Look at those smiles...Those are the real deal!! Just painted all weekend with my good friend and painting partner, Chris Volpe on a weekend painters get-a-way to the White Mountains in Bartlett, New Hampshire. Long over due...good times.
Champney pretty much nails it here, "..New Hampshires splendid scenery has been an enduring inspiration to countless landscape artist". Well said my good man!!!
Breathtaking little nooks were everywhere.
Volpe scouting a spot...feeling the presence of art heroes who painted these same locations.
My set up.
Check out this little gem by Volpe...Fresh, gritty pallet knife work. We talked a lot about past masters but also chatted about contemporary painters who inspire and are doing exciting things with paint. Particularly some of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts painters who seem to be chasing something...sometimes referred to as "Deconstruction"...a painterly, almost crude application of paint, sometimes using palette knife to create a sometimes battered textural surface... an attempt to avoid formulaic painting and composition. These are some of the hot shots we were drooling over...Jon Redmond , Alex Kanevsky, Fred Cuming....
We scouted painting spots in Crawford Notch and Bretton Woods, where we stumbled upon the grandaddy of painting locations...the very Grand, Mount Washington Hotel.
A perfect spot for a future White Mountain workshop, but that may have been the scotch and stogies talking...Here is Volpe inside by the grand foyer.
It really would be perfect for a workshop, aesthetically stunning location with world class painting motif options, parking, bathrooms, restaurants, shops, spa, swimming pools inside and out, fire pits, movie theatre and it's own post office. The porch was enormous and served as perfect protection at snowfall.
...I'm thinking, yeah...definitely a future workshop destination...get on my mailing list to be privy to the date should we decide to do it. That would be really fun.
Volpe didn't want to leave...I think he did three paintings on that last afternoon.
Me feeling very Italian with my old world lid and humongous shnozzola in profile.
A great weekend and I'm saying here and now...Painters weekends are good for the soul and are here to stay as an annual event.
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