Monday, November 23, 2009

Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts

Hello. I usually post this blog once a month. With an enormous amount of dedicated help from my husband. This one is a bit early, and January’s will be slightly delayed. It will happen when I return from snowy Canada, with lots of new drawings I’m sure!


Ogunquit, Maine. Late Autumn colors along the Marginal Way, a gorgeous mile-long walk along the cliffs. Perkins Cove and the breaking waves are in the background. I used to come here for a painting class when at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The plants are juniper with their beautiful blue berries, beach roses, bittersweet vine on the far right and sumac in the middle. So much loveliness in one place.


A November view of Mount Kearsarge, New London. The trees are odd shapes from old ice storm damage. The high hay meadow is on protected farmland.


The reading room at Tracy Memorial Library, New London. The piles of magazines are actually neat. Somehow they look untidy in my drawing. I love the portraits looking down on us. On the left Josiah Brown, first librarian, 1801, and on the right Micajeh Morgan, former owner of the private home that became this library. There is very little need in New Hampshire for a change of decor.


The small carpet is a hooked rug made by my mother. On this, a wool afghan designed and made by my grandmother. In the plant pot is a paper flower made by our granddaughter. Including me drawing all this, that puts the work of four generations of art loving females in the picture. And more to come I’m sure.


Supermarket flowers. Grown, packaged, shipped, repackaged, by hands unknown.


I love this pitcher, initialed ‘K.N.’ on the bottom. I bought in Maryland and it makes me want to travel to Estonia where it was painted. The turkey feathers were found in our woods. There is at least one wild flock around here. I have never seen a male. Just the ladies and lots of children, looking like a day care center field trip.


A little wooden shelf, from the 1940’s. Our younger daughter, the one who loves folk art, painted these bright colors when she was a college student. The shot glass has a Vancouver Olympics logo. The mugs are from Bennington Pottery in Vermont.


Our window seat overlooks the tool shed and our woods in the back. I sometimes paint here in the sunshine.


On the left is a child’s Adirondack packbasket, labeled ’46 and Bruce. On the right, jumping ahead one generation, is the straw boater worn by our children (they shared it) 1980-83 in England. It was part of the summer term uniform at Berkhampstead School.



The corner of Newbury and Clarendon Streets, Boston, Massachusetts. This section of the city is called Back Bay, as it was once water. A fun place to stroll on a warm November Saturday. All this urban activity is about 90 minutes from our woods in New London.


Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. We lived only a couple of miles from Harvard Square when I was 14 and 15. I took a bus here to buy foreign newspapers and magazines, mostly from France. This very news stand was my window on the world. Behind it are the buildings that form part of the famed Harvard Yard. Five years later I would be living in Dijon, the capital of Burgundy.


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