Mackinac Island Paintings

The trees above your head on Anne's Tablet Trail lean in mightily, framing a patchwork blue sky. I painted this mostly from memory. Oils. My grandmother believed in the fairies on Mackinac, and here one can almost imagine them at play in the treetop breeze.

Heather, in the pastel painting was baptized on Mackinac, and came here every summer growing up. At last she met her true love, Tom, and brought him to Mackinac, too. Both figures have led colorful lives in many foreign posts. I wanted to capture a sense of them clinging to one another, and of the atmospheric music in their lives and at the Grand. Chalk Pastels, with their capacity for a grainy swirling texture were a perfect choice.

I wanted to show the lively movement between the Arnold Line Dock and the downtown area on Mackinac, highlighting a major character: the water! I worked the colors, making Lake Huron the "sweet spot" in this oil painting.

I left my comfort zone as an artist, and explored the kind of storytelling quality that the subject of this painting demanded. A bit of drama, here, having the people in the foreground coming towards us, almost out of the picture frame. Mackinac's name in Ojibwa is the great turtle, and it also refers quite specifically to the name of the annual walking and running race each fall on the island, The Great Turtle Race. I loved capturing the people who come far and wide to enjoy Mackinac and to be part of this journey that engages the body and soul, beginning at Mission Point Hotel.

Mackinac Patterns
oil on canvas

I leaned on this fence on the West Bluff of Mackinac Island about a thousand times. It is near the end of the cliffwalk, right down from where I spent every summer of my life growing up. This painting spent the summer and fall at an exhibit at the Manoongian Mackinac Museum.

Not your typical reaction to Arch Rock, which is one reason I so enjoyed painting it. I took advantage of the mark-making of the pastel stick and of the fine sandpaper to create lots of texture.

On the shore road, a fine day with purple shadows, coming up the hill near Tellefson's beach.

The Driver's Hat
22" (height) 26" (width) framed

Most summers of my life I have enjoyed and observed the hardworking carriage drivers of Mackinac. This particular one caught my eye because here is this guy, Rob, engaged in double, maybe triple duty, keeping the omnibus carriage in line while waiting patiently for customers to climb inside the cozy Victorian world of this fine old bus, AND thirdly he is responding kindly to a little girl who wanted to try on his top hat. I enjoyed the challenge of creating a story with people, human kindness, the old wood carriage, and atmospheric perspective leading the eye along flower bed and up the bending road to the West Bluff. Rhythmic brushstrokes and impasto paint bring this one to life.

She Never Missed A Summer
28" (height) x 24" (width) framed

Crippled from severe diabetes and arthritis for the last decade of her life, the subject of this oil painting, Eileen, loved Mackinac deeply. The library here was in her home, White Birches on the West Bluff, one of two houses she lived in - often in spring, summer and fall -- since her birth in 1923. Eileen created a number of trails on the island, still in plentiful use today by walkers and riders, including Coffee Trail and Nicki Trail. In the 1960s she was asked by the Mackinac State Park to create a map of the island trails. With five children in tow, all she could find to execute this onerous task was a box of crayons. She went to work using the crayons and came up with an accurate, large and colorful map that was a key reference for trail maps in use today.

My reference for this painting was memory and a photo in which Eileen is in her nightgown and there is much other stuff in the room. My artistic license allowed me to paint her as you see here with her beloved books and little dog.