On Wednesday, I drive to Easton. Driving from Vermont to Maryland for Plein Air Easton is not particularly my idea of a good time, involving, as it does, unpleasantly sclerotic highways and endless Northeastern Megopolis. But the alternatives are equally unappealing: the Vermonter train does leave right from Bellows Falls, but discharges one in Wilmington, Delaware after eight hours, requiring a taxi/Lyft to a hotel, then to car rental place the next day, etc. etc.; and while the flight from BDL to BWI only takes an hour, it takes two hours to get to BDL, and then paying for parking, taking a shuttle from parking lot to airport, waiting around at least an hour before the flight, taking another shuttle to the car rental place at BWI and then, in an unfamiliar vehicle, crossing the Bay Bridge (seldom a problem outbound; very much a potential nightmare returning)….

So driving it is, this year. Instead of my increasingly unreliable Honda Elephant, which got about 20 MPG, I will have my new-to-me 2019 RAV-4 Hybrid, which is a pretty great car, averaging about 42 miles per gallon, and has tons of room. As of today, I am pretty well packed. Surfaces? Check. Frames? Check. Painting for the Variations show at Trippe Gallery? Check. Easels and paints and brushes and tools and sun shades and rechargeable fans and sunscreen and tick repellant? Check and check and check and check.

My friend Garnet Rogers once described the act of songwriting as “trudging up a hill every day with two pieces of bread in your hands, standing at the top with arms outstretched, hoping to catch a lightning sandwich.”

Painting is kind of like that, especially painting at an ostensibly competitive event like PAE. My plan is to create two paintings a day - a smaller piece in the mornings, a larger one each afternoon/evening. I tell myself I do a couple of these events each year in order to keep my eye/hand coordination in top form, which is true, but of course one also wants those paintings to be at least good, and certainly one would be happy if one or two managed to be pretty great. And one will be surrounded by one’s compatriots, and hoping to maybe win an award, and it would be nice to sell enough to make the whole thing worthwhile…

As well, more and more, these events are a chance to meet or reconnect with folks who follow my work on social media, have taken workshops, or have purchased paintings. I am so very grateful - for without an audience, I wouldn’t have a career. As a thank you, I will be packing a selection of stickers - the Late Great Studio Cat Corduroy (and late great home cat SLAS), REASONABLY FINE ARTIST stickers, Bellows Falls: Not Nearly As Bad As You Thought stickers, and Donald Trump pointing at things, saying “I DID THAT!” stickers (I can’t stand Trump, so I stick him pointing at things I don’t like, but, being very ecumenical, it’s okay with me if you have him point at things you approve of). The only thing I ask is that you not ask me for a sticker while I am actually painting, but otherwise, all the nextt couple of weeks I’m fair game.

I would urge friends who are part-time painters and are in the area to register for the Quick Paint, scheduled for Saturday, July 18, 9-11 am (there are separate awards for the juried artists, the open category, and for youth). If you’re not a painter but are on the Eastern Shore from the 9th to the 19th, check out the wide variety of events going on during Plein Air. Maybe I’ll see you at one - if so, I hope I have the stickers with me!

In 2022, I was off, um, powdering my nose at the moment that it was announced that I had been awarded the Timothy Dils Grand Prize. Now, chances are about one in a thousand that one would again receive that honor, but, just in case you were wondering, I plan to use the facilities prior to the start of the awards this year.

Hope to see you down the line.

All best,

~ Charlie

PS: This monthly missive is always free and freely given, but each month I also offer an Absurdly Discounted Original Painting ($450 plus tax and shipping; as opposed to $1400+) from my inventory to paid subscribers. All proceeds from this largesse goes to charities of various stripes. I’ll be sending out that email tomorrow, so if you are interested in owning a Charlie original, you might consider becoming a paid subscriber today.

The big news at the Hunter-Kim compound here in Bellows Falls is that a new used cat has found a forever home. At our house, cats are named after members of the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery (since 2000, we have had Meriwether, Pvt. Silas Goodrich, York, and Charbonneau; dear, departed Studio Cat Corduroy was Betty Soo’s cat in Texas before coming to live at 33 Bridge Street, and thus exempt from renaming).

I went to the local Used Cat Store a few weeks ago, and, thanks to the magic of video calls, Betty Soo and I settled on a very friendly 14-month old orange guy. I filled out the paperwork and brought him home just before Betty Soo came up for a week off before heading out on what is going to be an exhausting summer James McMurtry tour.

Much of our time together was spent vetting names for the new arrival. After close examination of the recorded behavior of multiple Corps of Discovery members, we winnowed the list down to Francois LaBiche (skilled hunter, valued interpreter, excellent boatman), Alexander Willard (from Charlestown, NH - just up the road, court martialed for sleeping while on guard duty) and John Collins.

We settled on Private John Collins. How could we resist? A fine name, with a distinguished service record. To boot:

John Collins was born in Maryland. He was recruited at Fort Kaskaskia from the 1st Infantry Regiment. Although he was a good hunter, he was often drunk and disobedient. When he was supposed to be hunting, he sometimes visited a nearby grog shop and returned severely inebriated. When he and another man went grouse hunting on 5 January 1804, they found part of a butchered hog hung in the woods, brought it back to camp, and claimed it was bear meat. He was court-martialed and received 100 lashes for stealing whiskey from the official supply when supposedly guarding it.

Since his arrival, Pvt. Collins has shown himself to be a dedicated hunter, waiting quietly -for hours- behind a bag of kibble before pouncing upon, and dispatching, an unsuspecting mouse (we will skip over his burying the corpse under Dad’s luggage and then peeing on everything) and avid lap-sitter, but negotiations as to territorial rights are still ongoing between him and resident cat Charbonneau.

During the day, Charbonneau -who is an indoor/outdoor cat- comes and goes in a district that encompasses The Office and Otsid, whilst Pvt. Collins has the run of the rest of the house. In evening hours, the door to Otsid is locked, and Charbs and Pvt. Collins coexist within the entirety of the house.

The problem, according to Charbonneau, is that Pvt. Collins does not, as yet, fully understand his place in the great scheme of things. To wit, here is Charbonneau explaining to his young friend that He Is Not Welcome On The Bed:

I think you will agree that, although the language being spoken is Cat, the meaning is unmistakable. Also the extremely flat ears.

The excitement here at the house, coupled with just taking it easy to be with my beloved for a few days, has resulted in a bit less painting taking place than normal. We have a fair bit of painting time scheduled this week, however, along with teaching a workshop at Southern Vermont Arts Center tomorrow, so we hope to have some good stuff under our belts before we take the train out to Utah in a week to participate in the Fryer/Hunter Gathering, the juried colloquium I run with Doug Fryer, with a dozen terrific artists. We will fill you in on that in a few weeks.

Tomorrow, we will offer our paid subscribers our Monthly Absurdly Discounted Painting, one original piece that we make available for $450 (as opposed to the normal gallery price of $1450-$3000), with all proceeds outside postage and a cheeseburger going to charity. Last month, we offered two pieces, and raised $450 for a friend walking the length of the UK to benefit WARCHILD, a nonprofit aiding children victimized by armed conflict; and $450 for EARTHJUSTICE, an organization waging legal battles on behalf of our wild lands against the depredations of the current regime.

I think this coming month we will keep things close to home and raise money for PARKS PLACE, our local social services clearinghouse. If you’re interested in owning a Charlie Hunter for cheap, maybe you’d like to become a paying subscriber (though there are no other benefits to speak of - this newsletter is free, and freely given).

Take good care, and keep creating (stay away from that old AI) -
~ Charlie

PS: I believe only two spaces remain for my final one-day workshop this year, August 30 up at Bryan Memorial Gallery in Jeffersonville, VT. Here’s the link.

Over the years that I have been giving workshops, I am often asked to teach how I sketch. This is not actually easily done, as a) my sketches are maybe 6x6” on a good day, so it would be impossible to have a dozen or so people gathered around and actually able to see what I’m doing, and b) knowing human nature, the people who couldn’t see very well would start talking amongst one another and the whole thing would get very distracting for all involved.

So, I’m experimenting with filming my sketching practice. I’m a big believer in getting out and sketching from life three or four times a week. Recently, our friend Re Sheppard has been kind enough to drive around and film me as I work on a sketch, sitting in the front seat of my car. Here’s what we were up to yesterday.

I have ordered a point-of-view camera and accessories so I’ll be exploring how that works in the days and weeks upcoming. But, until then, if you are interested in my process - and if you are interested in maybe trying it yourself - here’s the REASONABLY FINE ART TALK demo that will run today (for those who do not know, I have recorded over 150 REASONABLY FINE ART TALKS, which live on YouTube and can be accessed here. New ones go up most Wednesdays at 1:45pm Eastern. They’re a mix of interviews with artists and curators, opinion pieces about events and processes, and explanations of shows and bodies of work. I’d love to have you subscribe if you’re interested, but since Substrate now allows us to upload videos, I’ll likely also post them here.

Hope you enjoy. Feedback welcome. Take good care.

xx - Charlie

Lo and behold, twenty years later, here I am, having taught scores of workshops. Amazing! The five-year-old me would be amazed that anybody cares to hear about how I smear pigment on flat surfaces to create images that hopefully evoke an emotional reaction from the viewer. The slightly-grandiose young adult me would be pleased to learn that an eminence grise version of me would be imparting wisdom to eager students. And the actual me sits and wonders exactly what is the purpose of workshops?

The usual set up is that a local arts group invites a visiting artist to come teach. Compensation is negotiated (price, what percentage of registration fees go to the artist and what to the sponsoring organization, minimum and maximum group size, possibe inclusion of lodging, meals, and/or transportation) and both the organization and artist are expected to promote the workshop. The problem is that in-person art workshops are a hybrid beast that serve multiple masters. Aside from a desire to impart knowledge, the artist is hoping to make some money, and the sponsoring organization is hoping not to lose money.

This results in the primary motivation of both parties inadvertently but inevitably becomes a desire to fill the workshop; the sole criteria for inclusion is ability to pay, with the net result becoming a wildly divergent set of expectations amongst the class participants. A workshop can easily include:

• Someone who has never painted before, but thinks it might be fun to learn.

• Someone who is a follower of the specific instructor and is hoping to learn specific techniques.

• Someone who takes pretty much every workshop the organization offers and is seeking their own “voice.”

• Someone who just enjoys taking workshops recreationally with their friends.

• Someone who is serious about their work and may have taken academic classes, but the instructors were far more interested in conceptual art than in representationalism, and so consequently they may be weak in certain fundamentals.

To try to impart actual, useful knowledge over the course of a few days to each person in such a group (and many workshops get as large as 16 participants) is virtually impossible: students are either left in the weeds (too much information! too little time!) or are left scrounging for bits of sustenance (I already know how to shade a cone, thank you!).

That’s why, over the course of the last couple of years, I have severely limited the number of workshops I do, and I am adamant about keeping group size to no more than 12. I now pretty much only do either:

1. Juried multi-day workshops (potential participants submit a portfolio and a statement about why they want to take the class and where they are in their journey). Admissions are selected from pool of completed applications.

2. Open single-day workshops (first dozen people who pay are in).

This year, the nine-month online Painters’ Path workshop I’m doing with Jason Sacran or the five-day Fryer/Hunter Gathering that I do with Doug Fryer (this year in Spring City, Utah) are examples of the first. The three one-day workshops I’m doing in Vermont (the first has already occurred, the other two are coming up - June 14 in Manchester and August 30 in Jeffersonville) are examples of the second (I think both those workshops have like one space remaining in each one, but you should ask).

I do also do the very occasional multi-day unjuried workshop. I find multi-day open-admission workshops very tiring because I genuinely wish to impart information, and having to calibrate one’s teaching to each participant’s ability as best one can over the course of three days is pretty emotionally exhausting. But, candidly, getting out of Vermont in February is a strong motivator, and the Scottsdale Artists School is a really well-run institution with a fantastic sense of mission and purpose. And I can combine that with a good, long train ride, a chance to paint with friends in Big Bend, and a nice visit with my beloved in Texas (which also means barbeque and excellent live music).

But what to teach? I’ve fiddled and faddled with the curriculum over the years - what I’d really like to teach is The Importance Of Developing A Sketching Process (and, believe me, just about every one of my fellow artists would like to teach the exact same topic), but the reality is that people do not want to take that workshop one bit.

Put it this way: do you want to spend your disposable income on dried groats or on a gorgeous chocolate eclair?

So, the challenge is to make an eclair that actually has some nutritive value. I asked Jason for help, and here’s what he helped me build:

Things of God, Things of Man: The Low-Chroma Landscape
February 23-25, 2027/ Tuesday-Thursday, Scottsdale Artists School, Scottsdale, AZ

Charlie Hunter’s landscape paintings capture the quiet, melancholic beauty of “rural deindustrialization” using a near-monochromatic, modified tonalist style that feels both timeless and deeply personal. His work is acclaimed for distilling complex scenes into essential, moody compositions that blend photographic realism with abstract, textural mark-making. For this workshop, each day’s class begins with a demonstration painting in which Hunter explains the decisions and choices made as the painting evolves. Students then work on their own, with an emphasis on design, mood, and finding one’s true “voice,” before all gather for lively group critique and discussion. Sketching to work out compositional challenges, use of water-mixable oils and unorthodox tools such as window washer’s squeegees, patterned paper towels, and washes of thin paint to create unique, almost photographic textures are all discussed. Experimentation and laughter is encouraged.

How does that sound to you? Sure, it’s a bit of a catch-all, but as Jason pointed out, I’m now known enough that people want to learn more about the thought process behind the paintings, and not just about the way I use -say- a plant sprayer or Stim-U-Dents in creating a piece.

Well, we will find out. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences about leading or participating in workshops - that’s part of what I like about Substrate; the comment section allows for an actual conversation.

A reminder that tomorrow I am going to post the May Absurdly-Discounted-Original-Painting to our paid subscribers. Beneficiary this month is Alex MacDonald, a very good painter, who is engaged in a seriously demented fundraising walk from Land’s End (the most southerly point in England) to John O’Groats (groats again! and the most northerly point in Scotland), a distance of 1250 miles, for the UK charity, WAR CHILD. Details on Alex’s fundraiser here.

Thanks again for your interest in my work. It is deeply appreciated.
~ Charlie

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We wouldn’t say no.
All proceeds from those discounted paintings go to charity.

Happy April!

I like April, never having found it the cruelest month (February is -obviously - the cruelest month, as it is is 28 days too long); April is the time of year where, at least up here in Vermont, things start to come alive again.

Yesterday, the sun was out and the air was warm and filled with promise; I started commuting from the house to the studio on the bitchin’ e-trike; people were out with their dogs, and small children went zipping about dangerously on scooters.

I had been feeling mentally constipated in the studio of late; plenty of ideas - too many - all competing with one another; I had around thirty works-in-theoretical-process sitting around in front of me every time I opened the studio door, the net result of which is that I just felt scattered, overwhelmed and stupid. Fortunately, a couple of days ago my friend Kristen (@scavenger_aesthetic on Instapuppy) came over and for the afternoon we photographed, documented, and entered into the database the thirty pieces, and took about twenty of them into the other room, where I do not have to be confronted by them moment-to-moment.

Now there are just twelve unfinished pieces for me to stare at, and make adjustments to, as time and inspiration warrant. That is a more manageable number and it is amazing to me how that physical uncluttering has led to a similar mental state.

When we were photographing the works-in-progress, I was slightly aghast to note that my cellphone’s camera was making the pieces look about ten percent better than they actually are. I was talking to Betty Soo about that, and she posits that we, as a society, are now so used to seeing the world illuminated on our screens, that we expect that little-bit-extra of contrast in our images.

This is fascinating to ponder, and I am messing around with that idea as I work on this small piece. I call it Going After Sindler, as it reminds me somewhat of the wonderful, moody work of that mighty midwesterner, Brian Sindler.

As you can see, in the most recent iteration I have lightened the “sky” and darkened the “land” - I don’t think of this piece as anything other than a “study”, so the consequences aren’t high one way or the other. I have signed it, but I do not think of it as “done” - I applied the signature only because I do not like prominent signatures and the paint film is maybe one-twelfth of an inch thick in that corner and I can’t imagine it’ll ever get any thicker, so I carved it in with the end of a brush handle.

I’ll throw in a couple of caveats: these aren’t carefully photographed, and I haven’t figured out how to configure my cellphone to not boost the contrast/enrich the tones slightly, so each of these images is a little bit “more” than the actual image.

But what do you think? Just as how now most of the music we listen to is compressed-all-to-hell and degraded by Spotify’s low bit rate (more or less; I don’t actually speak audio) as compared to rival Tidal, is our consuming of art being degraded by seeing it mostly on computer screens? Or is that not actually “degradation”? Is it perhaps just the fact of modern information distribution, and something we, as a species, will just adapt to?

I’d love to hear your thoughts - please comment publicly in the comments section; it’d be fun to get a real dialog going.

Until then, take good care, and enjoy the earth waking up once again.
Fight the power; keep creating.
All best,
~ Charlie

PS: I am getting an increasing number of inquiries about one-on-one “mentoring.” Not something I do, nor do I plan to start. Instead, I do enjoy leading an occasional one-day workshop. I limit each workshop to twelve people - in my opinion, big workshops drive everybody nuts and nobody learns much of anything.

I have three one-day, twelve-person, workshops coming up in Vermont this year (all of which, I believe still have a couple of spots available): Sunday, April 26 in Putney (at Village Arts of Putney, includes a visit to Richard Schmid studio and home), Sunday, June 14 at Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester, and Sunday, August 30 at Bryan Gallery in Jeffersonville. First come, first served.

Tomorrow or Monday I will be offering our paid subscribers this month’s Absurdly Discounted Original Painting ($450 rather than the usual four times that), an original Charlie Hunter, often with embedded cat hair to prove authenticity, with 100% of the proceeds going to charity.

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We’d love to count you in our number of paid subscribers. You get exclusive video content as well (as soon as I actually sit down and do a bit of editing….)

The Royal We have returned from a nearly month-long jaunt. We left Bellows Falls, Vermont on The Amtrak on February 20, in the middle of a snow storm, heading to Arizona to lead a workshop at the Scottsdale Artists School; thence -again by train- to Texas to see the great BettySoo pick up her award as Best Folk/Bluegrass Artist at the 2026 Austin Music Awards, and from there, by car, to Louisiana where we judged the Teche Plein Air event, followed by a one-day workshop in Baton Rouge. Then we flew home - via Atlanta on a day where the airport shut down for two hours due to tornadoes - and were picked up in a lowering rain and driven back to Vermont by our friend Sandy.

It’s nice to be home.

I want to urge folks reading this who are aspiring outdoor painters to apply for Teche Plein Air in 2027 (March 6-13 will be the dates). It takes place in New Iberia, Louisiana, in the heart of Cajun country, and while the volume of sales are moderate and tend to be in the $300-700 range (as opposed to, say, Plein Air Easton in Maryland where you can basically add a zero to those numbers), it is well run, they take excellent care of the artists (host housing is provided as well as dinner each night but one), and a sense of camaraderie is highly encouraged. Plus, for us northeasterners, you get out of the snow and drear for a week, and get to eat a lot of fried seafood (“You gon’ be tired a eatin’ by the time you leave,” said event organizer Jerome Weber, and he had a point). It would be a great introductory event for those wanting to see if juried plein air events are right for them.

The heartening thing about the whole trip was that, even in the midst of the misery our world is going through at the moment, people were wonderful, and folks like Trudy at Scottsdale Artist School; Jerome at the Teche, Freddy Decourt (the mayor of New Iberia who would place high in a James Carville impersonation contest), or David Gary, who runs The Art Guild of Louisiana (host of the workshop in Baton Rouge) are all keeping a sense of beauty alive, and along with it, the possibility of art to transform and heal.

Tomorrow I’ll be offering the monthly Absurdly-Discounted-Original-Painting to our paid subscribers. Beneficiary this month is a guy who found my wallet after I dropped it (cash got taken, but cards were left alone). This guy is forced to live in his car at the moment, and he found it while going through the trash outside a pizza restaurant a couple of miles from where I lost it (“people don’t think twice about throwing out half a perfectly good pizza,” he told us matter-of-factly). In the wallet, I had Betty Soo listed as emergency contact; he reached out to her (“I know what it’s like not to have an i.d.,” he said) and saved me a world of trouble.

There are good people out there.
Big love,
~ Charlie

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one discounted painting -with proceeds going to charity- is offered paid subscribers each month.

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Fryer-Hunter Gathering in June; one space available…

Hey, by the way…. one of our dozen juried-in artists for The Fryer-Hunter Gathering this June 24-27 in Spring City, Utah, a colloquium that Doug Fryer and I are running, has had to drop out for medical reasons. Consequently, we have one slot available. Cost is $1,275 plus lodging and meals.

Here’s what Doug wrote about our plans:

"We are thrilled that you are considering joining us for another Fryer/Hunter Gathering, held this time in my home town of Spring City, Utah. The town is known for its preservation of early Pioneer stone or adobe houses and cabins. There are quite a number of interesting subjects to paint, both in the landscape and in town. But you don't have to paint en plein air. We have a wonderful building in which we will meet and work as well. Our venue for the Gathering is in the largest historical stone barn in the state, surrounded by lovely perennial and annual gardens.

As with the last gathering, we hope it will be particularly supportive for intermediate to advanced artists who desire the benefit of serious discourse, meaningful critique and congenial dialogue while developing associations with other artists in a friendly roundtable context. This is meant to be a type of collegium, one in which each member can contribute to discussion, critique sessions, and informal conversation, and in which the members can make connections, seek and give counsel and recommendations, and do work in a spirit of exploration - rather than as students receiving instruction, or as participants in a competitive event.

Although the exact content of the roundtable discussions is developing, I can say that it will be similar to what we did in the first Gathering. It will tend toward the more significant questions regarding developing content in our work, what makes a healthy studio practice, how we each navigate the various pressures of the art world, and how to best make and achieve both our artistic and our marketing goals. In essence, talk with others about how to find and retain our artistic voices and find satisfaction in our work.

Of course, as the hosts of the event, Charlie and I will generally take the lead during the course of the week, but much will be left to the participants as contributors. ...Our hope is that this second Gathering can be as transformational as the first proved for many of us."

Here’s a video Doug took crunching around on the gravel outside the stone barn that will be our headquarters for the week:

Doug writes, "The Anderson’s house, cottage and barn. The interior of the barn is open, with bare stone...There are tables, chairs and most things needed for catering... I don’t think there is a tv monitor in the barn, but I think I can get one from Spring City Arts if we need one. Extensive gardens with perennials and annuals. Pickleball court for those who are inclined. Easy access to small town Utah, as well as farmland, animals, and a short drive to mountains up to over 11,000 feet. Alpine forest and vistas. For anyone who would like to make a day trip there is Capitol Reef National Park two hours away. Leave early morning and be back by dinner time. But there is a lot to paint nearby, and some other great things only an hour away. We have two cafes in spring city for breakfasts and lunches. Plus others 5-10 minutes away. If anyone wishes I might be able to arrange horse or mule rides, or if they like noise I could possibly arrange side by side rides up the mountain. If anyone likes weeding, I have a garden and they can go for it."

If you’d like to join us, please drop me a line as soon as possible at:
charlie@hunter-studio.com
…explaining where you are in your artistic journey and why you’d like to join us, along with a couple of samples or a link to where we can see your work. We’d need your payment within two weeks of acceptance; we want to fill the space quickly so we can proceed with planning.

I also enjoy reading aloud, and back when I ran Roots on the Rails (train trips with live music on board), Dave Alvin and I discovered a shared love of Algonquin-Round-Table humorist Robert Benchley, and late one evening read Benchley stories to our patrons in the performance car. When Amtrak killed our ability to charter cars and we were no longer able to do the epic trips I loved to arrange (the company does survive as Roots Rails & Rambles, wonderfully run by my friend Sarah Ovenden - learn about the great trips she puts together here), I thought that was it for Benchley Night. Then when the pandemic hit, well, there was another way to pass the time. So now there are a whole passel of Charlie-reading-aloud YouTube clips - here’s a link for those. If you like being read aloud to, you can just binge-listen while you do the dishes or work on a dog portrait, or whatever.

Back in 2018, I briefly worked with an art management team who turned out to be more aspirational than operational (something I fifty percent suspected would be the case, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, and they were nice people), but the one thing they insisted I get going was posting to Instagram. Turns out I enjoy that, too. I post most of what I’m working on, mixed in (nowadays) with a lot of political content.

I don’t deliberately try to sell pieces off of Instagram (which posts automatically also populate my Charlie Hunter Art page on Faceplant), but now and again I’ll post something and someone will inquire about it. My policy is that if the piece in question is promised to a gallery, the inquirer needs to purchase through that gallery, but if it isn’t yet promised anywhere, I will sell directly at what would be 75% of the gallery price — the patron saves 25% and I make what I’d make through the gallery plus a little bit more.

So far this year, I have been working on a half-dozen or so biggish studio pieces, as I have a dream of doing fewer but more adventurous and substantive pieces. Two of them sold directly after I posted, which is kind of amazing, and presents a problem when applying for certain prizes which require available work. A good problem to have, though.

And then there is this newsletter/emailer. I moved it to Substack in 2024 (I used to use Mailchimp, which I never liked much and was starting to charge more and more, and my newsletters always looked like fundraising emails from small-midwestern-city hospitals). What I like about Substack is that you just sit down and type - there are essentially no confusing formatting and design situations - it’s pretty much just content.

I used to do weekly fundraisers in conjunction with Benchley Nights until Faceplant decided they wanted to take a cut. Giving fellow Exonian-but-otherwise-loathesome-techbro Marky Mark Zuckaduck 7% of funds ostensibly being raised for animal shelters and the like made me feel nauseous. Substack, on the other hand, lets me offer my newsletter for free; with those who wish to paying in and, in turn, being offered an original painting each month at an absurdly discounted price. This seems to work well - every dollar generated by those painting sales goes to one doomed charity or another; from manatees to local journalism to civil liberties.

All of which is to say that I find myself with a fundamentally kluged (but yet apparently-functioning) publicity set-up that generates over ten thousand dollars worth of charitable giving a year, and has upwards of 28,000 followers. But I’m not sure any one aspect of my audience knows about the others.

I just learned that Substack allows me to send out videos as emailers. I’ve attached the conversation with the great illustrator Shawn Braley (www.shawnbraley.com) that I had during last week’s REASONABLY FINE ART TALK. Shawn is a happy guy who mostly wants to do exquisite illustrations of adorable anthropomorphic bunnies, but -in my opinion- has produced the most powerful political cartoon of 2026 in reaction to the horrific killing of civilians in Minneapolis this year.

It’s quite easy for me to upload a recording here as an ad-free alternative to the YouTube experience. Is this something you, dear reader, would like me to do, or is that needlessly clogging your in box? If so, could just include it in the benefits my paying patrons get. I’d love to hear from you if that’s something you’d like or not.

One last note before I shut up.

Some of my audience would really prefer that I not discuss politics - they’re “just here for the art.” To that I say, a) art is inherently political - any painting I do of an abandoned factory or dying small farm is as much about the consequences of economic policies that favor corporations over people as it is about value and edges; and b) I think it is the obligation of anybody - even fairly obscure working artists with the tiniest of soapboxes - to stand up and speak when they see something that they feel is morally indefensible.

Why?

Not to change the minds of the demagogues in power or those who they have radicalized, but instead to be an example for others like us - the vast majority of folks who read this; people who love art and aren’t terribly powerful in the great scheme of things, but are known and respected in some little circle, or hometown, or wherever, and know, inside, that what this regime is doing is wrong. The courage of peers like Scott Burdick, Nancy Guzik, Scott W. Prior, Nancy Anderson and many others gives me courage. And so, if I stand up and say “nope, not okay,” that may give someone else the courage to do the same. Make sense? I hope so. And if not, you are always free to unsubscribe.

Take good care. Big love to all (yes, even those who disagree with me). Stay warm; Spring is coming.

Your pal,
~ Charlie

Paid subscribers - be on the lookout for this month’s Absurdly Discounted Painting offer on Monday.

PS: Workshops this year are up on Hunter-Studio.com >”Workshops”. I think there are still three spaces at Scottsdale Artists School in Arizona later this month. I do promise to be apolitical at my in-person events, teaching, judging, public demos, etc.

PPS: My friend Kristen has been hard at work and we have the Reasonably Fine Mark-Making Kits back in stock. Order your today!

When the bleakness of the American experiment sliding into a fascistic hell of mediocrity starts to get you down, Betty Soo and I have a bit of advice: spend a day with your beloved going to museums. Then you realize the world is built on hope.

As you may know, Betty Soo lives in Texas, and I live in Vermont (the day after tomorrow will be our ninth anniversary, so apparently this arrangement suits us okay). Both of us are on the road a lot (she much more than I, as she is a touring singer/songwriter - look for her in a town near you as she tours with James McMurtry & the Martial Law Revue this coming year), so when our schedules click to grab a day or two together, we go for it.

Last week, she had a show in Maryland with a couple of days off after, so I headed down to the Bellows Falls Amtrak station and boarded the Vermonter for Baltimore. We’ve decided that when we have time together we want to visit museums we haven’t been to before, and Baltimore presented a great opportunity for that!

We ended up visiting the B&O Railroad Museum (Betty Soo is very, very patient) and the Walters Museum of Art (where our artist friend Pam Betts is conservator - we found a quote from her next to one piece - it felt cool to know famous people!). The B&O had a fantastic exhibit about people escaping slavery by rail (the story of Henry “Box” Brown is not for the claustrophobic), and the Walters - which is free - had a charming little exhibit about cats and medieval manuscripts - the highlight being a display of an illuminated manuscript upon which a cat had trod before the ink was quiiiiiite dry); but what Betty Soo pointed out to me was that visiting those museums was a reaffirmation of hope.

And I, for one, need hope these days. I don’t know about you, but I am appalled at what the current regime is up to, and it is easy to pitch into despair. But on a cold day in Baltimore, we saw hope.

That amazing roundhouse roof that I’m looking slack-jawed up at? It was built in 1884.

From the museum website: “In February 2003, after a record snowfall, the western half of the roof collapsed, dropping thousands of pounds of slate, iron, and wood onto many significant locomotives, rolling stock, and causing extensive damage to the structure. After great effort, the debris were removed, and the remaining portions of the roof were replaced in a process that took 22 months to complete. During reconstruction, the interior of the building was returned to its 1884 appearance. Today, the Roundhouse contains exhibits and the most significant collection of 19th century railroad equipment in the world.”

We saw the pictures of the roundhouse after the collapse. It was a mess. The rail cars and engines we are standing near in the photo above? Many of them got smashed to bits. But they got rebuilt. The roof got rebuilt. And now the interior of that place - constructed for pure function 140 years ago, is now a soaring temple to an earlier industrial age.

At the Walters we saw rooms of art dating from prehistory through late 19th Century. So many waves of conquerors - it was hard to keep track! But basically, the takeaway is… civilizations come and civilizations go; nations rise and fall. And even as the barbarians bash down the gates, pillage the place, and knock the noses off the statuary, they’ve got some nice decorative work on their horses’ body armor; and eventually they start striving to create beauty themselves, to try to connect to the divine, whatever their idea of “the divine” may be.

Hope comes back. Beauty persists (not to mention there are a bunch of other great-sounding museums in Baltimore, and we didn’t even see everything in the two we visited).

I needed to be reminded not to give up hope. I am profoundly grateful that I have a wonderful companion who notices stuff I don’t and points it out to me. And I am grateful those two museums were there; a bulwark against despair and cynicism.

I often sign my little books of paintings with words from the late, great singer/songwriter Phil Ochs (and I quoted it in last month’s newsletter). But these days, one could do worse than to repeat them: “Ah, but in such ugly times, The true protest is beauty.”

Get thee to a museum. It’ll help cure what ails us.
Big love,
~ Charlie

Later this week I will be sending our paid subscribers this month’s absurdly-discounted painting offer. There will be one 12x24 piece offered to my “Big Fans” on Tuesday; the smaller piece (usually 8x10 or 6x12) will be offered all paying subscribers Wednesday. One beneficiary will be the Windham County (VT) Humane Society, honoring the memory of a fine cat named Dorito, who I didn’t know, but whose owner does work for me. The other will be honoring my friend Susan MacNeil, a wonderful human of indomitable spirit who never gave up hope that good would eventually triumph, taken from us just a week ago.

Hi, Friends!

As the wreckage of 2025 smoulders around our feet like a recalcitrant wood fire, I figure it is good time to cast a look back at the REASONABLY FINE ART TALK newsletter of 2025, and get a sense of how it is working for us both.

I switched my email list from Mailchimp to Substack at the beginning of July, 2024, primarily because I dreaded sitting down at the computer, working for several hours on an emailer, and ending up with something that looked like a fundraising solicitation from a small-city health center. Substack is a very simple and unclutterred platform on which to write - I started using it a few years ago with friends in order to publish my beloved late sister’s journals (you should subscribe - she was a great nature writer) and was pleasantly surprised at how simple it is and was.

The only downside, as far as I can see, is that Substack is very interested in having readers subscribe to other Substacks, and so folks who may just want to hear about whether I’m doing any workshops in their region (more on that in a second) are instead being urged to subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson as she decodes current American politics, or my friend Lincoln Paine as he writes about Maritime history (both fellow Exeter alumni; and did you know that Heather and I lived in the same dorm room, albeit ten years or so apart?)

Substack is also slightly strange in that it doesn’t attach a name to an email address unless one creates a Substack profile, which feels odd to me, and I am perpetually confused by some of the ways they want us “creators” to get the word out - notes!, chats!, restacks! I’m sure I can learn how it thinks; but, really, all I want to do is write one emailer a month, and be of some use to people in this world.

As many of you know, I do occasional REASONABLY FINE ART TALKS on Faceplant and YouTube - there is a playlist to which you can subscribe for free; there are over 150 RFATs now, available to watch anytime - and I also do a free Sunday evening humorous read-aloud, Benchley Nights, (started for fun during Covid, I continue to enjoy weekly readings to a small, devoted group who call themselves the Liberal Snowplowing Do-Gooders). Those, too, are available on a playlist on YouTube.

I used to do weekly Faceplant fundraisers on Benchley Nights for various charities, but, as with all things born of the tech-bros, the powers-that-be decided that they wanted to take a cut of the proceeds. Substack is interested in monetizing things, too, but they do not seem as soulless or avaricious as Marky Mark Zuckaduck. So I moved the fundraising aspect over to Substack.

As you know, you can receive this emailer for free, or you can be a paid subscriber. Substack allows me three tiers of paid readership - monthly, annually, and what they call - for reasons unknown to me - “founding members.” They suggest charging $7/month, $70 year — or $240 for those “founders.” That’s what I’ve been doing. All monies raised have gone to charity - that’s about $8,500 in 2025. In exchange, this year I started offering my paid subscribers one original painting each month for 75 or 80% off of what it would be in a gallery (or, put the other way, about 20 or 25% of its gallery price). That has raised roughly another $5,500 for charity.

The 2025 beneficiaries of that 14k+ are local volunteer nonprofits with which I am involved (Miss Bellows Falls Diner, the Bellows Falls Opera House, Stage 33 Live), defenders of the First Amendment (ProPublica, the Freedom of the Press Foundation), human rights (Community Asylum Seekers Project, World Central Kitchen, SAFE Alliance) and animal welfare organizations (Save the Manatees, Save Your Ass Long-Ear Rescue, The Windham County (VT) Humane Society, the Woodstock (KY) Animal Foundation, Merrymac Farm Sanctuary, etc.), among others.

I am thrilled that folks are willingly participating in this, but I do think that with more and more journalists and creative people migrating to Substack, it is better to adjust the paid tiers to be less burdensome - to allow people to spread the love a bit more, as it were. Thus I am lowering the tier prices in 2026 to $6/month (cancel anytime), $39/year, or $150 for “founding member” (or what I call “Big Fan. Love Your Work.”). Folks are welcome to pay more (I have one dear friend who pays in… a lot), and any paid member is eligible to purchase the monthly piece (it’s sold online first-come, first served). I’m also going to offer a larger piece (generally 12x24) at similar savings, a few times a year to my Big Fans.

I think I’m also going to start an occasional REASONABLY FINE ART CHAT - taking advantage of Substack’s video capabilities - for paid members, but I need to figure out exactly how to do it first. Stay tuned!

So, I’d love it if you chose to kick in $6 a month, or $39/year, or even $150 - it’ll all go to folks trying to make the world a little better, a little kinder, a little less mean. And hopefully, we can have some fun along the way!

If you could take a moment to comment about how this emailer/newsletter feels from your end, I’d be beholden. Is it doing what you would like a Charlie Hunter newsletter to do? How can I make it more useful? Or are we doing well? Let me know.

Subscribe now

WHAT ABOUT THOSE WORKSHOPS?

And for those who just want to know if I’m doing any workshops…. Yes, there are several on sale now, a three-day in Arizona (Scottsdale Artist School in February - sounds nice - i.e. warm), a one-day (March 15) in Louisiana (I include a link to their contact form, as the workshop isn’t up on their website yet); and several in Vermont, (with one more Vermont one coming). Just go to hunter-studio.com, and look under the “Workshops/Exhibitions” tab. I’ll be judging (and doing demos and a talk) at the Teche Plein Air in New Iberia, Louisiana, March 7-13.

You take good care, everybody. I sure appreciate your interest in my art. Those of you who paint - keep doing so! As the late, great Phil Ochs wrote, “ah, but in such ugly times, the true protest is beauty.” Keep spreading the beauty, my friends!

Happy 2026!

~ Charlie

Thank you for reading the REASONABLY FINE ART TALK newsletter. Each month, as you know, as a “thank you,” we offer our paid subscribers a piece from our vaults at an absurdly discounted price, with all proceeds going to charity.

This month it is a piece I painted during Plein Air Litchfield, in Northwestern Connecticut, in October. Here’s the story to go with it, a quiet example of why we paint what we paint.

Northwest Connecticut is a fine place, a world apart from the crowded coastal suburbs, and one can spend days driving the leaf-strewn back roads, bumping into forgotten bits of one’s cultural DNA (that is, if you happen to have the DNA of the Hunter family). One such bit was finding the Eric Sloane Museum in Kent, Connecticut.

Eric Sloane books, if you are a New Englander of a certain age, were ubiquitous coffee-table items if you had friends who lived in Colonial houses, books with pen-and-ink illustrations of faded-to-history ways of doing things and lovely hand-lettered serif italics. Want to learn about froes? Eric Sloane’s your guy.

I spent a morning during Plein Air Litchfield at the museum dedicated to Sloane’s life work, visiting his reconstructed studio, learning about barking spuds, pairing adzes, drawing knives… basically taking a deep dive into the world of someone with an abiding fondness of the outmoded. It’s right next to the Connecticut Antique Machinery Museum, another temple of the obsolete - steam engines and combines, steel wheeled tractors, lethal-looking sawmill equipment - none of which would remotely pass muster with OSHA today. It put me into a meditative frame of mind.

I came back the next day, when the museums were closed. I was the only person there, which is perfect for a plein air painter. It was just me and the squirrels and the occasional dog-walker. I set up and did a little monochromatic 6x12 of the Noah Blake Cabin - a cabin of which Sloane oversaw the construction in 1974- patterned on and built in the manner of 1805 homesteader cabins.

Plein Air Litchfield limited us to displaying only a few pieces at the gala, and I was thinking I wanted to live with that one for a bit, so I just kept it in my car and brought it home with me. It’s been on display at my studio for the last few months. Now I’ve lived with it, and I’m ready to have it move on to its forever home.

Who to benefit? Each month, we choose a charity. Friends of ours are deeply involved with Save Your Ass Long-Ear Rescue (“a refuge for donkeys, mules, and the occasional horse”) across the river in New Hampshire. I’ve long meant to support their work. I think Eric Sloane would appreciate funds going to workaday creatures who powered the long-gone world he admired; my late friend Gary Smith -who died in 2023 just as the days again started to lengthen- had a donkey (named Shotgun, but Gary always called him “Buddy”) who he loved and who loved him fiercely back; and, lest we forget, donkeys always bear remembering during the Holiday season.

So let’s offer it for $400 (plus $25 for domestic shipping and a cheeseburger - that’s my reward). I will send the paid subscribers the link in the next day or two. The first one who wants it, gets it.

I really enjoy writing these newsletters - sitting down once a month and expounding on whatever is on my mind. I hope you enjoy reading them.

Happiest of Holidays to you and yours.

Big love,
~ Charlie