Peconic Bay Impressionists

Caroline Bell and the Peconic Impressionists

I’ve been away for a few days – again- but this time no further than New York City. I came home and my neighbor Joan handed me a fistful of mail – alas only bills and a threat from the New Yorker that my subscription was “about to expire.” Never mind that a closer examination revealed that this sad event would actually take place sometime in mid-March.  I know  it’s a tough time for media of all kinds but how bad must it be if even the renewals department of the venerable and vaunted New Yorker is panicking?  On the other hand, if that’s true,  I might hold out for a better rate…

Joan has been busy while I’ve been away- in addition to writing all of her old beaux (the one she sent a Christmas card to has apparently written back and demanded a picture of her). She got a dog from  the local pound that came with the name Angel and according to Joan, she earns it every day. She’s an old dog that someone clearly thought had come to the end of her usefulness and decided to give away. Joan is a bit of an angel as far as I’m concerned for saving her life, whatever remains of it.

In the meantime, Joan is thinking of getting her picture taken in a wedding dress she bought a while back at TJ Max. “The dress looked good and it was cheap,” she said to me, as if that was an adequate explanation. Never mind there wasn’t a smallest promise of a groom. I do love her spirit.

Joan sells a lot of stuff on ebay – mostly dolls- and maybe a wedding dress or two. When I stopped by to visit, her friend Alison was visiting with Joan as well. Alison apparently knows a lot about a lot of things, including the Peconic Bay Impressionists, a school of artists that lived in Mattituck about seventy or so years ago. They were a group of artists who were apparently under the tutelage or perhaps the patronage of Caroline Bell. Alison later went home to get the book (seen above) which she dropped off at my door along with Subsoil, a book about the North Fork some seventy years ago. (She says it’s much more interesting than it sounds.) The impromptu generosity of my neighbors on the North Fork continues to amaze me. Now of course I need to something for them.

About these ads