Spring at Maudslay

Spring is here and the time is right for painting in the streets, or at least amid the faded glory of former East India Trading Company estates in coastal Massachusetts.

I and two fellows of the fraternity of painters convened at Maudslay State Park in Newburyport yesterday to essay our impressions of nature. My small painting bears very little resemblance to the crystal-blue qualities of the day, but that is in keeping with my current practice of taking the subject as a starting point for however strong a painting the thing deigns to become.

Early Spring at Maudslay, Newburyport, MA 6x8

The grounds of this place are just full of beautiful views and endless motifs. The Merrimack River winds by it. In addition to the maintained grounds, one encounters old stone bridges and sealed wells, disused formal gardens and boarded-up outbuildings that attest to a formerly magnificent Old World empire, all beautiful with the earth still dormant in the tremulous light of spring.

Landscape painter Donald Jurney is offering a workshop at Maudslay in May. I highly recommend it.

I catch myself mentally saying "Maudslay" to myself over and over (like "Manderlay" I guess) and pronouncing it "MAW-dslee" in a ridiculously pompous British accent. I just can't help imagining it populated (sparsely, of course) with figures from an Edward Gorey drawing.