Slaves to Nature

Today, on my last day in the Catskills, I’m painting an ordinary view of a typical Catskill stream. This will be reference material for a future Dinotopia painting. I’m trying to paint exactly what I see without relying conventional landscape formulas. The T-shirt I’m wearing is from a very small, semi-secret organization of plein air aficionados. We call ourselves the “Slaves to Nature.” The group arose in response to the notion that painting in this way is somehow slavish copying. (It also arose from the desire to have cool t-shirts.)

Of course Nature makes a slave of nobody who loves her. But she does punish us in other ways. Take the sunlight-diffusing umbrella, for instance. Over the years, sudden gusts of wind have blown it over and buckled the delicate wires. This was the last time I used it before it died.


The final painting is in oil, 8x16 inches. In the photo you can see the real scene directly behind it for comparison. The weakest part of the painting is the area on the lower right where I tried to improve on what I saw by compressing the forms. Whistler once said “Nature is nearly always wrong.” The Slaves to Nature disagree. We hold with the Russian philosopher Chernyshevsky, who said, “Art is fine, but Nature is always better.”

Dibble's Quarry

I find inspiration for future Dinotopia books in the most unlikely places.

The bluestone quarries above Platte Clove were once the source for the slate sidewalks of New York City in the Nineteenth century. Huge piles of broken stones and rubble remain along sections of the mountain trails. Over the decades, nameless people have fashioned strange structures from the stones, kind of a “wiki-vernacular-architecture.”

Along the Pecoy Notch Trail, about a mile away from the nearest road, is Dibble’s Quarry, the most extensive of its type. It commands a fine view of the valley of the Platte Clove, a good spot to munch granola bars and speak in elvish.

There are many stone slab chairs, notably the “Druid’s Throne,” with several Mini-me side thrones nearby. Rattlesnakes commonly sun themselves on these rocks, so you have to look carefully into the cracks and sit down gingerly. What if there were a whole village like this in Dinotopia?

Curious Spectators

I set up to paint on a bridge over Schoharie Creek, and a father and his two sons came along to watch. The boys were each holding a slice of bread and they tore off little pieces to feed the fish. They wanted to know why I hadn’t included the fish in the painting. The father wanted to know how I made my living as an artist. The delicious aroma of frying latkes drifted over to us from the nearby Orthodox Jewish community. Then the boys ran home, their father warning them to watch out for cars.

Into the Woods

I left the little red cabin for a day of painting in the Catskill wilderness. All the plein air gear fits into a black backpack so I can take it on the trail. The “Barbie-go” wheels on the pack might take away a few style points among hard-core trekkers, but they make the rig handy in airports.


Here I am in the woods “up a stump” and starting to paint. I use (and recommend) the Open Box M pochade box (www.openboxm.com). The paint palette and adjustable panel holder mounts onto a camera tripod (Velbon CX 444). The advantage over the traditional French easel is that you can turn, tilt, raise, and lower your work very easily. I added a side panel with graduated holes for holding brushes and Nalgene palette cups containing Gamsol solvent and Liquin alkyd medium. On the mixing palette is disposable white freezer paper.



Here’s the finished painting, Trail to the Beaver Dam, which I did in two consecutive three-hour sessions. It’s very tiny, only 6 by 12 inches. I was attracted to the glimpse of distance through the trees on the right, and the profound darkness on the trail ahead on the left. The illumination in the foreground comes from the trees that were cut down.

For more information about plein air work, have a look at the Web site www.outdoorpainting.com.

Jimmy Morton

On Monday morning we stopped by to visit Jimmy Morton, who lives alone in a little house near the headwaters of Schoharie Creek. He has spent all his 94 years within five miles of Platte Clove.

As I sketched his portrait in his kitchen, he told me about the horses that used to haul the bluestone down from the mountain, and how he used to walk to school in 30-below weather.

When he was younger he brought his pet crow Jip on his milk delivery route. “Jip was the nicest pet I ever had,” he said. “He’d sit up in a tree and then—‘caw, caw’—he’d come down and set on my shoulder. But he’d steal things from people around here—watches and keys and whatnot—and stick them all in a hollow tree. I had to climb the tree and fetch them all back to their owners.”

One time he was coming down from Roundtop Mountain through the deep forest when he heard a strange sound coming from above. “I looked up and I’ll be darned if there wasn’t a cowbell up in the tree ringing. The only thing I could figure, a raccoon hauled it up there and was ringin’ it when he seen me go by.”

The Platte Clove Community

On Sunday some friends from the Platte Clove Community came by for a visit. They live just up the road in a converted summer camp at the base of Roundtop Mountain. Formerly known as the Hutterian Brethren or the Bruderhof, the Platte Clove Community is a faith-based group of about two hundred people who work, play, and sing in harmony. Even though they’ve chosen to do without a lot of modern technology, they have the largest hot-water solar collector in the Northeast.

Two of their kids posed making funny faces for a scene in the new Dinotopia book Journey to Chandara. I had just received an advance bound copy from the publisher, so I brought it along to show them. Here they are holding the book and this time not making faces.

We had a potluck picnic supper on the porch, with sweet corn, potato salad, and grilled burgers made from beef they raised.
Later we made s’mores, ate watermelon, and sang songs around the campfire.

Boring Old Cabin

“This is going to be BORING,” declared Franklin as we started up the Platte Clove Road. “Stuck in this old cabin with nothing to do.”

As if in answer, the sky darkened as we reached the top of the clove and pulled the car into the space beside the cabin. The minute after we went inside a thunderstorm commenced its performance. Kuky clung to the wires of his cage in terror. The downpour sent muddy rivers pouring down the stone steps.

We are now living up in the clouds where the thunder is manufactured. Each new clap sounds like a huge plate of metal suspended a foot above your head being hit by a baseball bat.

Later, as Jeanette and I settled down to our books and Franklin to his DVDs, the mice commenced a ballet performance, scampering out from spaces in the wall. And then the moths found their way through the windows and circled around the single light bulb. I flailed at them to no effect.

When I went to use the wastebasket a scampering sound told me that a mouse had fallen in and was trapped inside. I carried him across the old kingpost bridge, a few hundred yards away on the other side of the stream and let him go. Time will tell if he finds his way back.

Cabin in the Catskills

Platte Clove is a V-shaped valley that slices into the western face of the Catskill Mountains in New York State. Some wildlife biologists consider it the wildest tract of land in the Northeast. Because of the sheer cliffs and plunging cascades, the DEC has decided to cut no official trails into the gorge. Cars can reach the top only by a single-lane road that is so treacherous that it is open only from May to November.

At the top of the clove, nestled above a 100-foot cascade called Plattekill Falls, is a little red cabin built in 1840. It has been granted the modern blessing of four or five electric light bulbs and a socket or two, but it is innocent of plumbing. The cabin is owned by the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development (www.catskillcenter.org), which has established an artist-in-residence program. Painters, writers, and others haunted by the muse can work in the magic spell of the clove, the very spot where Washington Irving reportedly received his inspiration for Rip Van Winkle.

I was thrilled to have been chosen for a week-long residency. Today, along with Jeanette, Franklin, and my parakeet Kuky, I’m on my way up the mountain in our old family van named Trusty Rusty.
(The painting was done outdoors at twilight during my last stay at the cabin in 2005.)

Diner Still Life

My sketchbooks have quite a few drawings like this, which I call the “Diner Still Life.” It usually consists of the chrome napkin holder, sugar dispenser, ketchup bottle, and salt-and-pepper shakers.

If the service is a little slow, I might have about twenty minutes to work on all the wonderful reflections and transparencies. You could try all you want to arrange a nice still life at home in the studio, but you can never beat the chance arrangements that you find in real life.

Meet Jeanette

Here’s my wife Jeanette doing what she loves most: sitting outdoors with a sketchbook. We met as sketching buddies at Art Center College of Design. For our perspective class we had to go outside to draw from life, so we spent many hours side by side on street corners trying to capture a scene or a character. We’d treat ourselves afterward with a coffee and muffin at a diner. We haven’t changed one bit since then.