David P. Curtis Workshop, June 22-24

I'll be painting rocks with David over the next three days in the Rockport, MA area.  "Rocks are Hard" is the name of the course.  The forecast is for rain.  Let's hope they are wrong.  Today I'm cleaning brushes that I received from my friend, Judy Rehill, from Florida.  A dear friend, Frank Miles, died last week, and some of these brushes were Frank's.  I hope his brushes bring me luck.

Colin Page Workshop - June 11-12

The first thing that Colin said was about how we had to work outside of our comfort zone, and it might not feel very good.  Well, I was happy to hear that since I felt to "down" after the previous workshop with Frank.  Colin had taken a workshop and had that experience afterwards, so now I didn't feel bad anymore.  He did a great presentation about values and massing and did a quick demo, then we all tried that lesson.  Then after lunch the rain came and it rained for the duration of the workshop.  We moved in doors and it might have even been better to learn the lessons that Colin taught which were many.  He had us doing lots of 1/2 hour studies and, for me, it was a lot less stressful and less tiring and it kept my mind alert as well.  I highly recommend his workshops.

Class at River Arts,  Damariscotta, Me.

Typical scene that Colin likes to paint.

Frank Gardner Workshop, June 6-8

Thanks to Suzanne Hoffman who found this cottage in Wellfleet, we had accommodations which had a beautiful view of the water and a great area to walk around in my spare time.
On Sunday night we met at Paul Schulenberg's studio, Frank's friend, and had snacks and saw some great work of Paul's.

For the first two mornings Frank did a demo of things we were to concentrate on. 

We painted two paintings per day for the three days I was there.  It was very hot and sunny.  The scenery was beautiful.  Jerome Greene, Frank's assistant, did a wonderful painting of me on Wednesday afternoon in a public garden in PTown.  My email has been down and I've been trying to contact him since.  I was pretty disappointed in my work during the workshop and wasn't anxious to go to Maine on Friday to take another one with Colin Page.  What happens is that it takes a while to sift through the ideas and techniques of the teacher and make them your own.