Tuesday 207: Not "Board"

Not Board / 4" x 4" / 2015
Sale Price:$207.00 Original Price:$300.00
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Last Saturday was one of the most beautiful days of this epic winter we've experienced here in Maine. The sun was shining on the slopes of Black Mountain and all the white that has snowed down around us became a perfect canvas for colorful gear, electric blue shadows, echoing laughter, and a full day of fun.

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Every Tuesday morning The Maine and jessicaleeives.com will post a new 207 Painting for sale. For a limited time these small works, each 4 x 4 inches on cradled birchwood panel, will be available for the special price of $207! Click on the image above to access the painting’s sale. New 207 Paintings will post each Tuesday around 5:30am EST and will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis directly through the artist’s website (no longer through a third-party auction platform — yeah for developments in soloprenuerism!). Should a painting not sell by midnight on the Saturday following its original posting, its price will increase to the standard $300 and be available through the store at jessicaleeives.com.

Tuesday 207 Paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Jessica is editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.

Working Days: John Steinbeck & the Art of Discipline (yes, my brain has been picked)

Just set one day’s work in front of the last day’s work. That’s the way it comes out. And that’s the only way it does.

I found great encouragement in Maria Popova's recent Brain Picking about John Steinbeck's diary, kept while he wrote his masterpiece, The Grapes Of Wrath. All creatives share the same basic struggles. Amazing. True. 

Popova writes, "Particularly of note is Steinbeck’s relationship with distraction, which encompasses everything outside the work — both positive and negative interferences. Life itself is a distraction from the living world he is writing into existence — visits from friends ('Sue and Bob showed up this morning. Had to kick them out. Simply can’t have people around on working days.'), outings on the town ('Good time but Jesus how the work suffers.'), rest periods ('Always on week ends I have the feeling of wasted time.'), his own body ('I’m a little sick today… It is time to go to work and that is all there is to it.'), the dentist ('I go to the dentist at four. After which digression, get back to work.'), and even something as neutral as the seasonality of summer ('Exciting but I can’t allow excitement. Leave that for this winter.'). The diary becomes his voice of reason, in which he is constantly counseling himself on retaining focus, as he does in this entry from late August: 'I must re-establish the discipline. Must get tough. So many attractive things are happening that it is difficult.'"

Taylor [Ed. — next-door neighbor] just rakes his yard and putters. But he would probably do a better job of this than I am doing. More ship-shape. I wish I were he sometimes. Just rake the yard and mix a little cement. How did I ever get started on this writing business anyway? To work.
When I think how I am not following orders to do what people think I should do, I am scared, but then I think that it is my own work, if anything, that will be remembered. I can’t work for other people. I don’t do good work with their ideas. So I’ll go on with my own.


Tuesday 207: Maine On Spring Break

Maine On Spring Break / 4" x 4" / 2015
Sale Price:$207.00 Original Price:$300.00
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It's only the last week of February but already I'm leaning forward, anticipating Daylight Savings Time, longer work days in a studio full of natural light, and increasing birdsong out the window. More wind chill advisories and snow may come, and I may not be traveling anywhere tropical in the month of March, but you can be sure I'm already swimming, snorkeling, and surfing in the studio. Studies say taking a vacation might not make you happier, but anticipating it will. Painting is, for me, an act of remembering because I work from past adventures and experiences; but it is also an act of anticipation. Oh to be that free, that immersed, that awestruck, that breathless, that filled with wonder soon -- soon when the painting is complete, soon when the seasons change, soon when I am in the water again. My imagination travels and so do I. So can you.

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Every Tuesday morning The Maine and jessicaleeives.com will post a new 207 Painting for sale. For a limited time these small works, each 4 x 4 inches on cradled birchwood panel, will be available for the special price of $207! Click on the image above to access the painting’s sale. New 207 Paintings will post each Tuesday around 5:30am EST and will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis directly through the artist’s website (no longer through a third-party auction platform — yeah for developments in soloprenuerism!). Should a painting not sell by midnight on the Saturday following its original posting, its price will increase to the standard $300 and be available through the store at jessicaleeives.com.

Tuesday 207 Paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Jessica is editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.

Tuesday 207: Wide & Groomed

Wide and groomed. This painting is for all the first-time snow boarders learning to turn on kind, corduroy bunny slopes. We all remember this honeymoon period. Heal side, toe side, heal side in long, forgiving swoops. Eventually we dare to take the chairlift up to steeper, narrower trails -- and we return home with a backside as blue as shadows on snow. 

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Every Tuesday morning The Maine and jessicaleeives.com will post a new 207 Painting for sale. For a limited time these small works, each 4 x 4 inches on cradled birchwood panel, will be available for the special price of $207! Click on the image above to access the painting’s sale. New 207 Paintings will post each Tuesday around 5:30am EST and will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis directly through the artist’s website (no longer through a third-party auction platform — yeah for developments in soloprenuerism!). Should a painting not sell by midnight on the Saturday following its original posting, its price will increase to the standard $300 and be available through the store at jessicaleeives.com.

Tuesday 207 Paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Jessica is editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.

Tuesday 207: Pond Hockey Sketch

Pond Hockey Sketch / 4" x 4" / 2015

Now available through Glesason Fine Art

Sometimes brushstrokes must be as quick and direct as shots on goal in the chilling afternoon light. Next goal ties.

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Every Tuesday morning The Maine and jessicaleeives.com will post a new 207 Painting for sale. For a limited time these small works, each 4 x 4 inches on cradled birchwood panel, will be available for the special price of $207! Click on the image above to access the painting’s sale. New 207 Paintings will post each Tuesday around 5:30am EST and will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis directly through the artist’s website (no longer through a third-party auction platform — yeah for developments in soloprenuerism!). Should a painting not sell by midnight on the Saturday following its original posting, its price will increase to the standard $300 and be available through the store at jessicaleeives.com.

Tuesday 207 Paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Jessica is editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.

Tuesday 207: Primary Colors

Primary Colors / 4" x 4" / 2015
Sale Price:$207.00 Original Price:$300.00
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Pond hockey season has begun! The Boat Shop set up it's rink last week. Saturday was an especially gorgeous, bright day to be out on the ice.

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Every Tuesday morning The Maine and jessicaleeives.com will post a new 207 Painting for sale. For a limited time these small works, each 4 x 4 inches on cradled birchwood panel, will be available for the special price of $207! Click on the image above to access the painting’s sale. New 207 Paintings will post each Tuesday around 5:30am EST and will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis directly through the artist’s website (no longer through a third-party auction platform — yeah for developments in soloprenuerism!). Should a painting not sell by midnight on the Saturday following its original posting, its price will increase to the standard $300 and be available through the store at jessicaleeives.com.

Tuesday 207 Paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Jessica is editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.

Water Warmer Than The Air -- a small painting sale exclusive to the blog!

I want to start the year off with a double dose of goodness so I'm offering a second small painting for sale this week. This painting isn't of Maine (did the bikini give it away?) but will still be available for the special price of $207 through Saturday at midnight. 

Last month I had the opportunity to return to Costa Rica for work. A friend and I created a portfolio of images and a video for my uncle's vacation rental listing. I'll share more information about the rental in a future post when I have more beach and surf paintings to show because, yes, alongside the hired camera work I took plenty of photos for painting in the studio back home. Making swimmer and surfer paintings has become one of my winter survival tools. The imagination is strong medicine. Second-hand Vitamin D is almost real. 

On the night before our flight back to Maine we spent every second of sunset playing in the surf at Playa Negra. It was Christmas Eve, and it was the most unusual experience of Christmas I've ever had. I think I understood the incarnation for the first time. I played and splashed and floated, surrounded by infinite bodies of air and water that were so...continuous, so infinite, and so close to my own temperature that I had moments of forgetting myself. And so it was, that in my moments of remembering, I was all the more aware of being miraculously, powerfully, and gracefully within my finite body.

The first 207 Painting of 2015...a launch!

Today I'm launching the new format my Tuesday 207 Painting sales will take here on my blog in 2015 with...a launching! 

In late November nine apprentice boat builders from The Carpenter's Boat Shop hauled two newly built Monhegan Skiffs to the town landing in Round Pond. Each cedar vessel contained within its fair curves months of work and lots of learning; and each symbolized transition in the lives of those who built them. After the skiffs were hefted from the trucks, the crunch of crushed rock underfoot and the breath of effort filled the air until a gentle slap and then the rhythmic lap of water on wood took over. Each skiff bathed in the magic light of a November evening in Maine, and in the pride and amazement of their newly christened builders.

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Every Tuesday morning The Maine and jessicaleeives.com will post a new 207 Painting for sale. For a limited time these small works, each 4 x 4 inches on cradled birchwood panel, will be available for the special price of $207! New 207 Paintings will post each Tuesday around 5:30am EST and will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis directly through the artist's website (and no longer through a third-party auction platform -- yeah for developments in soloprenuerism!). Should a painting not sell by midnight on the Saturday following its original posting, its price will increase to the standard $300 and be available through the store at jessicaleeives.com

Tuesday 207 Paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Jessica is editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.

Welcome

I'm looking forward to filling this space with all good things in 2015 -- first glimpses of completed paintings and works-in-progress, exhibition and workshop announcements, links to articles and artists of interest, instagrams, my writing, and editorial roundups from my other blog, The MaineHappy New Year to all!

One’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes.
— Andrew Wyeth