Pemaquid Point paintings series (click to view)

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Oil House - Pemaquid Point 6"x8" o/c © Brian Kliewer

Oil House - Pemaquid Point presents a view looking west across toward John's Bay if my memory serves. My current plans are to develop this quick study as a larger piece, probably about 24"x36." I've had this in mind for quite some time, long before starting this series of Pemaquid Point oil studies. I want to open up the view with a larger foreground and a more expansive sweep of the surrounding ocean. When completed, I'll post it here on the blog.

The following is a true story from the American Lighthouse Foundation http://www.lighthousefoundation.org/ and is used by permission.

A True Whale Tale

In August of 2002 a whale watch ship was ready to cast off from Boothbay Harbor. A full boat of tourists, anxious to see a pod of whales, was aboard. The experienced captain piloted his ship out toward the whales’ feeding grounds, when just outside the harbor an adult whale swam alongside the ship for a few minutes, getting everyone’s attention. The whale then veered off to the west away from the ship. The captain continued on his course, thinking that they were apt to see many more whales at their feeding grounds. Then the same whale came back to swim alongside the ship again, veering off after a few minutes. Finally, the third time the whale came alongside the ship and then headed west, the captain decided to follow it.

After a few miles of travel they came upon a fixed fishing net with two baby whales tangled up in it. The captain commanded the crew to launch the lifeboat and cut the whales free. Luckily, baby whales are less dangerous to get close to than adult whales, so they were able to cut them free. For the rest of the cruise that day the mother and baby whales swam alongside the ship, breaching and blowing as they played. When the ship had to return to the harbor the whales remained with their pod. Unfortunately, marine officials learned of this interference with fishing gear and later arrested the captain of that ship. This made the local news, which created enough public outrage that the captain was released with a ten dollar fine.

I would like to thank Marty Welt for allowing me to post this on my blog. The Pemaquid Point Lighthouse homepage can be found on the American Lighthouse Foundation's site HERE.

Pemaquid Point paintings series (click to view)

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Full Sun - Pemaquid Point Lighthouse 9"x12" o/c © Brian Kliewer

Afternoon sun warms the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse in this 9"x12" oil painting. I'm going to try to increase the frequency of these posts here on this blog. Stay tuned.

After 9/11 I had an opening at a gallery here in Maine. This was four days after the attacks. One thing I remember most was a man saying to me, "It must make you feel so good to be able to bring joy to so many people with your artwork." It does. But one problem I had, as I'm sure many did, was that I focused too much on the events and the many replays on TV. I was soon sapped of any creative flow. I didn't paint again for months. Besides feeling that painting was such a trivial thing in light of everything that was going on, the sadness brought on by it all depleted any creativity that I might have had, and I compounded it by watching all of the replays on the news. After those days, I realized how important painting really is...at least for me. If nothing else, it brings me peace and grounds me. With that in mind, I will try to do more of that here...to share some of my peace. For me it's the process that does it more than the finished paintings themselves. While not always true, generally it's peaceful to paint and most everything slips by when I'm really "into it." With all of the down news in the world I've decided to try to make this blog an escape of sorts. I need it too. I hope you feel some of the peace from the paintings that I do while painting them. I recently found reaffirmation along these lines. My site has been added to "Stressbusting.co.uk".


I also discovered that my screen savers were recently posted on Softpedia.com. And I have since noticed that other sites are linking to them as well. In just over a week I've seen over 250 downloads. I'm going to be developing new screen savers and posting download links here before long. If you download any (I currently have three available) you will be able to see full-screen views of my paintings. Windows PCs only. They can also be downloaded from my site here.

Pemaquid Point paintings series (click to view)

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Gull 4"x4" o/c © Brian Kliewer

Gull is just a diversion for me. It's not even at Pemaquid Point, but it could be. So I chose to include it. It's also different in that it is just about the smallest of these "small paintings" that I have done to date. This gull was actually at Schoodic Point, a pretty good distance up the coast from Pemaquid Point. It was preparing to land on a woman's head, believe it or not. In case you don't, here's a photo that was taken shortly after....no photoshop treatment or anything like that. Just cropped for a closer look:

More Pemaquid paintings coming up.

Pemaquid Point paintings series (click to view)

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Light Window - Pemaquid Point 12"x9" o/c
© Brian Kliewer

Light Window - Pemaquid Point features one of the windows on the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse tower. I did this from a cropped photograph that originally included a lot more of the lighthouse itself. I liked the way this worked, however, with just the window as the focal point. Another thing about the tower that interests me greatly is how it catches and reflects the ambient light. Here, you can see the underside of the tower's painted stones reflecting the warm earth colors from below. It reminds me much of the way snow needs to be painted. A very challenging subject that I keep being drawn back to. It's a challenge that keeps me on my toes. Further interest is added by the wire cutting into the sky and ocean.