Sketching with Renoir

This Friday, July 12, the Color and Pages of Peaks will be held once again at the TEIA. At 6 pm, meet the makers of art and books in one of the best spots on the island!

Peaks Island resident and author Nicole d’Entremont will be there signing her novel, Sketching with Renoir. I met Nicole many years ago, introduced by Eleanor Morse during a Sudden Fiction class. Although several years apart, we share the same birthday and have become close friends. I illustrated the covers of her novels, City of Belief and A Generation of Leaves. When she asked me to tackle her third and most personal book, I readily agreed.

This morning I asked her what drove her to write this story, more than five years in the making.

“I wanted to explore the period of time between 1947 and 1948, when suburbia was about to change the life I had as a child,” Nicole said. “Everything fiction is auto-biographical in some way. You thread your life through it. I lived a very rural life. Art was very important to my mother. Now that I’m older, I especially realize how deeply important art is and was for my parents. Both were artists, and I can appreciate the struggles they had. Once you’re in the world of your art, you want it to be as true as it can get. Artists understand that.”

Nicole’s parents met on a double date in Philadelphia, when her mother, Grace, was 19 and in her first year at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Her father was studying to be an architect, when only a rigorous exam was required.

“Architecture was his living, but he was not a university man. He drew all the time. I grew up with it, and always drew. It was a solace and a pleasure,” she said. Nicole went on to study writing, but continued to draw.

“My characters don’t lie. I might lie or deflect, but my characters don’t. When drawing, if you put a line down that isn’t true, you erase it, right? My characters let me know if I have them saying something that sounds phony. I listen to them.”

For the cover of Sketching with Renoir, Nicole envisioned a scene of a woman painting a tree, that would cross the front and back as well as the front and back flaps. We discussed this in May 2023, before she headed to the d’Entremont ancestral home in Pubnico, Nova Scotia. I began as usual with very loose sketches.

early sketches for Sketching with Renoir              © Jamie Hogan

I got my daughter, Daisy, to pose.

Daisy Braun posing                                     photo © Jamie Hogan

early rough for Sketching with Renoir                                       © Jamie Hogan

I could see a problem immediately: how to allow for text on the flaps? How would I draw around it?

In the book, Ev is a young mother, too busy to paint, yet driven by an urgency to create. The scene involves a painting that Nicole remembers hanging in her childhood home. She imagined the setting, the wind in the tree, Ev’s absorption in capturing the colors with her brushstrokes, while her daughter, Cleo, plays nearby with the dog.

As we began the project, Nicole found a CD waiting for her in the mail. It was a home movie made by a friend of her mother’s, in which Grace gives a little retrospective of the art hanging in her home, a few years before her death. This was like her mother coming through the veil between worlds, just before Nicole embarked on her final draft. “It was spooky,” Nicole told me. When I saw the film, I was moved to tears to see and hear an ardent artist discuss her work, from paintings and drawings to textile wall hangings, like in this screen shot.

A still from a home movie about Grace d’Entremont’s art

In the film, Nicole spotted the very painting she had written into her story! She hadn’t seen it in decades, after the family home was sold. What had become of it? Upon seeing the painting, she asked her family: who has this? Turns out, a niece in North Carolina, who sent a photo of it. I used that image, adding a hand-lettered title. Picture this folding over a book.

early rough for Sketching with Renoir                                        © Jamie Hogan

Nicole returned early from Canada, her plans upended by the wildfires there. I showed her my sketches but suggested she consider simply using the painting as cover art, with a hand-lettered title.

early cover idea for Sketching with Renoir                                    © Jamie Hogan

She needed to think about it. During a meeting in early July 2023, we arrived at this. Nicole didn’t want to cover the painting with text, but instead bring out the yellow focal point.

cover design for Sketching with Renoir by Nicole d’Entremont                © Jamie Hogan

About two months later, she proudly held a first proof from Maine Authors Publishing.

Nicole d’Entremont, author                  photo © Jamie Hogan

She read excerpts from the book at the Peaks Island Branch Library in November 2023 to a robust audience.

Nicole d’Entremont reading at the Peaks Island Library                                           photo © Jamie Hogan

In April this year, the original painting came into her possession at last.

Paintings by Grace d’Entremont in her daughter’s island home              photo © Jamie Hogan

Meanwhile, Nicole continues to draw and share what she calls “Trumpoons.”

cartoon         © Nicole d’Entremont

She’s currently in a figure drawing class at Maine College of Art and Design, strengthening her skills and enjoying working with other artists.

Drawing by Nicole d’Entremont from a Continuing Studies Figure Drawing course at Maine College of Art & Design

Nicole’s dedication to her writing craft and her drawing inspires me greatly. Here’s a review of Sketching with Renoir, but take it from me, it is a beautiful read!