Picturesque Five Islands

For the long Memorial Day weekend, my husband, Ken, and I packed up our new Chevy Volt with food, gear, a Corgi, a Cockatiel and headed to mid-coast Maine to the island of Georgetown.   The Plein Air Painters of Maine were painting Saturday at the Five Islands wharf.  What a great excuse to get away to the great state of Maine for a long holiday weekend.

The small, charming fishing village, Five Islands, is known as "the prettiest harbor in Maine" and truly is a picturesque spot for painting, paddling and eating lobsters 'in the rough'.  The village's working wharf is used by the local lobstermen for selling their catch and baiting their traps.  In the distance across Sheepscot Bay, the Hendricks Head Lighthouse can be seen.  The local scenery was exceptional for out-door painting.  But... typical Maine weather greeted me and others upon our early morning arrival at the Five Islands wharf: the air was thick with fog.  A lovely gray palette was worked up for the occasion.

We stayed at Back River Bend http://www.backriverbend.com/cottages/index.html in a converted sail loft perched at treetop level.  The height of our one bedroom accommodation  afforded us panoramic views of the river and marshes as well as sounds of the boatyard below. In the loft, Ken, a radio fanatic, enjoyed tinkering with frequencies while I painted afar in the fields and on the wharfs of Georgetown.

My new print, 'String Around the Posies', displays black flowers in a color arrangement of individually inked cut-shaped linoleum.  The center linoleum design with the circular red string, black flowers and yellow background were printed using the reductive method of one block.

My printer's alchemy changed the petite, yellow daffodils into mysterious blacks and laid them on a field of yellow. Bright colors always sing out loudly when highlighted next to black.

Black flowers were favorites of the Victorian gardens. My favorites are the Black Hollyhock and the 'Queen of the Night' tulip.

Or maybe the print expresses a little Goth in me, representing the touches of darkness and shadows in the corner of the garden.

With an invitation to create an image for 13Forest Gallery's summer show, "Tag, (you're it)", the catalyst for the print's image came from the children's nursery rhyme (see below) and a table arrangement of dainty daffodils from my garden.

Ring around the rosies
Pocket full of posies
Achoo, Achoo
We all fall down.

Some researchers associate the poem's meaning back to the time of the Black Plague in Europe.

My print, 'String Around the Posies', is a play on words and color: in an edition of 8 on BFK paper.


Tag (You're It)
@ 13Forest Gallery, 167A Mass Ave, Arlington, MA
May 11 through August 31
http://13forest.com/index.shtml