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Morning View from Cadillac Mountain, 10” x 12”, oil on linen.
He implored his parents to let him stay on at his grandparents’ place in Boothbay Harbor with his sketchbook, access to his grand-
father’s woodworking shop, and a copy of W.J. Aylward’s Ships and How to Draw Them. By the age of 12 or 13, he recalls, “I knew
all the rigging on every one of these ships.”

At the kitchen table of his cozy South Berwick home, I am handed a copy of the picture book originally published in 1950 as
part of Pitman’s Practical Drawing Series. In 2008, Flat Hammock Press purchased the copyright and republished it with an introduc-
tion and cover with a painting by Don, coincidentally born the year Aylward passed away. The softcover and Don’s masterful render-
ing of a three-masted square-rigger setting sail from the East River, assisted by a tug boat, with the Brooklyn Bridge rising majestically
in the background, immediately transports the reader to an era of illustration that interpreted pivotal events and sold products in maga-
zines such as Harper’s Monthly and The Saturday Evening Post and fed childhood imaginations in Scribner’s Illustrated Classics.

Both W. J. Aylward and his contemporary N. C. Wyeth, father of Andrew, were pupils of Howard Pyle, and so it seems life would have
been far less interesting without these artist-instructors and now Don, who is as committed to the evolution of his own creative process
as he is to impart the value of a tradition and the honing of a craft.

“Painting is every bit as interesting to me now as it was when I was 20 years old. It’s just interesting in a different way, in an experi-
ential, emotional way now and because the landscape is something we all experience to a greater or lesser extent,” he said.

“I used to be a picture maker and now I am a painter. There is a big difference.”

As director of the American Academy of Landscape Painting, Don is preparing to launch an innovative curriculum at the Lyme Aca-
demy of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, Connecticut this spring, a response to what Don viewed as a conspicuous absence – both figure and
still life have their atelier traditions, which was not the case for landscape – and as an answer to the growing popularity of the
genre. He has attracted a faculty comprised of some of the most accomplished and elite painters and instructors in the country.

“I tell my students, if you get good enough at your craft you will have the possibility of making art but no guarantees,” Don said. The
way it should go, Don explains, is from the inside out. “If the gestures start from the outside, they will most likely be inauthentic or
have some falsehood to them.”
Which explains Don’s curriculum of 10 sequential courses intended to build skills from the foundation through advanced techniques
and philosophies of painting. A student of the Landscape Academy will be granted a certificate upon successful completion of nine
courses.
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