April began in Maine with a freak storm and widespread power outages. As we had done with another storm in March, my wife and I decamped to the home of our daughter, her husband and our two grandsons. They have a generator, something we will need before next winter. The boys were a little restless because there was no Internet, but we ate together, talked, and played Monopoly. They keep a little chicken coop out back, with one rooster and five hens, so we woke to a cock-a-doodle-doo and took fresh eggs home when the power came back. Fishing Sketches: Tale of a Conehead Wooly Bugger Last fall ..read more

In case you can't tell, I had fun with this one.   The late, great Frank Webb, a watercolor artist who frequently painted Maine, advised artists to study their subject carefully, take their time, absorb it, look at it front and back. "Then," he said. "Close your eyes. What do you see? Paint that."   This is about as close to my philosophy of painting as anything I have heard. I am not an abstract artist. Nor am I a realist. I am somewhere in the middle zone. I think it's usually pretty clear what my subject is, but as I continue painting, I find the presentation tends increasingly t ..read more

  "And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast...and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue." -- William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 7, on the arrival of the Pilgrims   Here in Maine, 404 years later, the season it is again winter. We've had a few good storms with temps mainly in the 20s and 30s. The ponds are frozen over and as I write there is a g ..read more

There is a lot of front-end engineering in a watercolor.   I like every painting to have a story, so most works start with a subject that captures my imagination for some reason. In the case of my Bird Souq and Buses at Cairo Citadel, it began with a drive to the Citadel of Saladin in Cairo, where I glimpsed an interesting market scene from the vantage point of a raised motorway. I grabbed a quick photo, looked at it more closely later, and decided I had to paint it. I loved the market bustle in the foreground and the magnificent Mamluke domes and minarets looming behind.  ..read more

Thanks to all who managed to get to the November 1 opening talk/reception for my "At Home Abroad" exhibit of some 30 paintings at the Thos. Moser showroom and gallery in Freeport. Originally scheduled Nov 1-5, it has now been extended until Dec. 7.   Due to limited seating, we had to limit registration, but the opener was oversubscribed and we had a packed house. I recounted the story of how I moved from growing up in Maine to Bowdoin College to journalism to a long career in diplomacy, and then back again to Maine as an artist.    Clips and Photos from Beirut and Amman   ..read more

UPDATE -- The exhibit of some 30 of my paintings, mentioned in my last blog and scheduled as a pop-up event Nov. 1-5, 2023 at the Thos. Moser gallery in Freeport, Maine, has been extended until December 7.   We had a great opening reception and art talk on November 1 -- the event was oversubscribed, the house was packed and a lively audience had lots of excellent questions.  I did a painting of Bowdoin College's Massachusetts Hall, the oldest building on campus, for the occasion. Many thanks to my good friends at Thos. Moser for hosting, and to the alumni relations team at Bowdoin f ..read more

I'm composing this blogpost the day after my return from a visit to Athens and Thessaloniki. I stayed two days in Athens, visiting with friends, then headed to Thessaloniki to attend the opening of Watercolor International 6 on September 26. It was my first time back to Greece since 2016 and a real treat.   Watercolor International 6 is a biannual exhibit of watercolor painting by artists from around the world, curated by Greek artist George Politis. The exhibit will run to the end of October so if you're in the area, please stop in.  While there for the opening, I met many top-flig ..read more

It has been an odd season, rain without end here in Maine, scorching heat everywhere else. Leaves are falling off ornamental trees. Patches of grass take on a reddish tinge as wet conditions allow red-thread fungi to develop. Even the birds and animals are behaving strangely.   The Hawk - A Reminder to Focus   One rare sunny morning this month I saw a small hawk with brown and white streaking sitting on the ground near our bird feeder, both wings outstretched. It stayed motionless for a good minute, wings spread, glaring defiantly, then abruptly flew off. I later read that hawks som ..read more

    I've been painting watercolors since my assignment as ambassador to Algeria in 2008-2011.  I continued in Afghanistan 2011-2012, Washington 2012-2013, and Greece 2013-2016.  Within two years of leaving the Foreign Service I had begun building my D D Pearce Fine Art website and making my work available for sale.  A few years ago I added a site for fine art prints at GeoGalleries.com and this past year I started up an Etsy shop for prints.    Since 2018 I have sold 51 paintings, and 41 of them since 2020.  At last count, I had ship ..read more

  Memorial Day always brings to mind for me a Civil War battle in which two of my great-great grandfathers fought. One lived, one died.    On February 27, 2017, about four months after leaving government, I drove from my home in northern Virginia to the Cedar Creek battlefield in the Shenandoah Valley. I was there to do a little research on family history. I drove straight to the spot known as Thoburn's Position - on the crest of a hill and field that slopes gently down to Cedar Creek. This is where Col. Joseph Thoburn's First Division, VII Corps had been posted, the far le ..read more