Carl Judson - Guerrilla Painter Notebook

Maine Revisited

I’ve taken painting trips to Maine with a friend several times. Each time, we’ve painted in the area around Stonington and in Penobscot Bay.

Of the 50 or so paintings I’ve done on these Maine trips, some are repeats of the same subject. Comparing these pairs of paintings has helped me to look more critically at my work.

I keep almost all of my paintings, good and bad, partly because they are a form of personal journalism, independent of their aesthetic merit, but also because I learn
from my mistakes.

Merchant Island Dock
Merchant Island, ME
Carl Judson © 1992
Oil on linen, 10" x 7½".

Careful observation and accurate drawing frequently (but not always) pay off in my painting. Here, the first painting (above), carefully observed and rendered,
is clearly the more successful. In the second painting (top left) my attempt to convey the filigree of the evergreen foliage by means of painterly shortcuts was less successful. A little extra effort in seeing

and drawing might have helped to better capture this more difficult view of the subject.

The Dock
Merchant Island, ME
Carl Judson ©1999
Oil on museum board, 9" x 13".

Blow Down
Merchant’s Island, ME
Carl Judson © 1999
Oil on museum board, 9" x 13".

Blown Down
Merchant Island, ME
Carl Judson © 1997
Oil on linen, 7½" x 10".

However, here the first painting (middle left) is based on more careful drawing, but the second painting (below left) is probably
the more successful.

The second painting (below left) was done on a rust red ground. I frequently use red grounds and/or draw the subject with a brush and some red tone ranging from alizarin purple to orange. The
red ground peeks through, helping to unify the painting and to define edges. Although not a “natural” observed color, the red or brightly colored edge frequently gives a sense of reality and position in
space. The phenomenon is called halation and is what gives many of Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings their visual punch.

Again, the first painting (left) retains a painterly quality with the halation from the red drawing filling the painting with a sense of light. By contrast, the more carefully rendered second painting (below left) lacks the life and excitement of its more casual cousin.

While not the same subject, these (facing page and below) were painted in the same location facing opposite directions. They are stylistically somewhat different, but both share a balance of painterliness and drawing using a brush and alizarin crimson on interesting, textured grounds.
Note that the tree and the distant shoreline (below) neatly intersect at the center of the painting. Figuring out how to get away with putting things exactly in the center
of a painting is one of my compulsions.