Last February Heath and I signed up for a plein air watercolor workshop at Sitka Art Center on the coast. Something we have long thought of doing, as Phyllis Trowbridge is the instructor. Phyllis lived in Ashland for 8 years and we got to know each other well and painted together up in the Siskiyous. I have two of her coastal watercolors, a birthday gift from Eric. We rented a little house in Neskowin and it turned out to be even more delightful than anticipated – on a slope maybe 300′ above sea level and overlooking a very old golf course, the tiny town of Neskowin, and the sea. Visibility was mostly poor, it is a climate dominated by fog, but that was a lovely change (and a great painting challenge for me). The Sitka campus is ½ mile inland and we painted mostly on the estuary of the Salmon River. The Oregon coast is magical and varied and this area has a lovely river outlet and both bluffs and beaches. For painters, choosing a site is difficult, it all looks paintable. All skill levels were represented in our group of 12, but I was astonished at the final show-and-tell to find that Heath and I were clearly the most accomplished. Heath’s output was simply wonderful, even tho she has been doing pastels for the past few years. It was a magical interlude and went so smoothly and fast that we were back in Ashland far before we were ready.
Here are several of our paintings.
The 2nd annual Ashland Paintout took place on Saturday Sep 19. The weather was perfect and the 15 painters who showed up did some nifty paintings, but why the attendance dropped from 38 to 15 is a puzzle. The only thing I can think of is that the show was at Ashland Art Works, and not Hanson-Howard Galley, the latter being arguably the best in town. So we cancelled the judging and accepted all the paintings. Fortunately they were all pretty cool and the show looked great.
I had Market of Choice make two platters of nibbles and we had lemonade, as the venue does not allow alcohol. The setting was on Oak Street adjacent to Bear Creek and couldn’t have been more charming. Everyone else enjoyed the event – I kept wondering why 50 artists didn’t show up.
Jim showed up late and the paintings were gone. So he took a shot of Ann diSalvo and me which I like a lot.
9/25 The first concert of the season by Rogue Valley Symphony and the program was excellent – Carl Neilsen’s Inextinguishable Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s 2nd piano concerto. The orchestra has evolved under our youthful conductor Martin Majkut to become a really fine ensemble, and the programming is now a mix of traditional and contemporary music. It has been utterly transformed since our first, disastrous, encounter 16 years ago. Yesterday I looked thru our CDs and found we had all 6 Neilsen symphonies, which I have not listened to in years. So I started with the Indistinguishable and will listen to them all in the next few weeks. That’s what live concerts do, alert or renew interest and send you off searching for more. What a happy place this is!
9/27 Great sky event at dusk and Ashland came out in droves – I’ve never seen so many people walking around after dark all over town. I went across the freeway to a site with some unidentifiable equipment on it right by the road. And already at 6:45 there was a parked car – someone else had been checking out good sites. Soon there were 10 parked cars and an excited group of sky watchers on camp chairs. Quite a few cars stopped to ask what we were doing and some joined in. The moon became evident around 7:15 just above the horizon and morphed into a HUGE round glow of rich dark red-brown with a pale edge on its south side. It was truly glorious and eerie looming in the darkening sky. We watched for 20 min and then all left to see it at home. When I awoke at 1:30 it was its accustomed small bright self high in the sky. Lovely experience.