My Adventure at Sea: Shoals Marine Lab Artist in Residence Program, Appledore Island, Maine.

Writing in September, it seems so long ago, but just last month I was perched on a rock overlooking the crashing waves of the sea on a tiny island miles off the coast of Maine.

This summer I spent two weeks as an Artist in Residence at the Shoals Marine Lab, a remote field station run by Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire on Appledore Island, Maine. Every summer the island hosts undergraduates, high school students, interns, scientists and public groups all seeking an immersive experience in all types of marine science. And they've invited artists to bring their creative perspective to the island as well. As a resident artist I not only had free reign to wander the island a create art all day every day but to be part of this community and interact with a lot of amazing, smart, and fascinating people.

The first day of the residency included getting to the island by boat. Showing up at the dock in Portsmouth, I met professors and teachers for the two student groups that would be on the island the first week I was there. We had already arranged a drawing lesson for their students during the week, and it was great to connect with them right away. After loading everyone's bags on the boat bucket-brigade-style (everyone helps out when visiting Appledore, from when you first get on the boat to unloading on the island, dining room cleanup at meals, unloading weekly food deliveries, and cleaning out dorms as we depart) we were off on the hour-plus ride out the mouth of the Piscataqua River and about six miles offshore to Appledore. 

The island is beautiful, rugged, and filled with paths cut through its dense covering of shrubs, trees and a healthy amount of poison ivy. There are traces of the island's past as a resort in the 19th century, when a grand hotel stood on the east side, and the writer and poet Celia Thaxter hosted artists and creatives at her seaside cottage. Her famous garden remains and is lovingly cared for by volunteers and guides who keep her story alive. The entire island is ringed by rocky cliffs, beaches and tide pools. As an active seagull rookery, there are gulls everywhere and the island is rarely silent. They keep up a din all day and some of the night. It takes a few days to get used to it! Fortunately, I was there late enough in the season that they were not guarding chicks much any more and therefore not dive-bombing everyone in sight.

Aside from mealtimes, drawing sessions with student groups, and any other scheduled activities that I was invited to jump in on, my days were dedicated to painting. I quickly settled into a routine of waking up, going to breakfast, assembling my painting kit for the day and setting off to points around the island. I was most attracted to interesting rock formations spilling down to the sea, where the waves either lapped gently or crashed dramatically, depending on time, tide and weather. Most days I wandered a bit then picked out a promising spot. Covered head to toe in clothing, sunblock and a broad hat, I would sit or stand out in the sun for three or four hours, painting directly from the scene before me. There were ridiculously hot days, then a few when scraps of a hurricane passed by, making it humid and windy with great surf. I was only rained on a couple of times in the field. In those cases I would cover my work, hunker down in a rain jacket and wait for the showers to pass.

At mid-day I would hike back to the dining hall for lunch and hear about what everyone else had been up to that day - exploring tide pools, in the lab building or lecture halls, or out on the water collecting creatures or plant life. In the afternoon I would head back out in the field and either start another painting with a sketch, or take my sketchbook out and make a bunch of watercolor studies. I explored every trail around the island in the two week span, and ended up going back to many beauty spots over and over again. After dinner there were usually a few daylight hours left to do more sketching outdoors. I also had a bit of indoor space to set up as a studio, and later in the residency I spent some evenings there touching up and finishing paintings started earlier.

During the first week, I taught a drawing session with a group of high schoolers and a group of incoming UNH freshman. Hoping to keep the sessions simple but fun, I gave every student a small sketchbook and drawing pencil. Borrowing a large, stuffed Great Black-Backed Gull from the lab, I led the students through a process of observational drawing, using only straight lines to map out just the big shapes of the gull while trying not to focus on the idea of "I am drawing a seagull." After drawing the big shapes once, I had everyone turn around and try drawing what they had seen, fighting their brain's command to draw what they think a gull should look like.

We then returned to the gull and worked on looking closely, drawing it multiple times with ever more detail and concentration. It's a great exercise in figuring out proportions, building a 'scaffolding' for the drawing, and striving to draw what you truly see in front of you. I hope everyone had fun and found it useful! It was very cool to see students continuing to use their sketchbooks around the island the rest of the week. I did the same exercises with a group of adults the second week and it was so fun to see how younger and older learners faced the challenge at hand.

The two weeks passed swiftly by, and I made sure to get in as many sketches and studies as I could as the last few days wound down. What an amazing opportunity to have so much time, no other obligations, no housework or cooking to do, no other work than to simply make art! I am incredibly grateful to the Shoals Marine Lab for the chance to live and work on the island and find so much inspiration there. I can't believe I hadn't applied for an artist residency sooner!

I came home with a stack of paintings, a huge pile of sketches, a zillion photos, and a bevy of ideas for other paintings to work on going forward. It was definitely hard to get back to 'real life,' with work, home life and all the other things going on, but I came back recharged with my painting practice reinvigorated by the time away just painting on a rock by the sea.