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Monhegan Island's dramatic landscape provides an inspiring reference. Located ten miles off the Maine coast, the tiny island furnishes an unusual array of visual stimulation. On one side are tall cliffs, the highest on the New England coast. On the other side is a tranquil meadow sloping down to a picturesque harbor area featuring classic New England architecture. In the center are dense pine forests. Seventeen miles of footpaths meander throughout the terrain. There are very few vehicles, no streetlights, and only in the past decade did electricity come to the island. Monhegan has a long and illustrious history as a retreat for artists (it is a mecca for bird watchers as well). The island's landscape has served as subject matter for such luminaries as Rockwell Kent, George Bellows, Robert Henri, Fairfield Porter, and the Wyeths (who still own a home on the island). You won't find a more stimulating place to work! ********** |
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We're taking a sabbatical this year on Monhegan and devoting the 2010 season to our own painting and writing projects. Check back here this autumn for 2011 The Spiritual Language of Art Composition with Landscape as Reference workshop listings
Heavy surf off the backside of the island from Hurricane Bill which passed several hundred miles to the east during the summer of 2009.
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Here's what a number of past participants have say about their Aimone Art Monhegan Workshop experience: |
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"I
have taken many workshops over the years and have never had an instructor "I want to thank you both from the bottom of my heart. You have set me free in so many ways. So many things that I knew but could not verbalize, but you did, and things just fit into place. -- Betty Slade, Pagosa Springs, Colorado "The
experience for me, artistically, went beyond any expectations I
had going in. By week's end, the ways in which I was seeing things
changed...The intimacy of the island and the members of the group
was simply liberating!" "The
five-day artists' working retreat on Monhegan Island provides the
serious artist striving to find or enhance one's poetic voice with
the ideal context for artistic maturation. Monhegan is a tiny island;
its village is frozen in time: no fast-food restaurants, no shopping
malls, no TV, no phones to speak of. You are happily insulated from
the infringe ments of daily living on your art...totally immersed
in art…free for thinking, contemplating, absorbing, experimenting,
assimilating, and painting." "I've never experience a workshop so rewarding and so unique. There wasn't a soul in the group who wasn't excited by the challenges and marveling at the personal growth that Steve gently coaxed out of us. -- Lenore Barnett, Hendersonville, North Carolina "I learned
that I could respond to the landscape reference, paint landscapes
in an abstract manner, and be authentic. I was overwhelmed in a
positive way with the shapes that surrounded me – all I had to do
was turn my head and there was another painting waiting to be painted.
The blank canvas became less intimidating than it had been before." "On
Monhegan, its like Mother Nature is in your face. The rocks, the
cliffs, the wind, the surf shooting up 20 feet all around you, brings
out basic primal urges, fear, awe. It's a rush and the paintings
reflect it. Now, when I go outside to paint, I feel less like an
observer and more a part of nature." "The workshop can't be described as the best workshop I've taken--it's way beyond that. It's unique in that Steve pushes us in his gentle way to search, through our art, for ourselves." -- Pat Wellborn, Hendersonville North Carolina |
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