THE CANVAS-July 2011 

by Britta Konau

Ralf Feyl, David Little, Don Stone 

Ralf Feyl, David Little, and Don Stone are traditional landscape painters who make working on-site part of their process. Their subject matter ranges from covered bridges to mountain scenes to lobster boats. Collected here are images of water in various forms of motion: a roaring waterfall, a babbling river, and a crashing wave.

 Ralf Feyl

Feyl was trained as a figurative painter—a genre that remains an important part of his oeuvre. Yet he is better known for his realist landscapes and as a painter of crashing surf, quiet winter creeks, awe-inspiring waterfalls, and majestic mountain views. Feyl does not describe his subject matter in detail, but rather evokes the impression it made on him. “I depict moments of contemplation about the scene in front of me, but they are of course also about oneself,” Feyl says.

His paintings capture the atmosphere of a particular season, time of day, or weather condition. He is particularly intrigued by water and rendering qualities such as fluidity, reflectivity, and movement. Waterfall depicts a spring runoff in western Maine near Fryeburg. A huge amount of water thunders over craggy ledges of dark rock, partially dissolving into spray and mist in the process. The subject’s restrained palette—shades of white and black—appealed to Feyl. In keeping with his usual process, he painted several oil studies before starting the final canvas on-site and later finishing it in the studio.

For Feyl, much of the interest in water scenes derives from “the boundaries between land and sea, light and permanence.” While the land seems enduring, the impermanence of light continually affects it, subjecting a scene to constant change that is “almost like life itself,” says Feyl. But the artist does not search for the radical contrasts created by light and shadow; instead, he typically depicts overcast, evenly lighted landscapes pervaded by a sense of stillness. “Transitional times of day, season, or mood reveal subtle truths about my subject matter,” says the artist.

David Little

Until the late 1980s, Little worked in several different styles simultaneously, including surrealist-inspired abstraction. He received early encouragement from his uncle William Kienbusch (1914–1979), who painted abstract landscapes. After Little co-inherited his uncle’s summer house on Cranberry Island, he painted his first Maine-inspired landscapes. This genre became one expression of his passionate engagement with the natural beauty of the state.

Little is especially drawn to Maine’s North Woods for its challenging scale. In particular, Mount Katahdin has played an important role in his art and life; his grandfather was the first in the family to climb it in 1924, followed by the artist’s uncle. Little made his first summit in 1978. Katahdin has become a recurring motif in his paintings, but another deep connection to the mountain is of a more pragmatic nature: in 2007, he was part of a successful campaign to preserve Katahdin Lake. Since then, he has researched the area to the point of obsession, gathering information about its exploration, marketing, history, and artistic representation. He has accumulated a collection of more than a hundred publications on the topic and is now working on a book about the art and artists of Katahdin, which will be published by Down East Books in 2012.

Little describes himself as “a traditional impressionist painter.” His fluid brushstrokes coalesce into an animated solidity in which a few distinct shapes are picked out by black outlines. He employs a great variety of marks and obviously enjoys pushing paint around to see what it will do, a fluid technique that may perhaps harken back to his abstract days. The direction and movement of the brushstrokes in East Branch (Penobscot River) evoke the turbulence and sound of the river as it cascades over and between large boulders. Framed by trees in the middle ground, Bald Mountain looms pink and blue in the background.

Don Stone

Don Stone’s motto: “Paint for yourself. Paint to make yourself happy. Don’t paint to sell.” Employing an impressionist style in watercolor and oil, he prepares plein air studies in front of his subjects and then executes the final paintings in his studio, sometimes using photographs and videos for reference. While he has taken many painting trips abroad—to such destinations as the Bahamas, France, Spain, Ireland, and England—he is best known for painting traditional New England subject matter such as boats, fishermen, and coastal scenes.

The figurative work foregrounds Stone’s closely observed articulation of bodies, their stances and actions, while the landscapes reveal him to be a colorist. His first goal is to capture light and its reflections—two qualities that drew him to the full-moon image of Monhegan Nocturne. During several successive nightly trips to his chosen spot, Stone observed the effect of the moon on the waves and then executed small sketches from memory when he returned to his studio that night. In the mornings, he followed these drawings with small oil studies until he felt sufficiently prepared to start the final, larger painting in the studio. Although the moon is outside the image’s frame, flecks of moonlight shimmer on the ocean’s surface. One seemingly solid wave rolls toward the rocky coastline and, as we know, will crash with a roar and break into the liquid medium that it is.