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The Final Post

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  Above, Port-Aux-Basques Overlook, 10x10 I'M HOME, in Wachapreague, safe and sound, and glad to be with Peter and our menagerie. It was an amazing, inspiring and challenging trip, the fulfillment of a long-held dream, and I am delighted to have gone and seen and experienced. I drove more than 2,500 miles, made 26 paintings and took more photos than I can count. I saw more than my share of clouds and less than my share of rain and sun, too. I was lucky to have a good friend to travel with for part of the trip, and lucky, too, to have another stretch of time to pass in solitary contemplation and deep work.  I met kind and generous and lovely people. I felt welcomed by Canada and Canadians. I was impressed with the general good cheer and impressively good health of the people I met. The Newfoundlanders I encountered love Newfoundland, and by and large, want never to leave, never to live anywhere else. They are a tough breed, to live in such a difficult climate,
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Eddie's Cove West

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Eddie's Cove West / 18x36 BASICALLY, I COULD move to Eddie's Cove, paint every day and be happy. There wouldn't be anything else to do, but I think that would be OK. Peter and I could travel down to Cow Head and hang around with the guys I met there one morning. We could chop our six cords of wood, and dig around in our garden by the road. Aside from that, there would be painting, walking and staring out to sea. And some days, that sounds just about perfect. The landscape is beautiful and brutal at once. The sky and the ocean are the color of rocks, and in the mornings, look hard and immobile. Clouds bunch like fists, threatening, nearly every day. The sea churns, but the waves are not huge. I marvel at how close the buildings are to the water. Above, Eddie's Cove West is marked. Newfoundland is so large, it's hard to show one town, one place. I hope you've been looking at the map as the trip has progressed! *** Money, Math and Two G
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Eddie's Cove II

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Eddie's Cove II / 10x10 THE AMAZING PAINTING DAY continues. I drive a few miles down the coastal road and come upon this building, perched near the water. It calls out to me, the way so many of these landscapes do - the solitary house, or the two or three homes close together, at the edge of the Strait of Belle Isle.                                                                                                                      There's Eddie's Cove East, where I believe I am when I am painting this, and Eddie's Cove West, which I will hit tomorrow. Eddie's Cove East was settled by Philip Coates and his wife Sarah Duncan, says Wikipedia. The first census - 10 people - was in 1869.  These days, Eddie's Cove East has a population of 80, down from its record high of 128 in the late 1980s. It is a tough place to live, with severe weather, heavy wind, persistent ice. Fishing, logging and saw mill work keep this little place going, like so many oth
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Eddie's Cove

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Eddie's Cove / 16x16 I'M HAVING ONE of those days, those magical days, when everything I try works. I can't do anything wrong. Even if I put down a mark I don't like, I'm able to morph it into a mark that I do like.  I am trying things I usually don't try, attempting landscapes I usually wouldn't attempt, and it is all coming together in a way that is making me joyful. Gleeful. Grateful.  A painter doesn't get many of these days in a lifetime, I suspect, and I ride it for all it's worth, making three paintings, painting until I am absolutely exhausted, until my shoulder is aching, until I can't paint any more.  What a day!  *** Some More Road Art I see ANOTHER driveway with rocks just like this, in an even smaller town near King's Cove. I ask four people in the area if this is a thing, some quilter thing or some political thing, but they all say they have no idea what it means, if anything.  ^^^ I se
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Black Duck Creek

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Black Duck Creek / 18x18 on cradled board I AM HEADING HOME. Heading south, toward Channel Port-Aux-Basques, toward the ferry, toward Nova Scotia, Maine, then eventually Wachapreague. I am loving Newfoundland but honestly, I can't wait to get home. Can't wait to see Peter and the dogs, and all my friends, and family on the way - can't wait!                                                                                                  This is an interesting trip on many levels. It is great to have Carol with me for the first week, but when she leaves, I find myself feeling rudderless. The pattern of the trip changes. Partly it changes because I'm alone, and partly because of where I am.  Every morning of the trip, Carol and I start with coffee from Tim Horton's - and suddenly, I'm in a place with no Tim Horton's stores. It is just coincidence, but it is still somewhat rattling.  Carol has trip goals outside of painting, and when she leaves,
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Guimet

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Guimet / 10x10 DOWN THE ROAD from L'Anse Aux Meadows is a whole collection of teeny little towns that apparently live generally on tourism and specifically on Viking tourism - with a little fishing thrown in.  The proliferation of Viking-related stuff is overwhelming. It's so relentless that, over the course of an afternoon paying attention, it becomes ridiculous. Snorri Cabins? Val Halla Hotel? I shake my head at how the incredible fact of the Vikings landing in L'Anse Aux Meadows has become co-opted to sell everything from coffee to delivery services.  I make this painting standing beside a closed and shuttered restaurant. The town of Guimet seems to be sheltered a bit from the relentless wind - but is full of Viking adverts.  *** Dog of the Day MET THIS GUY  at a show this summer. I'm not seeing the dogs I usually find on my travels! Maybe Newfoundlanders don't have so many dogs? Many of the people I meet
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L'Anse Aux Meadows

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L'Anse Aux Meadows / 16x16 IT IS HARD for me to describe the feelings I have while I am walking around this most historic of historic sites. I don't cry, but I almost do, and I am astounded at the emotion that overtakes me.  Here, in these fields, in this place at the edge of the sea, Europeans set foot on North America for the very first time. The Vikings - with Leif Erikson probably among them - left Greenland and sailed into the wilderness, crossing the ocean in small, small boats and landed at L'Anse Aux Meadows.  To them, it was the new world. They built a village there, housing anywhere from 30-160 people. There were trees on the land at that time, and they used the wood to build boats, their homes, furniture. Their houses were sod huts - the earthen roofs are gone but the foundations remain, and that's what you see when your tour the area.  In 1960, explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife, archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, spoke with Georg
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