A Sailboat Painting of Maine: how to capture a dream

My paintings usually start on location, but my latest commission began with a google search. The client, who lives in the Washington DC area and vacations in Maine, had found me through a keyword search for painters of sailboats. She described her dream:

"For twenty two years, I've closed my eyes each night and pictured my little house on the coast, the front porch, the late afternoon sails on my little boat. Thinking of those things brought me the most peaceful feeling."

I usually paint from life, but sailboats move too fast to sketch accurately. While visiting my family on Nantucket Island, I headed to the Rainbow Parade with my DSLR Nikon camera. From Brant Point I was close enough to capture the old wooden boats sailing past the lighthouse. I couldn't simply copy the photo because the client asked for a Maine background and Nantucket Island is in Massachusetts.

Maine is farther north and has a different feel: the islands are rocky and coniferous. The day I set out to paint at Lookout Point, the sky turned an ominous grey as the tide was falling.

I worked quickly but the sea became mudflats as raindrops fell, blurring the paint. In the rush to finish, I'd also gone too dark. Watercolor is the most challenging of all paint media because there is no way to fix a mistake. You can go darker, but you can't go lighter. My painting was a disaster.

I cut my losses by picking up a couple of lobsters. Allen's Seafood at Lookout Point sells them live off the docks at $5 a pound. My client is a professional chef so I felt she'd understand.

My husband boiled the soft shell lobsters on the barbecue and picked them out of their shells. He'd bought a bouquet of calla lilies to cheer me up.

A fresh farmers' market salad, baked potatoes and locally brewed Shipyard Ale rounded out the meal. It was a happy ending to a disappointing day.

Another day, another attempt, this time at home. It was getting too chilly to work outside. I set up my laptop with the Nantucket sailboat photo and propped up a more successful watercolor of mine of Lookout Point. Blending memory and imagination, I merged the images in my head.

Before painting a watercolor, I do several gesture drawings in a sketch book. These 30 second ink sketches of the main elements allow me to test several compositions before committing to paint.

Once I've chosen the layout, I transpose the sketch in pencil with more detail to heavy weight paper taped to board. Then I mix my colors and slip into a meditative trance. Two days later the painting was complete.

The penultimate stop was the framers in Topsham. I usually frame watercolors in natural wood, but this client had decorating restrictions. My watercolor might hang with family heirlooms in gold gilt frames or beside other pictures framed in black-painted wood. I emailed photos of the options. Since it was hard to visualize how well this would integrate in her new home, she decided to use her local framer.

UPS fragile packed the painting, but my work wasn't over. Once I've finished the first draft of my novel, I'll begin work on a companion watercolor for this client. (Thanks, Dad, for mailing a photo of a moored gaff rigged yacht). It's a wonderful feeling to capture a dream.

Reading Nantucket Blue by Leila Howland on Nantucket Island

The Rainbow Parade at Nantucket Island on August 15, 2013 © sarahlaurence.com

Step Beach © sarahlaurence.com

Every summer since I was a child, my family gathers on Nantucket Island. This year I read Nantucket Blue on location. I was impressed that young adult author Leila Howland found Step Beach. The access path is nestled between houses on the Cliff and then descends wooden steps to a long narrow beach. It's popular with us dog walkers. She also found my favorite sandwich: Something Natural's Cheddar and Chutney (but add avocado on pumpernickel.)

Howland has a good ear for teens and a fine eye for amusing details. Although it sounds like satire, many summer people actually dress like this:

"The parents were dressed in clothes as vivid as their children's. Grown men wore kelly-green pants stitched with yellow whales."

Unlike her best friend Jules, 17-year-old Cricket is not super rich. She had planned to stay at Jules's summerhouse, but when Jules's mom dies, the invitation is rescinded. Resourceful Cricket finds a chambermaid job with free housing (this is fiction!) so she can be there for her friend. Their unbalanced friendship was well rendered with clever foreshadowing:

"I liked the way I felt around Jules- like I was tipping backward in a chair, on the edge of falling."

When grieving Jules turns her back on her best friend, Cricket falls into a clandestine relationship with Jules's younger brother. Zack is a nice boy, but young is not the same as innocent. Sex is on the mind of all the characters, although the act is not described in print. The writing style was typical of the romance genre, but there were some nice additions like phosphorescence in the night sea. Having a younger boyfriend was a fresh tack too. The setting made Nantucket Blue an ideal beach book.

Sunset at Brant Point, Nantucket Island © sarahlaurence.com

It was a welcome surprise to find that Nantucket Blue was more than a summer romance. With an eye on college applications, Cricket takes a second job as an unpaid intern for an author writing a senator's biography. At this point, I'd hoped we'd get some meaningful reflection on politics, but the biographer's focus was on the senator's ruthless social climbing and scandalous secrets. This angle would certainly appeal to the young adult audience. Teens often view the world through the polarized lenses of popularity.

Like many debut novels, Nantucket Blue suffered a bit from an overworked ending. Cricket works too hard to tie up all plot strings: she confronts a former flame and then flies off island for two days to resolve backstory issues with her family. The story would have felt more realistic with some uncertainty. It was still an impressive debut overall. I look forward to reading more by this talented author.

I'd recommend Nantucket Blue to teenaged girls and to Nantucket vacationers especially. The Beach House by Jane Green, also set on Nantucket Island, would be a better choice for adult readers.

Reviewer's Disclosure: I bought the ebook because the cover would have embarrassed my teenage kids if I were reading beside them on the beach. The hardcover book was prominently displayed at Nantucket Bookworks, where I bought The Age of Miracles in paperback and Beautiful Ruins on CD.

Sunrise on Nantucket Island

Good morning!

Climb to the attic with me.

Watch the clouds dance,

The sky burn,

And the sea blush.

Dawn is pink and purple,

And braided gold.

They sleep in silhouettes,

While our sun defies darkness.

Blog Watch: 

More seaside vacations: Bee Drunken drove to Wales. Just a Plane Ride Away flew to Italy. While vacationing in Mexico, Books in the City read about Nantucket.

Congratulations to Alyssa Goodnight on her 2 book deal! Reported by David@The Education of a Pulp Writer.

"Moored Sailboats, Nantucket Island" watercolor by Sarah Laurence 8/21/10

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

Are you looking for a good beach book that isn’t trashy? Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead is a coming of age story set in a real African American beach community on Long Island. Whitehead describes it as an imperfect Utopia for youths in search of their black identity.

Sag Harbor is based on Whitehead’s childhood and reads more like a memoir than a novel. There is no over-arching plot. The chapters are more like linked short stories or personal essays. Some worked better than others. The Gangsters was a page turner, but the one about scooping ice cream for minimum wage (and all you can eat) made me melt with vicarious boredom. Even so, Whitehead made me laugh, such as when he described the flavor Rum Raisin as “the polyester of ice cream.” The chapter was titled: “If I could pay you less, I would.”

Whitehead skewers racial stereotypes found in novels:

“They were every shade of the dessert menu of words beloved by romance novelists to describe African American skin, chocolate and caramel, butterscotch and mocha.”

Whitehead’s humor offsets the racial tension of his 1980s narrative. The central characters are teenaged boys whose parents were the first generation to go to college. These doctors and lawyers send their children to private school in New York City. Their kids work hard to fit in with their white, privileged classmates, but they also crave a black identity and street cred.

Only during the summer can these boys hang out together and be themselves or the selves they believe they should be. They play with B.B. guns and talk tough, imitating gang members. This would horrify their mothers, but the parents are working in the city on weekdays. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt….

Whitehead’s story really hit home to me. I’m two years older than the author. We both grew up in Manhattan and went to the same college. My friends and I danced at the NYC clubs mentioned in the novel. The landscape Whitehead describes is familiar even if we didn’t cross paths.

I started reading Sag Harbor on the ferry to Nantucket Island (featured in the photos) and finished it on a harborside beach. I love when my reading material matches my setting, but Nantucket is the opposite of Sag Harbor: near relentlessly white except for the seasonal domestic employees from the Caribbean and a handful of other families. I had to resort to fictional diversity.

Although the focus is on teenaged boys, Sag Harbor is literary fiction intended for an adult audience. Teenagers would relate to Whitehead’s well-drawn characters, but they might not get the 1980’s pop culture references and find the pace too slow. It would still be an interesting book to read along with your teenager to discuss race and peer pressure. Whitehead has an original and engaging voice. Listen:

“The sky over the wetlands was a fine, simmering blue, slowly boiling up morning. Before you lay the dead, misty surface of the bay, and imperturbable line of dark gray, a slab of ancient stone come out from under the earth. A reversal there: the sky was liquid, the water a solid screen. There were fewer boats then to zit the surface of the bay. No one to be seen at that hour, emboldening that cherished dread of early risers, that you were the only being alive and awake in the world. Occasionally some drowsily dipping seagull shot into the water....”

-Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

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Wild Things

I’m back from my blissful vacation on Nantucket Island (above.) I missed all the excitement back home in Maine. A moose went OVER the dam in town. That’s a good 30 foot drop in high rapids down to sharp rocks.

Amazingly the adolescent moose survived the fall and climbed onto an island. He munched some greens before swimming to the bank of the Androscoggin River. The incessant rain in Maine this summer had raised the water level. Lucky moose (photo by Troy R. Bennett for The Times Record.) It was a big story in our local paper.

I heard about the moosecapade from my neighbor, author Cynthia Lord. In her blog Cynthia quoted a Maine warden:

“It’s just one of those moose that’s a year-and-a-half old, and trying to learn to be a moose. He hasn’t really figured it out yet."

My woods have only chipmunks, squirrels and birds, but my neighbors had some fun guests. This vixen denned in their woodshed for several weeks while raising her kits (photo by Robert Rand.) We’ve only once spotted a fox in our yard in town.

To see wildlife in abundance, you need to drive 2-3 hours north from the coast. The North Woods of Maine have only a few dirt roads, lots of lakes and plenty of black flies. The interior is almost unpopulated and 90% of the entire state is forested.

My son is hiking the Appalachian Mountain Trail from central Maine to the peak of Katahdin (tallest mountain in Maine.) It will take three weeks. He’ll turn 15 on the trail. And, no, my son doesn’t have a mistress in Argentina like Governor Stanford. Talking about wild things….

When my son was little, his favorite story was Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. It got to the point where I could recite it without looking at anything but the fabulous illustrations.

“The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved good bye….”

Where the Wild Things Are is being turned into a movie:



Sleep well and Happy Birthday, wild thing!

Reflections on Writing, Art and Fashion

"Nantucket Red" watercolor by Sarah Laurence 8/14/08

Usually my two careers, writing and art, do not overlap. I paint outside in the summer and write novels during the school year. Last week I met a man who asked, “Novels and art? Is that right brain or left brain?”

I laughed and replied, “Both and neither. If I had a brain, I would choose at least one lucrative career, but I love them both.”

Lately the line between art and writing has blurred. It all started in my blog where my writing and photography came together. Three weeks ago I blogged about Jane Green’s novel, The Beach House. I had fun retracing her footsteps on Nantucket Island, where I spend time every summer.

Step Beach, Nantucket Island

The author discovered my book review on-line and admired my blog header painting. Jane was looking for a special gift for her partner who loves boats and Nantucket. She ended up buying him “Nantucket Red.” Her partner will get the joke: Nantucket Red is a cloth originally made on island that fades to pink. It’s popular with sailors.

Jane’s a blogger too, and much to my amusement, my painting is in her post “Planet Fashion Calling.” Jane is friends with Martha Stewart; they both live in chic Westport, Connecticut. Her novels and blog are full of amusing anecdotes about well-heeled suburban life. She also blogs about politics, cooking, parenting and writing. It’s a fun blog (in my sidebar.)

My eleven-year-old daughter (right) burst into giggles when she read the title, “No offense, Mommy, but you and fashion?”

I’ve never bothered keeping up with the latest trends. I’m short and hourglass shaped so shopping is a nightmare. Jeans need to be taken up inches in the rare case I find ones that fit. I like nice clothes but can’t understand why fashions change. I wear things until they have holes.

My favorite item in my wardrobe are these retro flower power boots from Arche that even my daughter calls cool.

My NYC friends call me bohemian. They say I can get away with it as a creative type. So the shoe fits, and it fits well in Maine. That is in the rare occasion I’m wearing shoes instead of hiking boots or flip flops.

In sandy-snowy-muddy Maine, folks dress for the weather, not for fashion. A newcomer asked if L.L.Bean boots and jeans would be okay to wear to a party. The host laughed, “Bean boots and jeans are always okay.”

L.L.Bean’s headquarters are in Freeport, the next town over. Several of the moms I know work the holiday season shift in the factory. One friend of mine edits the catalogue.

It was the contrast between small town Maine and my hometown of Manhattan that motivated me to start writing novels. After a year sabbatical in England, I’m writing a new book, NOT CRICKET, that puts two generations of Maine women at Oxford University.

Radcliffe Square, Oxford University

Fish out of water stories appeal to me. I don’t really fit in anywhere, and yet I look comfortable enough that strangers ask me for directions, no matter where I am. My agent, Jean Naggar, suggested that this lack of fit is part of what makes my writing good. It’s easy for me to stand back to get perspective.

It’s also important to get perspective in art. Halfway through my "Nantucket Red" painting, I flipped it upside down. When I was finished (thanks for waiting!) a woman approached to question me. I explained that I have to trick the rational left hemisphere of my brain which sees a boat. When a painting is upside down, my artistic right hemisphere can see a composition and check for balance.

It’s hard to see in the reproduction, but some red is worked into the seaweed and washed into the skyline. Red is the most difficult color to handle in watercolor. Other colors can be lifted off the paper with a sponge. Red stains like blood and mixes with green to make brown. I add the red last when the paper is dry.

I don’t paint exactly what is there. I removed the extra sailboats. The balance improved when I shifted the seagull to the right, but then he took flight. I had to paint him from memory. The sailboat kept swinging around its mooring.

I was working on a boat launch beach halfway between Jetties Beach and the Brant Point lighthouse so there were people dragging dinghies past me. Mosquitoes were buzzing. The painting looks so peaceful, but the process was turbulent. I still feel calm looking at it, remembering the beauty of the island.

When novelist Jane Green bought this painting, I was thrilled but somewhat disconcerted. It felt like my two careers had flipped. Was Jane a fellow writer or an art client? I learned that my agent co-represented Jane for her first book sold in the USA. Jane is English but now lives in the USA with an American, the reverse of me and my husband. I've gotten to know Jane a bit through our blogs and e-mails, and she's really nice. Our lives are like a reflection with the line between us blurred.

My art career is coming into sharper focus. I’ve added pages of watercolors and photos to my website. I've already had another inquiry about the "Nantucket Red" painting, but I don't sell duplicates (although I retain reproduction rights.) Watercolors look best in the original form.

This week the on-line journal nantucket-art.com posted a feature on me. Check it out. It’s a great way to get a sense of the art scene on the island. The journal is written in blog style. Answering Nantucket Art’s questions, I found myself mentioning my writing too.

An artist is the protagonist of my work in progress. It’s fun to be writing about art, to bring those two sides of me into one character. In fiction there need not be borders.

The Beach House on Nantucket

Do you ever try to match your reading to your vacation?

I was delighted to discover Jane Green’s The Beach House set on Nantucket before I headed to the island. With an eccentric lady running a summer boardinghouse on the bluff, the novel was clearly beachside material.

Maybe it was the just the hot sun or the sway of the hammock, but I didn’t feel like the plot took off until the characters reached the island. There it became an engaging fantasy with a lovely sense of place. Only on Nantucket could all troubles (and this book is chock-full of modern malaise) melt away on a summer breeze.

I set out to Siasconset (called ‘Sconset) in search of Green’s inspiration. The old fishing village is indeed a charming setting. Earlier in the summer all the rambling rooftop roses would be blooming.

Many of the cottages date back centuries. It’s not my camera that is crooked.

I left Siasconset Village and headed to the bluff where the larger houses were built for summer people. Newer construction at least tries to match the old due to strict building codes.

It’s hard to believe this path cutting through backyards is really open to everyone. Public rights of way are uncommon in the USA.

The bluff-top homes have stairs leading down to the beach, which wraps for miles around the island. Off season I’ve seen whales passing by. It was tempting to take a dip, but I wanted to find the house. There was one old, dilapidated Victorian that could have been the model for Windermere.

The path was cool beneath the crab apple trees. Trimmed privets afforded views of hydrangeas. I was getting warmer.

There it was!

Isn’t it the perfect bluff house? It’s weathered and aging unlike its neighbors. I just love the wrap-around porch. Can you imagine sitting in a rocking chair, watching a summer storm over the ocean? Windermere is meant to be 1920’s, and this venerable lady looks more late Victorian. It’s also not set on an improbable nine acres. Still this house was the one I pictured while reading The Beach House.

Green succeeded in making this novel ring true to a summer native. The fact that she is English and now lives in Connecticut makes this feat doubly impressive. I noted very few inaccuracies. The most amusing one was a ringing cell phone. I’ve never managed to get reception on Siasconset although the rest of the island is fine. I rather like that sense of remote isolation.

I would have liked to hear more about island life. My brother lived on island for 2 years working as a carpenter, and the year round atmosphere was very different. On Nantucket the world is divided into “on-island” and “off-island.” The economy does revolve around tourism although it’s a popular home for artists and writers too.

Dockside sunsets inspire art. My friend pointed out that it’s rare to see a town where the church steeple still dominates the skyline. Nantucket has done such a good job preserving its past, although the island has changed in the three decades I’ve summered here. Green captures well the pressures from developers to wreck lovely old homes and to replace them with McMansions.

Still, the air is fresh thirty miles out to sea. At night you can see the stars clearly. I fall to sleep to the sound of foghorns and wake to the sun rising.

One morning the sun rose in the east…

as the full moon was setting in the west:




I love the early morning light at this time of year. It lends a sharp clarity and intensifies colors. The light inspired me to paint one day. Isn’t it rather Edward Hopperesque below the big sky?

As I boarded the ferry to go home, I felt a familiar feeling of sadness but also the excitement of a new year. The kids start school next week, meaning I can resume my writing. Soon my characters will cross the Atlantic to England, and I’ll be joining them for the journey.

As I look forward to writing my new novel, NOT CRICKET, I’m still thinking about the one before it. Front page of the Sunday NYT was a story about a biology teacher’s struggle to teach evolution in a public high school. It read like a chapter from my novel S.A.D. It’s interesting when what you imagine turns out to be real.