Light in the rain

I was somewhat disappointed that the lunch that was included with our train excursion to Rockland was not a seafood meal at a nice restaurant, but rather our choice of plastic-wrapped sandwiches, chips, cookies and beverage at the Atlantic Bakery Co, which is a small, attractive, yes, bakery, that serves sandwiches. However, my turkey with cheese and sun-dried tomatoes on sesame-seeded bread was excellent, as were the kettle-cooked sea-salted potato chips and (especially) the pistachio/apricot/oat cookie. Service is order-at-the-counter, seating is a matter of grab one when you can, but fortunately turn-over was steady, so that by the time we had gotten through the line to present our vouchers, and gone to the various spots in the room to collect our choices (refrigerated case for the sandwiches, nearby table to pluck a packet of chips from a basket, another table to siphon off coffee or tea (i.e., hot water for same) from industrial-sized thermoses, pastry case for cookies) needed seats had usually appeared. I found myself sitting at a small table with a young woman from Maine, married to a very tall, lean young man from the British midlands. They'd met in Wales, where they were both attending university. The three of us were always at the far edge of the group photos Barbara, the organizer, kept insisting on; we would all have preferred not to be in them at all. (Alisha explained her and Mathew's reason: they weren't really Simmons alumni, but simply friends of Barbara's. My reason is I hate having my picture taken.)

We were to be treated to a guided tour of the Farnsworth, just across Main Street from the ABC, at 2 p.m. That was half an hour away, so I opened my umbrella once more and walked a short dis-tance down Main to a lovely, spacious, well-lighted art gallery, the Dowling Walsh, one of twenty-three galleries in this small town. What initially pulled me in was a wonderful ship's model in the window, that I immediately wished I could buy for my sea-loving friend Ernest. (I rarely visit an art gallery that I don't see something I wish I could purchase for a friend, or for myself. If I were wealthy, I would spend a lot of money on works of art.) Once inside I found myself impressed by the paintings of Colin Page, that exhibit a beautiful use of sunlight. I am very enamoured of light in paintings, which is why paintings that do not suggest light, but merely color (I think of Gauguin and Matisse, for example) do nothing for me.

One of Page's paintings, called Blueberry Harvester, was basically of an old farm truck, with a long flatbed attached, pulled up in a farm yard. A very mundane subject, but the scene was permeated with the light of a beautiful sunny day. Proof that a good artist can make a beautiful painting from any subject.

In an adjoining room I was much taken with a picture entitled After Grass, by Richard Vickerson: a long, low dull brown building with a red roof; in front of it, great rolls of golden hay in a field of dull gold, above, a pale, pale blue-to-white sky. Wonderful lines to the house. Almost a Hopper-like simplicity and sense of isolation to the picture. Very Maine-like, I thought, although as a matter of fact Vickerson is Canadian, from nearby Prince Edward Island, where I imagine things look a lot like they do in the northern part of Maine.

Most of the paintings in this room were landscapes by Thomas Paquette. I found some of them to be lovely and interesting, but all rather disturbing, because of the quality of the paint, which some-times looked flat, dull, unable to reflect light. When I reached the table where a copy of the catalog lay, I learned that these were gouaches; consulting an art glossary once I got home, I found that gouach is a type of watercolor paint mixed with a white pigment called body color, which renders the paint opaque. That was the dullness, the flatness I was seeing: opacity. That effect often distracted me from the scene itself; I was too aware of the paint. Nonetheless, there were one or two of his small scenes of the coun-tryside of southern France, where the serenity of the sunsoaked landscape offset the flat smears of color on the mountainside, that I could see myself hanging in my living room, had I the $2,800 to purchase them.

Works by all of these artists can be seen on Dowling Walsh's web site (www.dowlingwalsh.com), an example of what a gift the Internet can be.