Islanders are accustomed to seeing brush-wielding artists standing before easels in picturesque locations: near a lighthouse, overlooking a harbor full of boats, or a fetching cove with mountains in the background. Seagulls, schooners, blue water, lupines, and puffy white clouds are standard fare of the summer art scene in Maine, naturally enough with fine weather conducive to plein air (or outdoor) painting.
Keith Schneider, of Liberty, has gone against the grain for the past two winters, carrying his easel through snow or mud and standing for four or five hours in 20-degree weather on Islesboro to capture a different kind of natural beauty. “Fog, sea smoke, the intense cold of water in winter, creates an image you never see any other time of the year,” he said, “June, July, and August are only a portion of the island’s beauty.”
Then he stuck it out through the early spring months with black flies, May flies, and drizzly rain as he painted through the spring thaw until trees leafed out.
The results of this work will be on display at the Islesboro Historical Society from July 10 through 15 in the first week of the Society’s traditional summer-long art exhibits. Schneider will display about 40 works, many plein air, plus some representational and impressionistic studio paintings of the island that he says, evolved from visual memories and feelings.
Schneider has been painting for 20 years including time on Clark Island and Matinicus. He first came to Islesboro four years ago to paint houses, often staying in the houses he painted, which led to winter housesitting and winter plein air work. Major shoulder surgery has eliminated the scraping, painting, and ladder climbing of traditional house painting, and also forced him to paint with his non-dominant left hand.
Authentic plein air is challenging and interesting “I’m not that much of a believer in going back to the studio and touching them up-because then you can’t consider them plein air. The painting ought to be layers of paint that reflects what transpired during the period of time that I am out there.” He stops painting, he says, “when it seems like everything has come together.”
“We are taught from childhood,” he observed, “that sky is blue and grass is green, but the reality is that you have to sit by the ocean five or six hours to see the changes that naturally take place.” At high tide water may be deep blues but as it drops, and seaweed and rocks emerge it gets brownish or yellowish. “The sky’s color changes the water’s color, too. “The water can be white gray or, mostly in winter, black because of the light.”
One winter piece, “Hutchins Island,” was the result of three or four hours of work after 20 or 30 visits to the field overlooking the island off the east side of Islesboro. Living a few doors south of the site, Schneider had walked all over the field considering the view from every part, in different weather, different times of day. “Finally we finally had a big snowstorm, and everything was perfect, everything said now is the time to paint.” He set up his easel in eighteen inches of snow, temperatures in the 20s and worked alone from afternoon into early evening.
In winter, it is so cold that an artist’s hand shakes and paint stiffens up and is hard to spread. While painting Hutchins Island, he ended up dipping his fingers in paint to add color to the sky. Fingers aren’t the only things that get into paint.
“Probably most of the paintings I’ve completed on the island have either sand, grit, bugs, mosquitoes, flies in them,” Schneider says. “Shedding Pines” painted in late spring has black flies, mosquitoes, and fir needles in it. “I let everything follow its natural process, and varnished the painting to preserve whatever fell into it.”
“The greatest gift of being on island off season is going somewhere and having the opportunity to explore and paint in some incredibly beautiful location and never see any other human being, you’d never see the natural landscape if there were people around.”
The opening reception for Schneider’s show is on July 10, from 5-7 p.m. at Islesboro Historical Society. The exhibit is open daily July 11 through 15, 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Sandy Oliver is food writer and a food historian who lives on Islesboro.