I’ve always read that no on site landscape painter enjoys painting on a windy day. I know some that will sit and paint in their vehicle in the rain or snow. But wind…that will have them running for the comfortable confines of the studio and a nice still life. Perhaps I should have followed their lead. This past Saturday saw the leading edge of a very windy cold front come through Long Island, NY at about mid-day. In fact, the real reason I went out to paint at all was that we lost our electricity as soon as the wind began to blow. We ended up being without electricity for 31 hours!

I had heard earlier in the week from a friend who works at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory which is located directly across the street from last week’s painting and blog subject entitled “Saint John’s Church”. The CSH Lab sprawls over many picturesque acres of what, years ago, was referred to as Bungtown. A bung hole is the hole in a watertight cask or barrel and a bung is the plug or stopper. Cold Spring Harbor was a whaling village in years past and Bungtown was the capitol of bung manufacturing.

My friend Sandy had told me that there were many nice views to be had at the end of Bungtown Road and she did not exaggerate. I managed to get myself set up in the lee of a large group of trees so that the 30-40 MPH gusts of wind were not too much of a factor.

If you read my blog regularly then you know that I always learn some valuable lesson every time I paint on site. This week the lesson was that if you set up in the lee of a stand of trees the sun will eventually drop below said trees casting shadows on your painting which will annoy you. As a result I had to keep inching my easel out from behind the relative comfort of the trees and into the teeth of the cold wind. I have a fairly high tolerance for physical discomfort coupled with a work ethic that compels me to finish any job I’ve begun. I gritted my teeth and soldiered on.

I was beginning to debate whether or not I was near to being finished and, quite frankly, my flinty resolve was beginning to crumble. At this point nature intervened by lifting my palette out of my very sturdy Soltek easel and carrying it twenty feet to my right, dropping it face down in the sandy path.

Painting session over.

It happens to me often. I’ll be mindlessly driving along in the car when, suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I’ll catch just a quick glimpse of what can only be described as heaven. The perfect landscape! Right there, just to my left, a living, breathing, Bierstadt painting. Shafts of golden sun light, blazing brilliantly through parted dark storm clouds, falling upon a lyrically undulating meadow, highlighting the most perfectly shaped oak this side of Great Britain.

Without even a hint of concern for myself or my fellow motorists, I execute the most dangerous U-turn ever attempted... I will often drift off to sleep at night after manufacturing this very sort of perfection in my minds eye. Now I am about to come face to face with my dream of the ideal and my heart pounds with excitement. After what seems like hours I finally arrive at the source of my vision, bolt from the car, and…

What confronts me? The clouds have moved to obscure the sun. There is no light. The undulating meadow is, in fact, a nearly completed, brand spanking new Walmart. And, my mighty oak? A water tower. I am again a victim of what I refer to as “The Tease”. “The Tease” is the prospect in my minds eye of the perfect landscape. It is the burden borne by every landscape painter that somewhere, just around every corner, lays the perfect landscape, innocently waiting to be painted by me and only me.

So, once again, I was driving home late last Friday afternoon when out of nowhere “The Tease” gripped me once again. Just for the briefest of moments I glimpsed Saint John’s Church in Cold Spring Harbor through parted trees. The low sun made the whites of the church and steeple glow and shimmer in the reflecting pool. Perfection!

But, I would not be fooled again. I would not be tempted. This time I would not give in to “The Tease”. And for that decision I paid a terrible price. You see, if one does not obey “The Tease”, one suffers from terrible spasms of doubt. I could not sleep that night for thoughts of “maybe that was the one”. I painted at Center Island Beach on Saturday morning but my mind was in Cold Spring Harbor. I checked my watch all day long at half hour intervals until finally, at 3:30 in the afternoon I set off to be disappointed again.

I arrived at Saint John’s at 4PM, the precise time I passed by the day before. I got out of the truck, grabbed my gear and hiked the short distance to where “The Tease” gripped me yesterday. I clamored down a wet embankment, regained my footing and, almost cautiously, raised my eyes to survey what lay before me. And there it was.

Not the Bierstadt image of my dreams but the best I could hope for on this day. A lovely white church and steeple, illuminated by a low sun, casting it’s reflections on the foreground pool. On this day I was able to make an uneasy peace with “The Tease”.

Note that all of these small sketches are available for sale directly from me via this website. Simply click on the “Paintings and Prints” tab and then on “Available Paintings”. The price includes shipping costs.