The Women Artists of Monhegan Island (Full Documentary)

[Music] Monhegan is a rather remote island off the coast of Maine you can get here by various means and from various places there are a couple of different boats that service the island from Port Clyde I think it's something like twelve miles despite its remoteness it has always been a place where artists have gone to paint [Music] monkian is made of a very small village which is mostly houses close to a hundred years old or older clustered together it's a small dirt road there are no street lights or electric lines and then most of the island is a preserve probably close to 75% of the island is undeveloped [Music] and of course the wonderful nestling violent banana that sits off and kind of protects the harbor then you have this wonderful sort of the heart of the island the cathedral woods which are very thick evergreen woods and then around the edges are the famous headlands and the rocky coast which has been painted by hundreds of painters over the years the village of meheecan has a few small stores and restaurants of galleries artists studios there is a small power company that generates the power for the town and there's a telephone tower so that we do have telephone service to the mainland we have water tanks that hold water so there's public public water supply in the summertime when I first arrived our money money again it was a fisherman's Island there there were was caught on the beach they were filling cod there were bones from the cod the fish heads stank of fish and bait the bait barrels were full you know see bait barrels anymore this was the bait shed the bait shed they were huge but that's what they called them full of bait lovely smell it was a very different Island than it is today it wasn't touristy it was not as popular there we stayed at the money in house and had our meals at the trailing you and it just had an openness to it and it wasn't crowded it was very open there was a wonderful feeling and they weren't all these trees I that's one of my gripes now that the trees are taking over when I first got to Monhegan in the early 70s there was no central power there was there was there were no telephones so I lived in the house with a hand pump and a sister and there was running water in the summer but in the off scene since you you he did this manually the modernisation which has happened in the past 10 20 years has changed the character considerably I don't feel it so much because I I've been coming you know year after year but this summer friends of ours drove us up and they hadn't been here in quite a while and they were intensely critical of what has happened as far as commercialism is concerned the number of golf carts on the road the number of trucks the traffic it's just not there old man Hagan I think one thing that is universal about the population is that they're very independent you don't move here if you need someone to do things for you and so a large there are probably about 50 people who live on the island year-round at this point half of them or at least half of the people here are involved in fishing in some way whether they're married to a fisherman they are a fisherman they're a fisherman's child the rest of the people there are artists there's a lot here that draws people one is the light we're an island in case you hadn't noticed and we're a small island and on every side of us is the ocean overhead is things like Sun and Moon and so on and the interplay of light with the ocean brings something really unique in terms of what it does with color and with shapes and so on and I just think really the light as much as anything else is the thing that draws painters here one of the wonderful things about Monhegan is that you can really trace the history of American art by the artists that have come here and you would start with some of the Hudson River school painters who came came up here William Trost Richards and others you have American Impressionists who came out to the island you have obviously the modernists you have the ashcan school well represented by Robert Henry [Music] he of course was responsible for bringing major artists out here George bellows Rockville Kent you have wonderful post-war abstract artists so you have people like Reuben Tam and then you have all along artists representational artists of 1:1 Elgar and other people like Andrew winter James Fitzgerald so it's a wonderful island for teaching American art it's it's all there so I think the role of women in the history of American art is it's not very well understood first of all in 200 years ago you had to be pretty well heeled to be able to buy the art artist materials to create art and and women weren't after all we did not have the vote we weren't in many cases considered equal and so it was men who were supposed to be the artists not women I think historically women it's well documented that women's art was not taken as seriously as men's and a lot of the women artists who were out here that was also true they were either independently wealthy or they were the wives of of male artists and they their work was secondary they had other things that they needed to do to keep the house going and all of that and so so they would they would paint have less time to paint and that they're painting was not considered it as important as that of their husbands that said currently if you look at the list of artist studios on Monhegan it is female-dominated and i think there's a great presence of women artists on Monhegan at this point the scene on Monhegan has been greatly enhanced by programs like the women artists of Monhegan Island the Whammy group they have brought an enormous new energy to the island the women artists of Monhegan Island is a group that formed in some ways reluctantly because many of them don't wanted to just define themselves as women artists as opposed to male artists but there are very many women artists who are living and working on the island and I think they felt if they banded together they would get mutual support but also the the opportunity to show together and I think it was formed in defense of the fact that nobody ever thinks of women when they think of men even artists I have never felt the need to say oh I'm a woman artist I'm either an artist or I'm not and I happen to be a woman so it's not important and I think most of the people in the group share that feeling but every now and then you want to say hey wait a minute we're here and all of the shows and all of the chatter and all of the articles are always about men who come to maneechan and we're just waving a little bit of a flag I think they started out with a teen and then they begin my name is Francis Kornbluth I was born in New York City in 1920 I live in Connecticut most of the year and come to money in in the summer I've been coming to Monhegan for the past fifty four summers I came to Monhegan because it was a cheap vacation the thing we loved about Monhegan was the lack of structure here it seemed very open and as far as my painting goes I was originally landscape painter and wherever I turned it was another landscape and it was ideal for me well the subject matter of the island influenced me plus the fact that I developed a sense of myself here of looking within in a way that I hadn't before and I think this is what you do so artists you find out who you are really and nonverbal terms of course you you work and then if you've worked sort of bounces back at you and that's the way it goes the essence of the island has cinched it has a quaver raw quality in a sense certain aspects of it that it's like untuck it is touched of course but in a sense being right isolated from the mainland and being surrounded by water has a great deal to do with just the feeling that you have as an artist you're outside of society in a way you're an individual the island is sort of by itself you're by yourself I never thought of myself as an artist I thought of myself as a composer I wanted to be a composer I don't know but I never had any kind of career goal as to me having an image of being an artist was just unreal I never would think of myself that way I always loved to work with color and I used to work with color but now I have macular degeneration so I work with black and white and I do collage I do a lot of collage I've always done collage and I used to go out and do a lot of one err kind of drawing and painting but I don't do that first of all on ninety-one years old and I can't scamper up and down the rocks anymore the advice I would give anybody though is to Bluff I think respond to yourself that's really what I would say beauty lies in the eyes of beholder you really have to find your own strengths and know what you're doing to find your own way and to move along is really what counts my name is Joann Scott I was born in Brockton mass I came to von Hagen in 79 F when I became a widow to paint and it was so good painting here and under those circumstances that I decided to buy a house and I bought a house maybe one and this is that house was a good decision I I always wanted to paint even even as a little girl I think in second grade don't give me anything if you can't give me that box of pastels and my mother took me into both I was in Winchester Massachusetts outside of Boston and we used to go in and mother would take me to the museums and I had and the summer times on Nantucket I had art lessons I'm I'm a painter of nature light is very important to me I think it's the most important element I guess I'm a landscape painter mostly I paint things small things and I paint biggest scenes and I paint a lot of see my paints see from having been there but I usually paint most of the see paintings out of my head remembering what it was like if I paint a painting on site and I usually try to go back if I don't finish at that time to catch the same light I have as palette I paid the rocks a lot I'm known as a rock painter I think and and flower painter I paint a lot of roses over over my ears well I think composition dealing in shape very important deciding how you're going to approach a painting before you do it as an artist nobody cares for you paint or not so you have to care you have to plan you have to be organized with four children I was very organized she was a wonderful model her name was Felicia and these are dreadlocks hello my name is Lucia Miller and I was born Lucia Taylor and my parents came to the island I came with them for the first time when I was five years old in 1933 and I'm now 85 years old how about that I became interested in art I think when I was born I don't know I could not Elias memory as drawing and somehow the idea of art was very much in my life but that certainly doesn't explain why all I wanted was to get my hands on paper and I'd went to to art school I painted mostly portraits that's my basic background is is portraits and I love looking at people I love looking at human bodies and shapes I love light and dark and I have a very good time with it it's probably not serious art I'm I don't know what you thought what I do is figurative sculpture which seems like a misnomer to me but that's it I worked for my model and then I struggle not to reproduce the model precisely which my instincts make me reproduce this you know perfect human being and my aesthetic sense in that it says no I'd rather have something that has light dark sharp edges contrast so that when you turn it every inch or two you turn the piece will create a new sculpture I'm never happy another piece of sculpture unless it's it's can be manipulated and arranged in different ways I am amused by some of my pieces and I'm glad I made them the best advice I thought that I ever got was something my grandmother had said to my mother the advice was never try to please other people only please yourself I remember telling my mother once when I was about 14 you know Mom I really I really don't think I want to be an artist after all I think I really want to have fun and she laughed she said you don't understand about artists artists have fun you don't just work all the time sorry oh good I can be an artist that that was all I ever wanted to be I'm Alyson Hill I am was brought up in hanger Massachusetts born in Boston I always had a interest in art so when I went to school I majored in psychology and minored in art and got some art training there I got my masters in art therapy because I figured art and psychology were a good mix and but it didn't really satisfy what I wanted because I think deep down inside I really wanted to be an artist they just couldn't face that the first time I really found I could make money with art was when I decided to try art fairs and do portraits on the spot like heaven people say it and doing him from life and the first Art Fair I did was in Newport and I think I charged ten dollars for charcoal and $15 or pastel and I made $100 and I was so excited it was just like the best feeling that you know could have time to make money from my art the first year I came to the island was 2002 in February it was pretty amazing it was just like when I was like just astounded by the whole place because it was so different and so remote and you know dirt roads and just Mainers you know people really hardcore the winter landscape does inspire me the snowed really inspires me I love it payments now and I like actually the Oguri color of that the grass is even when it's not snowy I like that that color my art today is representational I like I that's what I lean towards that's what I love doing is representational I love trying to capture the mood of something whether it's a person or a landscape or a house or whatever it is a still life you know I want to try to get capture the mood of it I think that's the most important thing for me to get I think that's why I gravitate towards people because they are so I mean rich and you can get so much from under the surface [Music] I respect abstract I love abstract art but I guess for me to capture something a scene or a person is what gets what I love to do [Music] usually if I'm doing a landscape I'll start with a tone canvas and I don't do thumbnails or anything like that I just look at the scene look at my canvas kind of figure out what I want in my head and just sketch it out really rough and I work fast I think that I get fast because in the portraits on the at the Art Fair because you have to get a half an hour to do portrait and so you had to just like you know attack it so that's my philosophy I guess of how I approach the painting is just you know I don't think I just react and go at it and sometimes it works and sometimes I have to wipe it out and start again I never ever get bored on mine again it's just the most inspirational place I think I've ever been to paint it's so easy to paint there you just walked down the road instead of your easel and you know you don't have to drive anywhere you just and everything everywhere you look there's a beautiful place to paint I am Frankie Odum and I was born in 1941 in lived in Shaker Heights Ohio I knew I wanted to be an artist at a young age because of my sister who was also a budding artist and my father took us to the museums and encouraged us so we were we were growing up always doing art and when I was in the fourth grade I was making a beautiful drawing of a crayon Castle I had a Kleenex in my hand and I was rubbing it all over the crayon to make it come shine E and make all the colors blend and I said I want to do this I want to do this when I grow up I first came to Monhegan in 1962 I married into a family who were residents of meheecan from almost the start and who worked and owned the Dominican store so that was that was how I got to know all of people on the island very quickly I was drawn here as an artist too because of the beautiful landscape and the idea of being on an island and being able to see all around you and look at sky and look at sea and a lot of my work is about sky and sea I've really been able to use these as muses and it was all about one or two brushstrokes two or three and and it's also always been that way for me I wanted to have my work become as quiet and serene and and yet and yet compelling and I'm working toward that all this time and I'm really excited about where as well simplifying starting out with one size square I always I never I never worked with on a square but I decided I was going to do that and and just using a pen drawing it drawing on what I call a scaffold all those lines or scaffolds and then going in and working into that and trying to find the balance and the the energy of the piece and it's just very small but small can be good and less is more I think it's the creative energy that keeps people alive and Frances Kornbluth and several the other women artists who were elderly have been giving it all of their energy all their lives devoted to it as children as being devoted to your children this is something they would had to do and it's something I have to do in order to feel alive I'm sticking to what I have now right now I think it's just just beginning to open the door and it's exciting so after a lifetime that's right uh-huh I liked to die with the brush in my hand so peacefully not today [Music] I'm Giancarlo I was born in 1941 in New Jersey I first came to the island in when I was 26 to visit my great-aunt who was a painter here Alice Kent Stoddard and I came every summer because I just I fell in love with a place when I Dallas died I inherited the cottage from her I'd been coming every summer but when she died she left it to me and she also left her paints in the studio and after a year or two I said I'd like to try I didn't tell anybody I mean this art Island is so full of artists I was not exactly going to admit what's good but I I borrowed some paper and I just I tried and I loved the idea of putting the brush on the canvas and color it's just and I never thought about it but the only things I I wanted to paint were things that showed light I mean what's the point at high noon everything's light everything's it's not very interesting so the first things I did I think were sunsets they fascinated me because the from here we're facing due west and in June the Sun sets there and now it's here by the time we leave at the end of September it'll be or just over the tip of banana but every every night is a different palette I seem to have been doing a lot of interiors many people most people who come here are painting the island and the water and the cathedral woods and anywhere outside its the place well my place is my cottage and I had seen a ton an awful lot of interiors because the light in the cottage changes from one season to another so strongly that I can look at a painting and say oh well that was September oh that was Julien I had to be because and there it is if it's if it's an interior flowers which sounds sappy but what's important is not the pretty little flowers in the vase but what's happening with that bays what's happening with the light coming through it what reflection is it giving on the table behind it what distorts it it's all those things it's not the pretty little basil flower with the water all around I don't know that you can get better like the paint like it's it's somehow set in a reflective Bowl it's not there's nothing like it on the mainland and that's the island magic and I think that's what the early people found when Robert Henry and all those people came up they saw a magic to a pine tree looks different out here than it does on a riverbank being on the island has given me the freedom to paint because there's nothing else I want to do the outside world is not impinging I don't have to answer the phone I don't have to make photo send emails when I'm here and when I'm here by myself I don't have to stop for lunch I don't have to make that sandwich for somebody else I can just keep hating while I've got the light what I want the general community is supportive of the arts as well no one would dream of coming to your house in the morning unless they've made an appointment because morning is serious work time the island is is supportive of the work that's being done and does not intrude upon it and yet the whole island is is the art world it's it's all around you and it's a very generous community for that I went job went out drawing in these last three foggy days a little bit more kind of interesting for me because usually I work I work a lot in color but I also work a lot in black and white and these drawings seem to be staying black and white I'm Elena yan I've been traveling around the world for 73 years and I came to Monhegan when I was 11 come on he can just grab me from the very beginning and I think it's a lot of reasons coming from inland to the sea was just magical suddenly there was all this space and yet it was limited so I like that kind of you can soar out there in your heart and mind but you you know you have to come back to the to the kind of defined space that exists here and of course this space is it's very powerful I basically had my maturing here on the island and when I was finished high school and knew that I loved to draw and of course being here was so exciting because the lonely artists were very involved art was everywhere and it was a different it was a different atmosphere than it is now and but very good for a young person growing up I think I think the most one of the most meaningful experiences that I had with one of those artists was when I was 17 and off to college and then study art I had decided and I'd gotten into a good school and was you know ready to go and he thing he said to me that I should never count on my art to make a living he said it'll it just it it causes you to focus on the the end rather than the process and what's really in your heart what you really want to do kind of a like a wandering person around the world I like to wander in my work and I love to draw and I did you work in a lot of media I don't have one style but yet I have a certain kind of mark that comes out and everything I do right now I'm working abstractly but then I go out and I look at the rocks and I draw what I'm seeing in a certain way I'm interested in dynamic of that and the information that it gives me collages and things like that are this their subject matter there there's ideas there there's this way I've been tearing up old work I'm old enough now to have the right to do that I got a lot of junk up produced over the years something hey I'm gonna I love these surfaces but the final thing just doesn't cut it doesn't take it it can be a lonely business but I would I love about it is to get that that connection with what feeds my passion might say you know what I mean I just if everything here does everything so I get that from a lot of places I mean I can always find something that that grabs me I just this is sort of the effor out of which a figure and hopefully will emerge I'm Beth Van Houten I was born in Washington DC in 1945 I first came to the island to Monhegan in the latter half of the 70s I'm not sure whether 76 77 and I was only here for an overnight but I think even before I set foot on the wharf I somehow knew it was my place my sense was when I came that the people who were here came because they they liked aloneness and I think now there's there's so much organized activity that a lot of a lot of people come to be a part of that rather than away from that I came to art pretty late in life visual art I came to love looking at visual art and and started to draw them to paint myself and going to art school at night and weekends because I wanted to learn how it got that way and to try to understand what made one piece good not what made a very few pieces great and I fell I fell madly in love especially with the stuff of paint just the physicality of it um so that changed my life I jumped off the corporate ship and and followed my heart when Hagen is a it's a perfect place and in which to to pursue that kind of life it's a very accepted engagement on the island most places on the on the mainland one can't just open a studio shop and say hey come one come all here it's just a part of life so it's it's it's easier to to do that the one feels less vulnerable doing it I think here it's what I've been trying to do lately for the last two or three years pretty exclusively with the figure which is always intrigued me but with organic shape to is to using paint try to try to pull a figure or pull an organic shape out of the ether have it suggest itself and find itself without ever being totally defined because I think that that the extent you're totally defined I don't know maybe you're not interesting anymore and and I I don't think we really can totally define anything sometimes I do I work especially when I'm working on paper of organic shape but mostly this I don't want to sound pretentious about it but mostly it's not it's not pretty that I'm after we don't I don't want pretty I don't even want to the extent I could ever achieve it beauty unless it's unless unless there's an ugly element I think it's other people who decide whether or not you're artists I try very hard not to use that word v's myself I'm a painter because art who knows art is when it works and it only works for someone else it you can think it works for you but that's not what matters it's it's a communication my name is Diane Burke and I was born in Chicago Illinois in 1949 I came here as an adult for the first time I actually saw an article in The New York Times I was living on Long Island and it reminded me that this was an artist's Island and this was way back it was in 1975 I kind of put this article away for about four or five years and then I finally had the opportunity to come and I came by myself with my paints and and discovered money again and then just kept coming back and coming back and coming back it was just I think the beauty of the island for the tractors at that time and I was a landscape painter then I used to paint plenty of paintings and have since switched gears well I think what I noticed most here is that I always call it the big quiet it's it's got a big quiet that you don't find anywhere else and for me that's really important I like to kind of go to a quiet place to to tap into my creative source so that's real important to me I actually have a really hard time describing my artwork but it's really about play curiosity being open to what's going on right there at that moment I work really intuitively I don't plan out before I start I feel like I'm kind of at the point where I'm putting together years and years and years of work in a new way well when I start a piece these days I have already kind of accumulated all sorts of different pieces that that I'm gonna start with so I'm not exactly starting with a blank page but I do have to figure out how all these pieces are going to kind of live together and these pieces that I have have been developed through the years I feel again they're kind of my vocabulary that have been expressed in difference in media in different forms so I kind of feel like I start with just a whole lot of pieces and I spend a lot of time actually just playing with them I often sit on the floor with them and take out a big piece of tape and sit on the floor and then there's a lot of moving that goes on I just keep moving things around and moving things around and until I feel that it's it's working it's got the energy that I want and has some kind of dialogue going in there that I sense but I really don't want to completely say it I kind of want to leave it open for the viewer to see what what and how they're gonna get involved with it so I try and just kind of keep it alive and it's the hardest thing is probably to know when to stop but eventually I do I do eventually get a sense of that this is it and again I kind of followed the work I I really feel strongly that I'm not in charge of what's going on if I really you know right there with the work and and not distracted but really listening to it it is really going to tell me what to do so it kind of keeps organically growing into something and the night kind of saying okay I feel like it's done it's a real job for me it's a real playful way to work and it's an exploration how this comes out my name is Arlene Simon I was born in Yonkers in New York I came to Monhegan in the early 50s we came with a friend of ours from school who just pulled up to the house and said it was nine o'clock in the evening and he said we're going to Monhegan you want to come and we said ok we had no idea what Monhegan was or where it was and we drove all through the night we never got off we never left the money gained in a way we always came back we came for two weeks every year every time we came it rained for two weeks we tried every month in the summer and it rained for two weeks and we came back every year my husband and I both graduated from Cobian with a degree in graphic design and that's what we did graphic design and illustration he he did most of the graphics and illustration I did and I did illustration too and we did children's books and all kinds of things and it was a great life I do not do watercolors I don't do them well so I keep away from them I paint in acrylic on different surfaces if I paint on canvas I tack it to the wall because I don't like it bouncing or moving but I'd like to also paint on good in a very good paper and then mounted on wood I do sketches first like the the red sky over there which is called sailor's delight because it was in the morning I was out about four o'clock in the morning and I happened to have a pad and pencil and this this is exactly what happened to the sky it's a realistic painting it is not abstract it came rushing past me and I just took notes and sketches then I came home and did that sometimes I work from a photograph I've taken it depends on where I am when I go out to paint usually I just sketch it in and then bring it home and work in this studio [Music] when I do go out I usually do pastel cuz I don't like to work on in doors yeah and I don't want to like to carry paints it's a pain in the neck actually I must say that my father was an artist and my mother wanted to be an artist and they they really wanted me to be an artist and my father brought me my first oil paint said when I was about 10 took me a while to even open it he didn't give me any he didn't tell me how to do it unless I asked him oh they took me and he took me to the Metropolitan all the time and to the Museum of Modern Art when I was a little kid I remember going into one stairs and there was this big blue and orange painting very large especially since I was like nine eight and was women and he said what do you think of that and I said I could do better and he said I hope so and then 10 years later the Cooper group went to Museum of Modern Art and it was the Matisse bathers I remembered it I couldn't do better I'm in Lane Reid and I was born in Jersey City in New Jersey in 1949 I Twitter out my whole life on the high school level i twit in Jersey City in a big inner-city school but I wasn't really an artist I was somebody who knew little about a lot of things and when I came here I became a painter and just the peacefulness and the beauty you know it really inspires me it it just makes me want to share that with other people and and I guess that's what it is it's it's just such a if such beauty here that it just makes you take a deep breath and say God you know it doesn't get any better than this a lot of people I know think of lung Haven kind of as a place to heal you know a place to sort of recenter yourself it either resonates with your heart and your soul or it doesn't for me it's been you know a place to dream a place to be inspired you know it's it's a passion it's a part of my life I have a sketchpad with me all the time I you know if I'm quite in traffic cauldre no matter where I go it's almost a problem where you're distracted visually distracting I'm very drawn to high contrasting values and here on the island I for probably five years I spent most of my time out on the rocks doing large rock paintings and with light and shadow my process is that I'll see something that I love the pattern of light and shadows and here the lights fabulous I've learned to appreciate kind of the subtlety of the fog coming in you know and it's it's magical yeah it's just magic I think Monhegan is a place that's very introspective and at certain points in your life you can come here and really find it you know just the perfect place to be I think it's it's really to find things you're passionate about and not to waste your time doing paintings or drawings that that don't kind of stop you in your tracks you know I I I do believe in the discipline of of drawing and painting every day like I think that that's part of it that you need to have a sketchbook and you need to really try to keep up with it but but if you're really trying to do a serious piece you have to love what you're doing young people I would recommend that they find things that they're passionate about and not worry about whether you're working in watercolor if you're working in oils or it doesn't make any difference what materials it's trying to share your passion with the world and you know and then just do it and don't worry about what somebody else thinks just do what you love my name is Sylvia Alberts I'm a native New Yorker born in 1928 first came to man hidden in 67 for a week and that one week was enough to convince us that we had to come back again and again well I guess I have to start with the fact that I'm a self-taught painter I've never had any academic training and it's something that that on occasion I have missed I think that it might be it would be nice to be able to sit down in front of the scene and reproduce it on a piece of paper and that is not anything that I've ever been able to do well I started painting you probably about almost 50 years ago before then I had been a commercial artist for 15 years and when I started painting I was I was not at all serious it was a hobby really and I I started doing it because I didn't think of myself as a painter I thought that I wanted to be a writer except that writing was much more difficult than the kind of painting I was doing which was a relief and relaxing and it took a long time until painting became much more difficult and not at all relaxing and very frustrating at times that I really felt yes of course I'm the painter by the way I've always resisted calling myself an artist I I don't like that I don't like the way the word artist is used these days I mean I don't think that rock music stars are artists I don't think that great French chefs are artists I think they're you know they're chefs they're musicians whatever I'm a painter because I use paint the brush over the past few years I've tried very hard to loosen up because the fact is I don't see as well as I used to and and I know that my soul has to change I simply can't do this sort of detail but these efforts that loosening up are pretty complicated when you you know somebody of my age who started out with with a coloring book always staying within the lines you know it's loosening up for listening that process is not as easy as it might seem so I'm sort of fooling around with with abstract ideas but it doesn't come easily it doesn't come naturally to me you know somebody like Francis Collins for instance is a wonderful artist and whose eyesight is much worse than mine is still working and so generating ideas you know I admire and envy that ability the harder you look the more you see and it doesn't really matter much what you look at I can remember years and years ago being on the island with two friends we went over to mañana this must have been 40 years ago and we're sitting there and my two friends both artists are sketching furiously away and I said Howard how do you draw water and he said you just look at it I think that is the only art lesson that I've ever received and I think it's the only one that's important the more you will probably see [Music] my name is Joanne Rappaport and I was born in Washington DC in 1941 I was been very much involved with working with Peter Schumann from the Bread and Puppet Theatre and he invited me here in 1979 to state the Monhegan house and I was supposed to be here for a week and I came the first week in July an overnight fell in love with the island and found a play it took me two weeks to find a place I had to stay in a few different places but then I got the same room back I'm 29 on the fourth floor of the Monhegan house and I've been there since 1979 so that's my home when I worked no matter whether the paper is round or rectangular oval I work in all directions and if I feel like working in pan I work in pan or working with watercolor nothing is really predetermined but what I find myself doing is just putting the pen down someplace and just starting to play with the point there is a transition in my work because it got away from even somewhat structural forms and you're really feeling more of the island and I decided to work on only one piece of art at a time and to as much as possible because I know it's not really that much really possible not to have anything in mind as far as design or subject when I started to work nor even at what place on the paper I would work so I worked in all directions and what I found by doing that and not looking at it as a total art form when I started to work again is that there's something that lets you just play with a line and the form and the color and because I've had at that point I had 25 years experience you do have experience even though you may not think you're using it so my intuitive nature is now free because I've absorbed all of the technical skills from some very good training from Brooklyn College at Pratt and this is what my intuitive knowledge is left with is a feeling and I have nothing in mind when I sit down to work except the feeling and the energy of the island the whole nature of the Sun and the sky and the moon and then the weather conditions very much change even a tiny bit of a landscape or seascape and I think that's what the Hudson River School people appreciate it as well in such a small space to be able to experience so many different kinds of landscape and seascape and light and I never really think of my work even today as necessarily art it's my own intuitive feeling that comes through [Music] I started coming to mind Hagan in the early 70s and by the late seventies I'd moved to year round and I've been here ever since then it's brought up in an artistic family and I had an answer with my mentor who was the first woman editor at Random House who really wanted us to excel but was sort of like well you're no van-gogh you're no Picasso so why did you just not do art you'd always if I had a real phobia about painting and I didn't paint but I did go to fine arts school we have a fabulous community of artists and most of them are very willing to share something about themselves or what they know about painting so that it's very instructive and the other thing is they're not always living a lot of the artists have died and you can still say well how do you paint this lighthouse or how do you paint that scene of black head and then you can just refer to everybody that you know either through the museum or books and and there you are you've got these great examples of how somebody else did it and then you can sort of channel them and you say okay today I'm going to be George bellows and I'm gonna go out there and I'm just gonna figure this out correctly and you know it's not bellows when you're painting but you you've seen what he does you you you can read about him and then you can go look where he was painting and then try it yourself it is pretty incredible I paint seasonally I paint in different mediums and there they're all problematic but I go outside in the summer and I do studies and in the winter I do still lives or go outside and paint but less frequently I get way too cold below 20 and 30 degrees I usually get started outside and then work inside on these things for a long time so it's it's just they're just the beginnings and then I come inside and I really look forward to bad weather because I don't have to be out it's just so much easier and the still lives are fun because you set them up nothing is moving you can really work at them outside everything is moving all the time and you know it's just a challenge and I found that I was really comfortable painting in oils outside because you could just keep going after something and moving it around and it's it's very forgiving I try to do as paint light with color and even though I never feel I've succeeded I that's what I'm trying to do the other thing that I try to do now is that's why I paint outside and then I come back inside and say well that was a start but that's not what I saw so then I go back and I without going outside I tried to paint what I remembered that I did sink and that's that is the way that I paint now they go back and the beauty about mine Hagen is you can keep going back to the same spot so okay you didn't get it either by painting on the spot or thinking about you can go back time and again and you can look and say okay what did I see how did the light hit everything what was it doing I really admire people who can do it in two hours and they come back and they're they've got their study I've spent two hours I'm looking I'm working but boy it takes it's gonna take me another two months to actually figure it out inside I really love to paint portraits of the best but I don't do pretty people and I don't try to make a success of it commercially you paint what somebody may not want to have showing about themselves and it just seems to come out and you know as I said this it's not always pretty but the people are very forgiving and they're usually our friends so it's okay my Higgin really works for me I love everything about the boat right out here I love the security of it I love the weather of it the woods the safety the people have changed from the summer to the winter it just all works for me I really found my place my name is Katie nee Chappell I was born in Hartford Connecticut in 1945 and I first came to Monhegan in the late 80s early 90s on a sense of my destiny as an artist to find that community of artists on the island and be part of it when he ghen is a sole place for me and I think for many people for me it was a place I felt I came into myself that I had an idea that I wanted to grow into being a more full time professional artist the essence of Who I am is when I'm on the rock painting on the island I'm just there and nothing is interfering with my connection to what's very hard to describe as all of us struggle to describe the mystery or the spirit or some people call it God a connection within yourself but also coming from that experience of being particularly in nature I think I like to work in a lot of different mediums I was trained originally as a painter and printmaker I studied in Paris as well as in colleges in the States but really all of my work comes from a place of being concerned about the natural world about the depredations of humans on the natural world and awaking people to that interference and that that they're part of the web of life and if they whatever they do to the earth they do to themselves because it's all of a piece and so I I want my work to reflect that unity I would say when I was 5 6 & 7 if anyone asked me I would say well I'm going to be an artist and indeed I have but it's been a long journey when I'm on mannequin I cannot help but go with put my gear into my little old ratty backpack and go down to Pebble Beach or out to the back side and just sit there and paint and there's nothing like it and I started that way so I come back to it it's something I revisit every summer there's something about the island that makes you feel more alive because you're right you're on the edge of this of the sea you're on the edge of our country really and you're sometimes on the edge in terms of living you realize you're living there because the island allows you to my work may take off in different directions during the rest of the year but it's like an anchor I I can go back and be suddenly drawn into looking at a tide pool or a rock formation and noticing things because when you really are painting directly and you're in in the open air the plein air you're actually into your painting goes the sounds the sights the smells and all of it I'm Susan Gilbert I was born in Schenectady New York in 1949 I knew I wanted to be an artist when I was 14 my mother bought me some watercolors took me to the art store and bought me some watercolors and I absolutely fell in love with with the colors in the tubes and began to think of myself as an artist and a few years later I went to the Boston Museum school right out of high school and going into my second year a friend of mine told me about an island off the coast of Maine Monhegan Island so believe it or not we threw our ten-speed bicycles in the bus at about one o'clock in the morning got out in Rockland and and rode down the peninsula and crawled into the bushes and slept overnight and then got on the boat came out to the island and camped for five days up in the ball field and that was the last year that was allowed on the island actually so we we weren't terribly welcomed I think a lot of hippies or young people were living up in the woods and the island people had sort of had it but that was my first experience of the rocky island you know I'd seen sandy beaches all my life before that so it was quite wonderful I was I was enthralled kept coming back I really tried to be a more postmodern artist I tried to invent a statement of my own but I really got very bored with inventing something of my own I didn't find that I had that ability I find myself basically inspired by the late 19th century in painting continuing in that tradition of American Impressionism I think it's it's more what's outside of me that interests me responding to the world that I see with my eye in my hand and rather than an interior work which then wants to be expressed I think I'm more enthralled by the experience of being in nature and in being outside and in in seeing I'm more interested in seeing and I'm interested in the history of painting as how a painting is constructed and built so I've always looked at paintings very intently ever since I was a kid in the museum's in the in the big cities that I've been to and in the small regional museums I've developed a huge love for American art and I'm just very fond of that tradition and I find myself very comfortable within the realm of American painting first of all I probably am drawn to surf so if the weather is such that we have the wind and the swell and the tide and everything bringing surf to a certain part of the island that's sort of a first choice from getting the outside but I try to think about composition as well if I want to do a painting of boats in the harbor I'd think about the arrangement the size of the boats so I try to stand in a way that I could see those boats in relation to mañana and in relation to a certain time of day the light that would be interesting to me our early light and late afternoon light is more interesting to me than midday I've just found that the place was right for me I I love the island first I loved every Rock every tree every Bush every wave it was just a very meaningful and special place for me [Music] you

Channel: gaffersband

Views: 182,730

Keywords: Sonic Pictures, Mike Boucher, Michael Boucher, Kate Cheney Chappell, Frances Kornbluth, Joanne Scott, Lucia Miller, Alison Hill, Frankie Odom, Elena Yahn, Susan Gilbert, Monhegan, Monhegan Island, Monhegan Artists, Women Artists of Monhegan Island, Women Artists, Rockwell Kent, Jamie Wyeth, George Bellows, Monhegan Paintings

Id: R-08hn2LjNk

Length: 69min 58sec (4198 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 02 2018