one point about half way throught the painting process, I gust of wind knocked my easel over and the painting landed face down in the gravel on the side of the road and I had to scrape the whole thing down and start over, which actually turned out to be a good thing as I think that having to repaint it improved the painting.

Sand Beach Seaweed (pastel on paper, 2011)

While on vacation on Mount Desert Island my wife and kids and I went to Sand Beach one afternoon. I brought my pastels along and spent the entire time drawing. I did a view looking out over the water, but I'm not really happy with it and probably won't post it here. I think it's just too "picture postcard" for my taste. But the dunes in back of the beach with the seaweed on the ground and heavy clouds moving in – this I like.

Road to Bernard (pastel on paper, 2011)

This drawing was done while on vacation in Southwest Harbor from a little bridge on the road that leads to the small town of Bernard on the quite side of the Mount Desert Island. To my left as I was working was a little inlet with boats visible in the distance but those types of postcard-like views really don't interest me at all. A woman actually pulled over and got out of her car and said that she had to see what I could possibly be drawing since I wasn't looking out towards the water at "that beautiful view". A policeman pulled up behind me at one point also, and parked right in front of that big pole on the left, obstructing my view for about 10 minutes. I was expecting him to get out and ask me questions about what I was doing, but he eventually just drove away. I'm no sure if he even realized that he was blocking my view.

Cable Crossing (pastel on paper, 2011)

This was done early one morning while on vacation in Southwest Harbor. I wandered down a road called "Cable Crossing" which led from the Seawall Road to the water. It looks like the place where the power cables go under water out to the Cranberry Islands. This was a view looking to my left back towards Southwest Harbor. There are broken mussel shells everywhere on the shore and they give an interesting iridescent shine that contrasts with the dark brown rocks along the seawall.

The Narrows from Valley Peak (oil on canvas, 2011)

I hiked up Valley Peak mountain on Mount Desert Island with my painting gear to do this one. No small task, climbing a steep, rocky trail with a 40lb. backpack, a portable easel, a canvas, an 18" x 24" piece of masonite that I use for a palette and a folding table to rest the palette on. Top add to the fun, I gashed open my left leg on rugged shrub near the top and was bleeding all over the place while I painted this and was continually harassed by a hornet. Nonetheless, I found a nice view of The Narrows at the mouth of Sommes Sound out on a rocky ledge. The biggest challenge of all turned out to be getting the wet painting back down the mountain without smudging it too much.

From Manset Town Landing (oil on canvas, 2011)

(Private Collection)
This was painted from the town landing in Manset, looking out at the moorings in Southwest Harbor.

Seawall Grill (pastel on paper, 2011)

(Private Collection)
This was done from the Seawall picnic area near Southwest Harbor late one afternoon. I wandered around the rocks for quite a while with my heavy backpack full of pastels looking for an interesting composition before I found this rusty old camp grill which I immediately fell in love with.

Seawall Boulder (oil on canvas, 2011)

(Private Collection)
I painted this while in Southwest Harbor on the Seawall between Manset and Bass Harbor one morning as the fog was lifting. I believe that's the Cranberry Islands in the distance. I got quite a sunburn on my neck while working on this.

Red Cottage (oil on vanvas, 2011)

We spent the last week of June in Southwest Harbor on Mount Desert Island at an absolutely wonderful and lovely cottage owned by the Lesters. It's for rent and you can learn more about it here. I spent a lot of the time there working (I actually told my wife before we left that the thing I was most looking forward to about vacation was being able to work!), but did get to see some great sights and go hiking with my kids. I did this small painting on the first day that we were there, behind the kitchen of the cottage. My son was zipping up and down the dirt driveway just behind that big tree the entire time that I was working and I can still hear him making his motorcycle noises whenever I look at this.

"Home (Wright House)" (2011, oil on canvas)

(Private Collection)
This is painting I did in May of Nancy and Dana Wright's house, right here in Littleton. Nancy was retiring from her position as teaching principal at the Wellington School (see below) and Dana had asked me to do a painting of the school for her. A little while later, the faculty of the school approached me and asked if I would be interested in doing a painting of the school for Nancy. I explained that her husband had already asked me and that they should get together with him. A few days later they got back in touch with me and said that they decided they would like it if I did a painting of the house. They were worried about keeping it a surprise so I figured that the best time to work was while Nancy was at school. I checked with some of the staff to see if she ever goes home for lunch (Her house is just a couple of miles from the school.) and they assured me that she didn't. I went over to the house around noon on a day that the kids at school were performing the annual big play that they do in the spring, thinking that she had to be at school that day. I ran into a man working on their farm and let him know that I would be across the street painting and he also assured me that Nancy never came home during the school day. So I set up my easel and started to work and, sure enough, here comes Nancy driving right up to the house! I thought for certain that the surprise was ruined but it turned out that she was so used to seeing me all over town standing behind my easel, that she had no idea that I was doing a painting for her. She was even planning to buy it for her husband for Father's Day!

"Home Away from Home" (2011, oil on canvas)

(Private Collection)
This is a painting of the Wellington elementary school in Monticello. My son just finished first grade there and my daughter went there from pre-K through third grade before graduating to the Houlton Southside School last year. It's a wonderful little school and I spend a lot of time there, teaching art classes to the kids and volunteering for various things. A few years ago I painted a mural inside of Jack chopping down the beanstalk with the giant's feet coming down out of the ceiling. The school board threatened to close Wellington down this year but a large group of us parents, along with the Wellington staff, fought them and convinced them to keep the school open, at least for another year. My son's teacher, who was also the principal, retired this year and her husband asked me to paint a picture of the school. It was something that I'd always wanted to paint, anyway. The only difficulty was being able to get down there to work when the principal wasn't there, which was almost never. I went down on Mother's Day, figuring there was no way she'd be working that day and sure enough, she showed up to plant flowers out in front! Luckily, I'd brought my kids with me (giving my wife a couple of hours of peace and quiet) and they were riding their bikes around the parking lot so I had an excuse for being there.
At least half a dozen of the people who saw the painting pointed to the area on the hillside above the door and said "There's Tom Good's house." which I find interesting because it looks like this:


I like that people can look at what are essentially abstract swirls of paint and see something that they recognize.

Edge of the Wood (pastel, 2011)

Of course, I finally have lots of time to work and now the weather forecast is calling for rain over the next five days. I drew this on Monday (before it started raining). It's done on Arches Cover that I painted a layer of acrylic medium on to. The paper has almost too smooth of a surface, and the acrylic medium gives it an interesting texture for the pastels to cling to and I like the way the brush strokes show through the drawing and prevent me from being too "descriptive".

I live in rural Maine and am surrounded by woods but I generally avoid this kind of subject because it's virtually impossible for me to stand in front of a bunch of trees with a box of pastels and not feel like I'm standing in the shadow of Wolf Kahn, whose work I have admired for many years. However, perhaps in striving to transcend the influence of the masters whose work we admire, it's better to take on similar subject matter, rather than avoiding it, and work through it until we find our own voice. I do know that as a subject, the woods, especially at this time of year when the snow is gone and the leaves haven't come in yet, provides a very alluring combination of deep, atmospheric space and gestural, linear elements that offer a wealth of possibilities to the artist. It also reminds me of my childhood, when I spent countless hours exploring the woods near my home in Massachusetts, all of which have been cut down to make room for suburban sprawl.

Spring in the Air (pastel, 2011)

April was not a good month for making art. I had a 9 day trip to Disney World at the beginning of the month, caught bronchitis on the way back and spent a week in bed and then spent most of the past two weeks building and painting sets for the Houlton Children's Theatre's production this past weekend. Going out to draw on Sunday felt like drinking a big glass of ice water after spending a month in the desert.

Nice Day for a Walk (oil on canvas, 2011)

Working from landscape motifs in the brutally cold weather of northern Maine presents a myriad of challenges. The strong, bitter, icy winds make setting an easel up outside almost impossible and I am usually forced to work quickly, standing with a sketchbook in one hand and a pencil or pastel stick in the other. Working without gloves on is very difficult, but sometime a necessity, but drawing with gloves on can force one to work more loosely, which isn't a bad thing. I've noticed that the colors are more apt to change, both throughout the course of a single day as well as from day to day. I think this is because all of the intense, saturated colors have been drained from the landscape and the many neutral grays and the white of the snow are more apt to appear different colors depending on the position of the sun. In the absence of the vivid greens of spring and summer, the sky takes on a greenish tint, having no stronger greens to compete with it. This painting is based on a view looking south on the Currier Road here in Littleton, where the big hills of Danforth and Orient, 50 or so miles away, are visible in the distance. I did a painting called "Mailbox" a few months ago looking back down this road from the opposite direction. I worked this out in my studio from about half a dozen pencil and pastel sketches that were done over the past few weeks, out in the freezing cold, clutching my drawing materials between purplish-blue, semi-numb fingertips.

Leaving Russell Rock (oil on canvas, 2011)

I took my kids sledding about three weeks ago. We initially went to the big hill behind the Wellington School, which offered some great sledding. My son Damien talked me into going down with him on his sled and I reluctantly agreed. I enjoy sledding, but wasn't dressed for it. I had been out in my studio all day and was wearing my "painting" jeans, unlike my kids who had water-resistant winter coveralls on. So, of course, the sled turned around half way down the hill and we ended up crashing backwards into 18 inches of powdered snow and I ended up with quite a bit of it up under the back of my shirt and down the back of my jeans, giving me more than a bit of a chill. The kids wanted to continue sledding so I told them I was going to wait in the car and warm up. We left about 15 minutes later. I was ready to go home, but they wanted to check out the hill on the road to Russell Rock, which we had heard offered good sledding as well. I agreed to drive over and just have a look, but once we got there, they begged me to let them take a run down the sled trails. I conceded that they could take one quick run down while I turned the car around. As soon as I turned the car around, I found myself looking at this view. Having a sketch book and pencils on the passenger seat, I yelled out to the kids to sled as much as they wanted and then proceeded to draw. I finished this painting a couple of weeks ago, but had some difficulties photographing it.

Homecoming (oil on canvas, 2011)

(Private Collection)
I spent all day a week ago this past Saturday working – finishing up another painting (I had intended to post it before this one, but the photos came out very grainy for some reason), doing some drawings out on the Currier Road for the painting that I'm working on now, and stretching and priming a canvas. At the end of the day I went for a much-needed run and saw this view on the way back home, on the corner of the Framingham Road and the Shaw Road. I hurried back to the studio and did a quick pastel sketch of the color scheme from memory and then I went back to the location the next day and did a pencil drawing to work out the composition and the structures of the buildings before heading back to the studio and doing this small (10 x 12) painting. I spent about an hour and a half mixing the colors but once I started painting, it came together very quickly. I wanted to avoid over-working the cloud shapes while maintaining a sense of their transparency and I found the solution was to just slap the paint on and push it around a little. The little pastel sketch that I had done the day before, although done very quickly (a minute or so) and very abstract, was quite effective and I wanted to maintain the same type of energy in this painting.

Blanket of Snow (oil on canvas, 2011)

(Private Collection)
I painted this view of the old Schools barn, across the field behind my studio, last Saturday, January 15th, which I just realized was the five year anniversary of the day that we moved into our house here in northern Maine. Coincidentally, the first art that I did after moving in was a pastel drawing of the same subject. I can see this barn out of the window over my kitchen sink (where I probably spend more time, washing dishes, than I'd care to...) and it amazes how different it looks every time I see it. At different times of the day and during different seasons of the year and depending on the ever-changing northern Maine weather, the sky and field take on a multitude of different color combinations. I had some paintings in the house yesterday, preparing them for an upcoming show, and my daughter asked me what I'm going to do when I run out of things to paint. I pointed out that many of my paintings are based on the same subjects and that I could quite easily spend my whole life painting any one of them.

View from Ross Ridge (oil on canvas, 2011)

This painting is based on some drawings that I did standing in the snow at the top of Ross Ridge, looking east over northern Littleton and on into New Brunswick. I haven't had heat in my studio for the past week and working in the cold has forced me to work at a much faster pace, more akin to when I'm actually working outside and have to capture the image before the light changes. Not that I enjoy working with frozen hands, but the process of working in the cold gives the work an urgency, causing me to focus on the essential and minimizing the temptation to overwork the painting and fill it with unnecessary descriptive information.

Misty Morning, Clouds in the Sky (Pastel, 2010)

(Private Collection)
I did this a couple of weeks ago but have been too busy with holiday activities to get it posted.This was done in a field not far from my house on a Saturday morning after a couple of warm days and lots of rain washed away all of the snow (which has since come back). Working in the cold is never very comfortable, but the urgency to finish before I can't feel my fingers anymore always seems to give the work an energy that I like. I was standing in quite a bit of mud while I drew this and I learned that I should add a small tarp to my backpack that I can lay on the ground for working in such conditions, to keep all of my pastel boxes from getting covered in mud.

Home Before the Monsters Come Out (oil on canvas, 2010)

This is the old Henderson barn, on the ITS trail where it crosses the Wiley Road. I've drawn and painted this subject several times over the years. I was out for a run one evening about 4 weeks ago and, having failed to anticipate how much shorter the days were getting, I found myself with three miles still to go before reaching home and darkness quickly approaching. (Since moving to northern Maine from suburban Massachusetts, I have developed a strong dislike for running in the dark - way too many wildlife encounters, including several skunks and a large bull moose!) As I approached this old barn, it was silhouetted by an amazing pink and orange sky. I never saw skies like these in Massachusetts. I've drawn the barn itself so many times that I could easily do it from memory. I did several unsuccessful color studies in pastel – I think the problem was that they had too many colors and the barn wasn't dark enough. Then, one evening last week, I was walking out to my studio from the house and looked out across the street and saw a similar pink and orange sky behind my neighbors field, with a row of trees in back. The trees were almost black and the field was barely discernable. I grabbed my pastels and a scrap of paper and did a quick little drawing, which became the impetus for the color scheme in this painting.

The Light Is On, But Nobody's Home (oil on canvas, 2010)

(Private Collection)
I was out walking on the trail that goes through the woods around Deep Lake, where I have been numerous times before. I ended up staying straight where the trail turned left to circumvent the lake and ended up at the base of Front Ridge. I climbed the steep ridge and came out across the street from this old house. I did several drawings and a couple of color studies in watercolor before embarking on this painting. I've driven by this house many. many times, but never noticed it. That's why I prefer to go out looking for subject matter on foot rather than in a car, which is the reason that most of the subjects of my paintings are within walking distance of my house. It's evident that nobody lives in this house (In reality, those reddish plants in front of the door extend all the way up the facade to the second story windows, but I "trimmed them back" for compositional reasons.) but, interestingly, that big light that sticks out from the top of the garage comes on every night when it gets dark.

We've Met Before (pastel, 2010)

We had some very nice weather towards the end of last week. Of course, it's been raining all day today and the weatherman is calling for temperatures in the 20's by the end of the week and maybe some snow on Saturday. If I had any sense, I'd have spent the weekend raking up all of the leaves in my yard instead of wandering around in the woods making pastel drawings.

Vacant House (pastel, 2010)

I would love to know the story behind this house. It's about 2.5 miles down the road from where I live. Last year a crew came and dug out beneath the entire house. I used to run by it sometimes and the house was up on cement blocks with a hole about 6 feet deep dug underneath the entire house. I thought maybe they were putting in a septic system or something. The hole got filled in, the construction vehicles left and the house has sat there empty ever since. I drive by this house almost every day and the section on the left always casts interesting shadow patterns on the section on the right. I've been wanting to draw it for a while, but it's right on US Hwy 1 and there's no place to park or set up an easel. Last Friday I stopped in at the house next door and the nice folks who live there were kind enough to let me set up on their property and make this drawing.

Mailbox (oil on canvas, 2010)

(Private Collection)
Some paintings come together fairly quickly; when I'm working outside from direct observation, they have to. Not this one. I started this back in early October. I went out to paint on the first day, but it was too windy and cold to set up, so I sat in my car and did a pencil drawing and then a pastel. I went back the following day, in similar high winds, armed with several plastic shopping bags with big rocks in them that I used to anchor my easel and the little folding table that I set my palette on. It was bitterly cold and very windy, I but proceeded to work anyway, blocking in my composition and then mixing some colors. I turned around for a second and the wind lifted my palette, covered with piles of paint, right off the table and sent it flying over the fence to my right, eventually landing about 15 feet away, face down of course, in the horse pasture. I capitulated and packed my stuff up and brought everything back to the studio where I proceeded to labor over this painting for the next two weeks, making several trips back to the site. I was trying to capture an interesting sort of diffused light as the sky was mostly overcast with small pockets of light poking through a few small holes in the pervasive cloud cover. This gave everything a distinctive glow, with very few strong areas of light and shadow.

Fuel Tank (pastel, 2010)

Monticello Town Line (oil on canvas, 2010)

(Private Collection)
Tuesday was a gorgeous day – clear blue skies, 72 degrees and no wind. I haven't been able to ride my bike much in the past month since we had so much rain in September. I thought Tuesday might be the last day this year that I would be able to get a nice, long bike ride in, but it was also a perfect day for painting and I didn't have time to do both since I had to be home by 2:00 when my son gets home from school. I'm glad that I decided to paint.