New Jersey

October 20, 2008

New Jersey should be called the most maligned state in the country. I am not even sure if "The Garden State" is still on the license plate but it was there for a reason. When I was growing up in Pennsylvania there were all the obligatory neighboring state jokes about New Jersey and I remember being surprised when I crossed the border for the first time to see green fields and neat little houses, not the Mad Max gray landscape of our imagination. With the growth of New York and Philadelphia, more and more of New Jersey has become urban but less than 30 minutes drive from the city is still open country. I also have a special attachment to Atlantic City where I had my first art job during college. I drew portraits on the Old Steel Pier in the days before casinos, when there was still a diving horse and a Miss America Pageant. It was a great place then and that old boardwalk culture is gone. Were it still existing I would have headed there to paint the Belgian Waffle stand I walked past every night on my way home. Today I headed to the Delaware Water Gap area and the little area near Polkville where the early morning light and shadow on a white fence caught my eye.

Rhode Island

October 18, 2008

Rhode Island is so small, it should not have been located so far to one side of the country. It takes commitment to get here, because it would be easy to not have to go through it on the way to anywhere. But I am here to confirm that it is worth the effort. Like most of New England, it has plenty of important history, much of it to do with its busy seacoast. The sun is spotty in the afternoon so I decide to paint before it is swallowed by clouds moving in from the west. I enter from Rt 96 in Masachusetts and follow it to route 102 in the western part of the state. Near Coventry I find good light and a horse barn to paint. As I begin to set up on the side of the road, the owner comes out and asks me if I want to buy the property. She is a very nice woman who tells me the horse graphic on the barn (not shown in my painting) was done by her son. As I am finishing, her son, Don West shows up to talk a little about art. He does auto detailing and painting and gives me a card. I apologize for the small size of my canvas precluding me from painting in the horse graphic on the barn. We arrive on the Rhode Island coast at Charlestown breachway in late afternoon and get some great photos of the fishermen who line the rock jetty. I know I will be painting from these photos in the future but glad I do not have to fight the fading light, wind and blowing sand with my paintbox.

Emmie and I have dinner on the coast before I take her back to New York. It seems like a world away in less than 2 hours as I drop her off in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge.

Massachusetts

October 18, 2008

One of the purposes of getting on the back roads of all the states I am visiting, is to see the true nature of the country. Over the last few years it seems we have been in an urban trend and even those areas that are not urban are trying to look more cosmopolitan. Many areas of the country are dominated by large cities and Massachusetts is one of them. I love Boston and the Cape. Don't get me wrong. I love the museums, the architecture, the history and the culture of great cities like Boston. But I think there is so much information about them, I'm not sure what I can add with a small painting. So when I look for the road less traveled for my paintings, I am looking for a thread that runs the breadth of this country that tells us what our underlying culture is. Today we wake up in Great Barrington, Masssachusetts and it is cold. We have been blessed with perfect fall weather at the peak of the fall foliage for this trip. Taking an early morning walk, I find that our hotel seems to be across the street from a castle. Searles Castle has a long history beginning with it being commissioned by railroad tycoon widow, Mary Hopkins in 1888 who ended up marrying the architect, Searles. I am a year late and $15 million short to buy it. It is presently being used as a private school, Dewey Academy. According to old real estate listing, it even has a dungeon. I rush back to the hotel to get my oil paints and bundle up. It is a great subject, one befitting Massachusetts and another testament to the benefit of being open to surprises along the road. Western Massachusetts also has plenty of farmland but I am happy to have some variety in my subject matter and to get a painting done first thing in the morning. We head east to Rhode Island.

Connecticut

October 17, 2008

Before driving to Connecticut, I picked up my daughter Emmie in New York so we could visit a bit while I painted the next two days. We got off the Interstate in southern Connecticut and headed up scenic route 7. My aim was to find a great place to paint that would show the other side of Connecticut, meaning the side that was not a suburb of New York. I intended to stay on route 7 but somehow got diverted onto 202 toward Litchfield. As often happens, my favorite moments on the trip happen when I get lost. (Everyone tells me I need a Garmin. Besides my belief that the annoying voice telling me where to go would result in me throwing it out the window, I like maps and allowing for following the road signs and my instincts.) This time my accidental instincts led me to a small farm north of Litchfield that belonged to the Ryle family. I stopped to ask permission to paint on their property and talked to the father and son. The son was a vet of the first Gulf War and I promised to show him the resulting painting. When I was done I kept my promise and had a nice chat with him. It is always surprising to me to talk to people as an artist and see the surprise in their face as they recognize (a) that I'm not nuts and (b) that I am patriotic. I finished the painting by late afternoon and drove north to Massachusetts for the night.

Virginia

October 16, 2008

Like all little girls growing up in a rural environment, I loved horses and one of my favorite books was Misty of Chincoteague. I never got that pony I dreamed of having as a kid but I always imagined I could just go to Assateague Island and pick one up. I was anxious to see, crossing over into Virginia, if they were still there. Like Maryland, Virginia goes from Blue Ridge mountains to coastal plains and the extreme ends of the state are about as removed from the DC suburbs as you can get. As soon as I got onto the island and pulled off the side of the road, I was rewarded with a view of a distant herd of ponies. In the children's book you imagine they are just wandering all over the beaches. In real life, they keep their distance and are in the salt ponds and meadows peeking out behind groves of trees. Since they would not pose for me, I shot some photos and chose to paint a beautiful salt marsh where they had been moments before. Far more eager to make me aware of their presence were the black flies. Sprinkling my arms with turpentine did not help but thankfully a couple of cyclists stopped to watch me paint. I begged a few sprays of repellant from them and was able to stop swatting long enough to finish an 8 x 10. By mid afternoon I was on the road again back to Pennsylvania and a quick visit with my parents.

Maryland

October 16, 2008

The Delmarva Peninsula named after the 3 states it includes is the thin strip of land between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It is comprised of small towns, state and national parks, seashores and tourist towns. The middle 50 miles of the eastern shore belongs to Maryland, which seems far removed from the Baltimore Washington area. In fact Maryland seems to be state of differing regions connected by thin strips of land and whose largest mass is a suburb of Washington DC. From the western mountains, through DC to the coastal plain, it is small but very diverse both in its geography and its people. Being from Pennsylvania I have been through almost all of Maryland at some point in my life. On this trip I stop in the small town of Snow Hill and the Pocomoke River where I find a lovely city park and a water lily covered inlet to paint. I am greeted by small boats of fishermen who cruise down the river . I must be painting a prime fishing area because as soon as I pack up they head into the inlet.

Delaware

October 15, 2008

I flew into Philadelphia to begin my painting week of the surrounding states. I drove immediately south to Delaware with the idea to return to spot I had visited in high school. I skirted around Wilmington and Dover, passing up beautiful historic landmark buildings along the way before heading through farms and fields toward the eastern shore. In 1968, Lewes, Delaware was a quiet historic town I visited during an oceanography field trip which I believe was run by the University of Delaware. In any case, Lewes has grown considerably. I stopped to snap some photos of the downtown before heading to the beach. It was late afternoon and I found a beautiful dune to paint before the last light of the day escaped. The following day I would continue along scenic route 1 enjoying the beaches along the way before crossing into Maryland.