“It is beauty that magnetized the contemplative, and it is the duty of the contemplative to give beauty away so that the rest of the world may, in the midst of squalor, ugliness, and pain, remember that beauty is possible.”
Still untitled 20" x 30" oil on panel
The noun of self becomes a verb.
This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music --
the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls,
and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Henry Miller
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207 Paintings post everyish Tuesday around 5:30am EST on both The Maine and jessicaleeives.com. Save thirty percent on any 4x4 inch oil on panel painting by making your purchase within the first week of its posting. Instead of $300 pay just $207, a number which just happens to be the Maine state area code.
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.
Three dips are better than one. The frigid waters of Frenchman's Hole renew the spirit again and again.
Three paintings are also better than one. Sign up for my occasional newsletter here and receive an email with a special offer to buy all three Watch Your Step paintings for $500.
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207 Paintings post everyish Tuesday around 5:30am EST on both The Maine and jessicaleeives.com. Save thirty percent on any 4x4 inch oil on panel painting by making your purchase within the first week of its posting. Instead of $300 pay just $207, a number which just happens to be the Maine state area code.
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.
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things I haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”
Foresight, 4" x 4" oil on panel
Join me at the opening reception for the August shows at Courthouse Gallery Fine Art in Ellsworth this Wednesday the 12th, from 5pm - 7pm. I'll have a collection of recent work on exhibit, including many of the new Acadia paintings you've seen glimpses of and studies for here on the blog and on The Maine.
Pictured to the right is the 5" x 7" Echo Lake Race, and below is Echo Lake Evening Swim, 4" x 4".
Without the sea, Acadia would be like a gem without a setting. Each headland, bay, and inlet reveals the majestic interface between sea and land.... The sea destroys and displaces, but it also builds. What the sea takes from one point on the coast may be added to another. With the irresistible energy of hammer blows, waves dislodge rock particles, smooth them, and deposit them at the head of nearly every cove. In still other places, the dispossessed stones and cobbles become gravel bars and shoals. Bar Harbor was named for just such a bar, which connects it to Bar Island.
Because the coast is [geologically] young, sandy shores are rare. But at Sand Beach, shore currents have shifted the tons of sand that the sea eroded from the rocks. Mixed into the sand are broken bits of shells and the skeletons of crabs, mussels, sea urchins, and other marine life.
[A] story that began with sediments piled on the floor of a primordial sea closes for the moment with those washed ashore at Sand Beach. But in reality there is no beginning and no ending. Rock becomes sand, and sand becomes rock. The granite of Cadillac Mountain, the cobbles at Hunters Cove, even a pinch of grit at Sand Beach bears evidence of this endless cycle. For indelibly written on the landscape, in bold stokes or fine scratches, is a script that tells the astonishing story of mountain ranges that rose and fell, of ice that sealed in a continent, and of coastlines that emerged and vanished. Source
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207 Paintings post everyish Tuesday around 5:30am EST on both The Maine and jessicaleeives.com. Save thirty percent on any 4x4 inch oil on panel painting by making your purchase within the first week of its posting. Instead of $300 pay just $207, a number which just happens to be the Maine state area code.
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.
I recently enjoyed reading this New York Times article,
How Walking in Nature Changes the Brain.
It provoked a further thought: if visualization is an important tool for an athlete's training (as studies show it is) could paintings serve as tools to visualize ourselves walking through nature, similar to the photos, videos, and daydreaming used by athletes, and therefore provide "brain training" opportunities in the places and times when physically getting outside is not possible?
I'll be thinking about this...
Beehive Backside, 5" x 7" Acadia painting headed to Courthouse Gallery Fine Art for an August 12th opening.
Beauty take us beyond the visible to the height of consciousness, past the ordinary to the mystical, away from the expedient to the endlessly true.
JOAN CHITTISTER
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207 Paintings post everyish Tuesday around 5:30am EST on both The Maine and jessicaleeives.com. Save thirty percent on any 4x4 inch oil on panel painting by making your purchase within the first week of its posting. Instead of $300 pay just $207, a number which just happens to be the Maine state area code.
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.
I hope to see you at the opening of Arts & Recreation, this Saturday from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. at The Good Supply in Pemaquid. It's my second annual pop-up show in this beautiful venue! I'll be joined again by Margaret Rizzio; and this year Grant Haynes will be with us as well. If you were at the opening of last year's show, you know this is a party not to be missed! Official press release below, and to the right a sneak peak at some new paintings I'll have on display.
Arts & Recreation: Jessica Ives, Margaret Rizzio, and Grant Haynes
Pemaquid, ME—An exhibition of new art work by Jessica Ives, Margaret Rizzio, and Grant Haynes will be on display for a two-week exhibit at The Good Supply in Pemaquid. The public is invited to join the artists at a reception from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 25, at The Good Supply’s post and beam storefront.
The title of the show: Arts and Recreation is a play on words meant to reflect the subject matter of Ives’s colorful oil paintings and the recycling process shared by Rizzio and Haynes to create their respective mixed media collages and acrylic on reclaimed material paintings.
Ives, a Damariscotta resident creates oil paintings inspired by outdoor adventures local and statewide. Arts & Recreation features a selection of her 4 x 4 inch “207 Paintings" appropriately named for the state's area code. Swimmers, paddlers, hikers, and other outdoor adventurers are captured in jewel-like moments. A selection of larger paintings will also be on view. Ives exhibits regularly with Gleason Fine Art in Boothbay Harbor and offers color theory classes through the Farsnworth Art Museum. In conjunction with this exhibit, Ives will host two color theory classes at The Good Supply on August 6 and August 9.
Born and raised in Blue Hill and now living in Camden, Rizzio received her MFA from SUNY Purchase and returned home to pursue a life of art. Her current work uses a wide range of mediums—vintage ephemera, found objects, repurposed frames—that embrace the passage of time and the beauty of physical objects in a screen obsessed era. Arts & Recreation will include various size assemblage pieces and a series of unique postcard collages. Rizzio exhibits at Turtle Gallery in Blue Hill and at The Maine Farmland Trust Gallery in Belfast.
Haynes studied fine art at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York in part because of the university’s access to the Adirondacks. Currently based in Belfast, his love of nature continues to fuel his endeavors both personal and professional. Painting in acrylic on reclaimed wood and metal, his style is dynamic and modernist. His work is concerned with re-creating structure on material that is fractured and cobbled together. He gives care to honor signs of reclaimed materials’ origins—identifying wear not as blemishes but as stories worth expressing.
Ives and Rizzio have collaborated on pop-up events and exhibitions before, and this will be their first time inviting Haynes into the fold. The Good Supply, an up-and-coming rustic boutique, housed in a recently restored 150-year old barn in Pemaquid, is known for its utilitarian work from Maine artisans. This pop-up event marks the store's second 2D art celebration.
Arts & Recreation: Jessica Ives, Margaret Rizzio, and Grant Haynes will be on exhibit at The Good Supply from Thursday, July 23 - Sunday, August 9, with an opening reception on Saturday, July 25 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Art is available for purchase.
Big Fresh, 30" x 40"
Two By Land, One By Sea, 4" x 12"
Low Tide Cast Off, 6" x 6"
Arrival, 5" x 7"
Island Summer, 6" x 6"
Lookers, 10" x 10"
Into The Cool, 5" x 7"
Foresight, 4" x 4"
If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.
RAY MERRITT
All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
ERMA BOMBECK
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207 Paintings post everyish Tuesday around 5:30am EST on both The Maine and jessicaleeives.com. Save thirty percent on any 4x4 inch oil on panel painting by making your purchase within the first week of its posting. Instead of $300 pay just $207, a number which just happens to be the Maine state area code.
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.
I'm super psyched that I get to contribute to The American Guide blog on a regular basis; look for my posts every month or so. Editor Brett Klein (who just moved to Maine himself) invited me to be a "Maine Guide" for AG and my first submission of ten paintings, an excerpt from the original Depression-era guidebooks, and a short reflection was published last week. I was inspired by my regular trips to Monhegan and a deepening interest in Maine's pre-Colonial history.
More about AG:
THE AMERICAN GUIDE is a revival of the Depression-era guidebook series by the same name. It’s part archive curation from back in the day, part documentary travel in the here and now. It’s here to keep a state by state record of an America coming out of the Great Recession and beyond: to document people and places both pretty and hard because, all things being equal, that’s what makes America, America.
The original guide series was produced by a community of regional writers, photographers, and artists — locals documenting their home states. THE AMERICAN GUIDE is where today’s mediamakers for all things American will be found, cultivated, and promoted. A/G has a crack team of 60 city, state and regional guides from all points North, South, East and West. And, like the guides before them, they are folks telling stories they know. A/G contributing organizations include: American Student Radio, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Bureau of Land Management, Casper Star-Tribune in Wyoming, LBJ Presidential Library, Lucid Inc., The Moth, and The Paris Review. A/G is featured in both the History and Travel categories on Tumblr with a following of over 160,000 folks and climbing. Click here for more on The American Guide team; click here to become an American Guide; or click here to submit a dispatch from your state.
LOOKING FOR SAMOSET — Monhegan Island, Maine
New Harbor was the home of Samoset, the Indian who, in March 1621, startled the Pilgrims of Plymouth by appearing among them with the words, “Much welcome, Englishmen.” He explained that he was a sachem and had learned the language from Englishmen engaged in fishing off Monhegan…. On his next visit he brought with him Squando, who became a friend of the settlers. Chief Samoset was a magnificent figure, tall and straight, his body naked save for a loin cloth. The advice of these Indians enabled the Pilgrims to replenish their dwindling stores, a friendly act that was later repaid with treachery. -Maine: A Guide ‘Down East’ (WPA, 1937)
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I ride the ferry from New Harbor to Monhegan Island, tracing a well-worn journey over waters once so plentiful that early explorers kept knowledge of them shrouded in mystery. When no hope of protecting the secret of these fishing grounds was left, a lighthouse was built on Monhegan to show everyone their way. Today I land on the island and hike up to and past this lighthouse, marching through rugged woods to the tallest cliffs on the coast of Maine. The wind here whips up a wildness and a searching in anyone who stands looking… looking… for the secret that was lost with Samoset.
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Editor’s note: Jessica’s artistic submission is the first since we’ve put the call out for more artistic contributions to The American Guide, as alternatives to the photos we so often feature. You can read more about the WPA’s Federal Art Project and our recent invitation to submit work here.
“Change happens not just by giving the mind new arguments but also by feeding the imagination new beauties.”
“[...] it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things—plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.”
-- John Steinbeck in The Log From The Sea Of Cortez
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207 Paintings post everyish Tuesday around 5:30am EST on both The Maine and jessicaleeives.com. Save thirty percent on any 4x4 inch oil on panel painting by making your purchase within the first week of its posting. Instead of $300 pay just $207, a number which just happens to be the Maine state area code.
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.
Remember these from exactly a month ago?
This is what they became!
Spent another day on top of the tallest cliffs along the coast of Maine - guess where? #whereinmaine
I've added a new Workshops page to my website to accommodate my increasingly busy teaching schedule. August is going to be packed with opportunities to develop an eye for color up and down the coast of Maine -- and I can't wait.
• Thursday August 6, 9-12pm at The Good Supply
• Sunday August 9th, 10-1pm at The Good Supply
• Monday-Thursday August 17-20th, 4-6pm at Sweet Tree Arts
• Late August TBD at Courthouse Gallery Fine Art
• September TBD on Monhegan
I love teaching this class and can easily tailor the teaser or multi-day workshop for school groups, arts organizations, conferences, retreats, or private classes. Email me and we'll talk possibilities.
*Love what Sweet Tree stands for and provides? I do too. Check out their scholarship campaign on Indiegogo and consider making a donation at any level. Become a root and receive one of my small paintings as a thank you!
Don't look down! -- or you'll go whirling and falling into space.
But you have to look down -- what a view!
The Beehive from Acadia's Sand Beach is a short trail with a big thrill.
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207 Paintings post everyish Tuesday around 5:30am EST on both The Maine and jessicaleeives.com. Save thirty percent on any 4x4 inch oil on panel painting by making your purchase within the first week of its posting. Instead of $300 pay just $207, a number which just happens to be the Maine state area code.
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.
I'm super psyched to be featured in the June/July issue of Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors magazine! In response I've received some wonderful emails, including one from Barb, a friend and follower of my work, who wrote, "It was such a great article and now I totally understand why you paint what you paint." Many thanks to my interviewer, Carl Little, who came up with the term "free verse" to describe the way I capture embodied experiences of the outdoors in paint. Read the interview online here or here.
Floating is a brand new 20" x 30" oil on panel.
13. No good life is possible unless it is organized around a vocation. If you try to use your work to serve yourself, you’ll find your ambitions and expectations will forever run ahead and you’ll never be satisfied. If you try to serve the community, you’ll always wonder if people appreciate you enough. But if you serve work that is intrinsically compelling and focus just on being excellent at that, you will wind up serving yourself and the community obliquely. A vocation is not found by looking within and finding your passion. It is found by looking without and asking what life is asking of us. What problem is addressed by an activity you intrinsically enjoy?
From The Road to Character by David Brooks
