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In spring of 2019, American artist Sandy O’Connor was awarded a Copley Society of Art Visual Arts Fellowship to work at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts from Aug. 26 through Sept. 22, 2019. Follow along as she records her time spent in this historic art colony. Her focus is the subject of climate change and its impact on the coastal landscape of the Outer Cape. By researching, sketching and painting the natural beauty of vulnerable landscapes, she hopes to engage others in their protection and support efforts already in progress.

Weather: 75/63, overcast windy morning, sunny afternoon

Shhh…Visit to the Cape Cod Room at the P’town Library, Studio Time and a Hike on Small’s Swamp Trail

On my way to FedEx my husbands prescription glasses that were discovered in my apartment, after a long search at a friends art studio, two cars and a restaurant, I discovered a real gem. The Provincetown Public Library. I’ve passed it a hundred times over the years and never went in. There is a giant sailboat built inside the library on the second floor!! And it’s right next to the kids sections. Their little heads must explode the first time they see it! There’s a little room off to one side called the Cape Cod Room. It is filled with all books that reference Cape Cod. Including historical books which will be very helpful as I pull together background information for many of the places I’m researching and painting. I will be spending time there!

After an early lunch I hit the studio and finished two more sketches which I’ll do color studies from tomorrow. Then it was time to get ready for a hike to Small’s Swamp Trail in an area known as Pilgrim Heights in North Truro. My friend and watercolor artist Ann Hart from Harwich drove up for the afternoon to join me. Ann and I reconnected last May in Portsmouth, NH at a watercolor workshop conducted by Antonio Masi, President of the American Watercolor Society. She told me she had spent time in one of the dune shacks out in the Province Lands! I’m happy where I am now with running water and electricity but I would love to stay in one. I could do a week. Another new artist friend who I’ve mentioned before, Joan Cobb Marsh also stayed in one a long time ago. Such gutsy women! Joan is stopping by to see my set up at the FAWC tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow I want to be all day in my studio…until sunset.

The hike around Small’s Swamp Trail was peaceful and just beautiful. It starts out in a scrub pine forest with gnarly trunks and bright green needles. It was about 4pm and the sun was casting long gold shadows across the forest floor and along winding trails that took us up and down over ancient land that, according to the National Park Service, “was chosen by Native People for living sites for thousands of years for water, protection, and food sources, early-European settlers also sought to make a living on this landscape. Gradually, the soil gave out, farms were abandoned, and the landscape began its slow recovery. The forest here now hides most, but not all, of the former land uses in this area.”

Our next stop was High Head over looking East Harbor which was the geologic end of the Cape 6,000 years ago. The strip of land under Routes 6 & 6A along Cape Cod Bay is man made and connects this area to what is now known as the hook at the tip of the Cape. The sun was blinding and the atmosphere hazy which didn’t make for good picture taking. It may warrant another visit at a different time of day. All over there were little swatches of fall color in the vegetation.

After leaving High Head we headed back (see what I did there?) to the Fine Arts Work Center to freshen up, share a glass of chilled Seaglass Sauvignon Blanc, chips and hummus that Ann brought as a gift. We walked through town a little and ended up at an iconic restaurant, Napi's for dinner. It's a lively, colorful place with original local artwork collected by owners Helen and Napi Van Dereck adorning the walls at every turn. We sat at the bar. I had the cod special. 

https://www.nps.gov/caco/planyourvisit/smallsswamp.htm

 Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) presents Color Beyond Description: The Watercolors of Charles Hawthorne, Hans Hofmann and Paul Resika

I have to confess that I knew very little about these three artists before attending this lecture last night at PAAM. What I knew of Charles Hawthorne, 1872 - 1930, the celebrated teacher of the early Provincetown Art Colony, was that he primarily painted  portraits of local people working as fisherman and romantic settings. Dark, serious oil paintings is what I had in my head but as an article today in Cape Cod Today, who reviewed the current show, states, “Alongside and counter to these pictures he made free flowing watercolors using light filled planes of color which move through space and prefigure modernist use of color and abstraction.”

The article goes on to talk about how the “movement of color and form is taken up again in the watercolors of Hans Hofmann, mid-century seminal teacher in Provincetown and New York. Hofmann’s emphasis on movement of color in space is at its most fluid expression in his watercolors and crayon drawings. Hofmann loved the brilliant landscape of Provincetown, and his art school, which operated from 1935 until his retirement in 1958, promoted the idea of landscape and nature-inspired abstraction by encouraging students to work in direct response to the environment.”

The show also featured some works in gouache by Paul Resika. If you’re not familiar, gouache (pronounced gwash) is a water based paint that is more opaque than transparent watercolor which I use. It’s kind of chalky with body to it. Resika was a student of Hofmann’s and a colorist painter of the New York School. I understand he still paints here in P’town and carries on the tradition of Hawthorne’s “color spot” and Hofmann’s “push-pull” with his use of vibrant watercolor and gouache.

Hmmmm…nature-inspired abstraction in direct response to the environment sounds intriguing.  Cheers ~Sandy

Some links:

http://capecodtoday.com/article/2019/08/31/248551-Color-Beyond-Description-PAAM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Webster_Hawthorne

http://www.hanshofmann.org

http://bertawalkergallery.com/Artists/Resika_P/ResikaP.php