"Fish Beach Road", 12x16, oil, paintings of Monhegan Island, the Fish House Monhegan, summer vacations, Maine vacations, island trips, Maryanne Jacobsen fine art

 "Fish Beach Road", 12x16, oil

It's been quite a while since I posted anything new. It's hard sometimes to get back into a routine after you've been out of one for a long time.

I used to post on this blog everyday. And I often even found nice comments afterwards. It was great. That was about ten years ago.

The years fly by before we know it and then we suddenly find ourselves in a whole new era.

In this case, it became the era of social media. Instead of blog posts, artists started just posting photos of their new paintings on Facebook, Instagram, etc. 

While I am just as guilty of doing that, I discovered that it wasn't  very satisfying. I used to really enjoy creating stories about my art within the blog post. It was another level of creativity to write and explain in a blog post the inspiration and process behind the painting. it was fun and  for me, at least, very rewarding.

I often sold my work through my blog posts. And people around the world got to know me a little and began to recognize my work on sites like Daily Painters, when the "painting a day" phenomenon" took root and flourished.

Anyhow, now I'm just mumbling, if it's possible to mumble on a blog.

This is a new painting of a scene that I painted a couple times in the past. It is Fish Beach Road outside the Fish House eatery at the height of summer on Monhegan Island, Maine. My colors are more sober and muted now, and I think my change of palette simply reflects my overall mood anymore. My mood is not buoyant and positive and colorful and quirky like that of the Maryanne of the past.

Life with Covid has changed us all in new and different ways, and many are not positive additions to our fragile little personalities. That being said, I can look back with longing and appreciation for those carefree days when travel was almost effortless (at least compared to today's so called travel), and life seemed to be bubbling with possibilities. Indeed, on Monhegan Island, there were new possibilities lurking behind every corner, every turn in the road, every change of seasons. So I know that if things ever return to the way they were, we will all find ourselves ever so grateful for those freedoms and carefree attitudes of the past that no longer define our lifestyles, but hopefully will surface again.

Well, whether or not, I'll ever travel to lovely Maine again, I can still enjoy my memories of those happy painting trips, and hope and pray there are some new ones still to be found within my lifespan.

Stay well, and feel free to comment about your own experiences!

Final! "Noonday sun, Fish Beach Road-Monhegan Island", 20x16, oil on canvas by Maryanne Jacobsen

"Noonday sun, Fish Beach Road-Monhegan Island", 20x16, oil on canvas by Maryanne Jacobsen

It's funny. Whenever I work hard on a painting, it gets more and more difficult as I get into the final stages. I think that is because I know when a painting is coming together in a positive direction, and there's always the fear that I'll screw it up in the end!

That's exactly what happened with the painting that I did of Fish Beach Road. The very last thing that I did was the building in the foreground on the right, and as soon as I looked at the finished painting, I knew that building was detracting from what would have otherwise been a very good painting.

Nonetheless, I was afraid to touch it. So I stewed on it for two days before I finally woke up this morning and decided I had to try to fix it. In this case, I was fortunate. I knew exactly what was wrong with the painting. Here's the painting before I corrected it:


I had worked pretty hard to stay true to the photograph, but I knew that the long vertical line created by the doorway in the foreground building was an eyesore. Your eye kept being drawn to it, yet it added nothing positive to the overall painting.


I also knew that the temperature of the building in the foreground needed to be warmer, in order to bring the building forward and create more illusion of depth. So I mixed up my batches of paint and experimented a bit with grays. I finally came up with what you see above. I think I probably could also have gone more into a brown direction, but in the end, I decided to stick with weathered blues in a warmer note than what I had had before.

I feel relieved. It sucks when you work long and hard on a painting and know you haven't done the best you can. Now, I feel that I have done the best I could do, and that's a good feeling.

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"Noonday Sun, Fish Beach Road-Monhegan Island", 20x16, oil on canvas by Maryanne Jacobsen

"Noonday sun, Fish Beach Road-Monhegan Island", 20x16, oil on canvas by Maryanne Jacobsen

Last week I enjoyed painting the quick study that I did of Fish Beach on Monhegan Island. So I decided to do another one, bigger and a lot more refined than the last. This is the result. I must say that I struggled with this painting because there was just so much going on in the scene.

If you are unfamiliar with Monhegan Island, it's a dramatic little working island about 10 miles off the coast of Maine. Some of that wonderful lobster that we so enjoy eating all year long, may well have been an end result of the stalwart efforts of the lobsterman who live on Monhegan Island, who brave the coldest temps and elements imaginable in order to lower their nets into the ice, snow and otherwise frost-bitten waters of the northern Atlantic and bring to the surface those cold water lobstahs that we all so love to eat!

So I debated about just how much detail to put into this painting. In the end, I knew that I had to include the convoluted buoys, the haphazzard yarn, the weeds, the traps, the weather-smitten cedar shingles, and the view of tiny Manana just a stones throw away, in order to convey the character of the island. Here's the photo I took that I used for my reference:

I was fortunate to visit Monhegan in the heat of summer. I tried to portray just how hot it was on the August day that I snapped this photo. Monhegan is an island of drama- hills and vales and cliffs and fog. Some people visit there and hate it. Others get a taste of it and can't wait to return!

Even though I am a former dancer, in pretty good shape, I had trouble navigating the hills and dales on this hot summer day. I also had trouble trying to portray the character of this island in all its truth and simplicity.

I hope that you enjoy my efforts. I'll probably work on this a tiny bit more and take a picture of it in daylight so there's no glare. But for the most part it's done. It is available for purchase for $1400. Just send me an email at maryanne jacobsen@aol.com, if you are interested in purchasing this painting.

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"Monhegan Morning", 14x11, oil on canvas, boats, fish, Monhegan island, Maine, lobster, art

Sold"Monhegan Morning", 14x11, oil on canvas

Monhegan Island was one of the highlights of my recent trip to Maine and Cape Ann. This was the sign that greeted us when we stepped off the boat onto the island:

It is pretty hard to describe Monhegan unless you've been there to see it for yourself. Think working island, fish, lobster, fish shacks, public plumbing very limited, gorgeous cliffs, ocean, sunsets, fog, lighthouse, mist, boats, and pastel-colored perennial gardens dotting the rolling hills. The island has been an artist's haven for many decades.

Are you beginning to get the picture?

I enjoyed painting this scene of a road leading down to fish beach (I think that's what it's called) on the day that we visited the island. The light is very, very blue there, so you have to look for the warms in the scenery. There are lobster traps, buoys and fish nets everywhere, so if you can't figure out what you're looking at in this painting, just use your imagination!

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