"A Winter Nocturne"  by George William Sotter 1942 22X26

     An artist recently asked me what Artist I admired for Winter scenes.  I thought about this.  I do admire Stapleton Kearns Winter scenes.  I also love George William Sotter.  His night scene facinate me.  I am amazed at the beauty of the snow at night.  I was fortunate to see one of these painting at a Gallery in Blue Hill.  It was 5:00 pm and he was closing.  I stood there and looked for a long time at one of George William Sotter's paintings.  I could feel the Winter quiet and the coolness.  It had a magical feeling.  The gallery owner said he would sell this painting to me for 95,000.  Believe me if I had this money I would have bought it.  He was ready to close.  So I left.  I was thinking for days about this painting.  The sky of this painting was a warm blue.  There were some translucent greens too.  Beautiful colors Sotter used.  This is a different painting than the one I saw.  I like this one very much too.  I wonder if he stood out there on a very cold night to paint this.  There is a lot of detail. 

      High key is a painting with very little darks.  The painting, "A Winter Nocturne" is a low key painting.  Low key is a painting with very little lights.  When I was taking Stapleton Kearns's Snow Camp class he was talking to me about avoiding Middle key paintings because they are boring to look at.  Middle key paintings are monotonous.  There is nothing to grab the viewer attention.  All of the values are in the middle, such as value of 4, 5, 6.  He also said most artists paint with six values.  He said to paint in all values.  This amazed me.  At Stetson University, my art professor commented artists should not use a one value, or white, in their paintings.  He said he did not think it existed in reality.  Watercolorists were flawed by allowing their whites to be untouched.  I never used straight whites because of this.  Hmm.  Now I am going to reconsider using a very light value in my paintings.  I am also going to make sure I do not paint boring middle toned paintings.  I am going to paint either high key or low key works. 

    How am I going to paint nighttime snow scenes?  Stapleton Kearns has painted a few night time snow scenes looking down at a village.  Very beautiful.  He described his process.  He would go out during the day to paint the scene.  Then he would paint a smaller painting of this and turn it into night scene.  He then would paint this smaller scene again on a larger canvas. 

     One time on Monhegan Island I walked down to Monhegan School house.  There was a dance going on inside the school house and so there were lights luminating from the building.  I started to paint using a little flashlight as a guide.  I only used a few colors.  I used a warm blue for the sky, Phalo Blue.  I used a darker purple for shadows.  I used titanium white mixed with Cadium yellow for the highlights.  It was very different.  I think it was August.  I remember mosquitoes surrounding me but I had sprayed down the top of my hat and entire rest of my body with deet 40 bug spray.  I was almost finished when it started to rain.  I quickly put on a rain poncho and continued painting.  Once you have oil paint on the wood substrate rain doesn't interfere with the painting.  So here I was at night in the rain painting away.  There was nice music coming from the school house.  I looked up and there was Caleb Stone.  He didn't know me, but I was aware he was Don Stone's son.  I was embarrassed somewhat.  He seemed fine with the situation.  I asked him if he ever painted at night.  He answered yes many times.  He loved painting at night.  So I finished my painting.  I still have this night scene of the monhegan school house.  There are a few mosquitos squished into the paint by accident.  It is pretty raw!  I have never showed anyone this painting.  Sometimes I just paint for the experience.  It did seem like the values were very narrow, 6,7,8,9,10.  Maybe a 3 value for the light.  When I finished my painting my flashlight went dead.  I had to walk in the dark with all of my painting gear back to the Trailing Yew hotel.  What an adventure!