A CAPE ANN MORNING Th e fi rst morning,
workshop participants were greeted by the crisp air of
early autumn and a bright, cloudless sky that called
into question the weatherman’s gloomy forecast. It
seemed like an auspicious beginning. Th e drive to Kat
Masella’s studio in the wooded enclave of Magnolia,
Mass. off ered glimpses of the calm waters of Gloucester
Harbor through a scrim of trees that lined the road. At
every turn, there was yet another rocky inlet, another
tableau of moored fi shing vessels, another velveteen
marshland dotted with a soft confetti of snow-colored
egrets whose wings sparkled in the sunlight: altogether,
an ideal destination for plein air landscape painters.
Th e arts community here has deep roots in Cape
Ann, an area which also includes the towns of Essex,
Rockport and Manchester-
by-the-Sea; both the North
Shore Arts Association and the
Rockport Art Association are
nearing the centenary mark.
Artists have been drawn to the
area since the mid-19th cen-
tury, when Gloucester native
Fitz Henry Lane showed
his luminous harbor portraits in Boston and New
York, attracting the attention of painters such as John
Twachtman, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer and
Cecilia Beaux. Th ere are dozens of museums, galleries,
events and diversions in the area for both resident and
visiting artists and, during the warmer months, Cape
Ann plays host to a vibrant but low-key tourism indus-
try that off ers visitors a multitude of charming neigh-
borhood restaurants, inns, ocean adventures and shops
that thankfully don’t descend into the depths of kitsch.
THE (GOOD) ANXIETY OF
INFLUENCE^ Upon arrival at the Northeast
Workshop studio, it was apparent that the prospect
of inclement weather had barely made an impression
on the group’s level of enthusiasm as old friends
reconnected and new students gained their bearings.
Katherine is in her element when she teaches. “Th is
is my sandbox,” she likes to tell her students. “Th is is
where I get to play.” She has been cutting back on her
teaching commitments but had been looking forward
to visiting Gloucester again and working with students
in Masella’s spacious, well-lit and airy studio.
OPPOSITE: Katherine
Chang Liu with
students Laura
Jackson (TOP LEFT),
Deanna Chillian
(TOP RIGHT), Joyce
Hill (BOTTOM LEFT).ALL STUDIO PHOTOS BY
ANITA EASTERAs Hurricane Joaquin spiraled on a meandering northerly course from the
Bahamas toward the Atlantic seaboard, 25 artists from as far away as
Washington state converged on Gloucester, Mass. for Katherine Chang Liu’s
painting workshop at Kat Masella’s Northeast Art Workshop Retreat.
The largest city on Cape Ann, a rocky promontory at the northern limit of
Massachusetts Bay about 30 miles north of Boston, Gloucester is America’s
oldest seaport and the setting for The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger’s chronicle
of the Halloween Nor’easter that devastated the area in 1991. With meteorolo-
gists issuing dire warnings of cataclysmic rain and wind from the Carolinas to
New England and banks of monitors at the airport transmitting satellite images
of what must have looked like the Vortex of Doom to nervous fl iers, it seemed
possible that the workshop could be disrupted by the unpredictable storm.
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