This is a sneak peek at Sketchbook Traveler: New England; the third volume in the series, from Schiffer Publishing. Projected publication date: Spring 2023

Fort Trumbull, River Thames, New London, Connecticut. Sketchbook painting. Aqueous media on paper. 3.5 x 10.5 inches

Mao of the mouth of the River Thames in Connecticut, showing the movement of British troops under the command of General Benedict Arnold on September 6, 1781.

Standing guard on a rocky headland at the mouth of the Thames River, Fort Trumbull was constructed in 1777 to protect the town of New London. Four years later, Crown forces commanded by Norwich native Benedict Arnold landed on opposite sides of the river and advanced northward. Fort Trumbull was quickly overwhelmed. Fort Griswold, on the east side of the river, greeted the attack with stiff resistance before falling to the British, who murdered its commander and most of the defenders.

Revolutionary War-era map of Fort Griswold, Groton, CT. The earthen fort has been preserved as a public park, and a memorial to William Ledyard and members of his command murdered by British troops following their surrender.

During the War of 1812, both of these fortified positions were updated and improved. In 1839 construction began of a new Third System fort on the former site of Fort Trumbull. Completed in 1852, the Egyptian-Revival fortress never faced an invader but served instead as mustering point and training center during the Civil War. General Seth Eastman included a romanticized view of the fort in his series the Principal Fortifications of the United States, commissioned by the U.S. House Committee on Military Affairs.

Fort Trumbull’s coastal guns were steadily upgraded until 1910. For two decades, the fortress was home to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. Merchant Marine officers received their training here during World War II, after which the facility served as a laboratory for developing submarine warfare technologies in concert with the U.S. Naval Submarine Base New London, and General Dynamics Electric Boat across the river in Groton. Decommissioned in 1996, the building and grounds were reopened as a state park in 2000. This picturesque relic of a bygone age is also a souvenir of grim purpose and personal sacrifice, in America’s fight for independence.

(A preview of SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER by James L. McElhinney (c) 2020. Schiffer Publishing). Pub date: July 23, 2022

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Copyright James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2022 Texts and images may be reproduced (with proper citation) by permission of the author. To enquire, send a request to

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Sneak peek at pages from Sketchbook Traveler New England, the third  volume in the series from Schiffer Publishing. Projected publication date: Spring 2023

Journal painting: 3.5 x 10.5 inches. Watercolor and mixed media on paper.

During the colonial period, Rhode Island was the reigning seaport of the transatlantic slave trade. Just prior to the revolution it emancipated enslaved Rhode Islanders, which established a precedent for those living in bondage across New England to sue their masters for freedom. During the war of independence, Bristol and Newport became a nest of privateers that preyed  on British merchantmen. During the years following the Civil War, Newport became a magnet for posh vacationers. Drawn to the rugged beauty of its rocky coastline and sandy beaches, landscape painters and maritime artists flocked to its shores. It was not by chance that artists such as Worthington Whittredge, James Suydam, William Trost Richards and John La Farge chose to set up their easels in the shadow of the Gilded Age cottages in which their patrons summered. Many of the painters’ motifs were popular destinations for picnics and hikes, such as Bishop’s Rock and Paradise Rocks. John Frederick Kensett; one of the most popular painters of the age, had pioneered a poetic offshoot of the Hudson River School later dubbed Luminism. Characterized by glowing light and tranquil settings, the Luminist style had deep roots in the maritime art of Gloucester’s Fitz Henry Lane, and Martin Johnson Heade’s haystack paintings of the Newbury-Essex salt marshes.

John Frederick Kensett. Beacon Rock. Oil in canvas 22.5 x 36 inches. 1857 National Gallery of Art. Washington DC. Kensett includes Fort Adams (seen on the left) which would not have been visible in this manner, from this point of view

One of Kensett’s painting locations was at the head of a tiny inlet to Benton Cove, looking toward a high, rocky ledge jutting into the water from the eastern shore. Rising ninety feet above the tide, Beacon Rock bonfires guided colonial mariners along the entrance channel, northeast into Newport Harbor. Kensett’s rendition of the site in the Metropolitan Museum of Art juxtaposes a dark plane of water against a fractured Olistostrome outcrop. Kensett’s vista is fictionalized for poetic effect. The cove I found was home to pleasure-boats, riding at anchor, in the shadow of a colonnaded mansion designed by Stanford White. Commissioned by Commodore Edward Morgan in 1887, completed in 1891, “The Acropolis of Newport” recently sold for 23 million dollars.

(A preview of SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER by James L. McElhinney (c) 2020. Schiffer Publishing).

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Copyright James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2022 Texts and images may be reproduced (with proper citation) by permission of the author. To enquire, send a request to

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Late Light, White Rock Canyon. March 4, 2019. Looking South from 35.8257 x 106.1810

Traveling to New Mexico early in 2019, I explored the Rio Grande between John Dunn Bridge and Cochiti Reservoir. Sites were selected for narrative reasons, as well as for their visual allure. Many of the works I produced, including my painting-journal, were exhibited at Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, in the exhibitions Reimagining New Mexico, from June 28 to August 3, and Speaking to the Imagination / The Contemporary Artist’s Book, from June 21 to October 24.

White Rock Canyon is a stunning declivity carved by the Rio Grande through volcanic sediment, running south from Otowi Peak, aka Buckman Mesa. Below Cochiti Reservoir the river snakes across a wide plain, passing Cochiti Pueblo, Pena Blanca, Kewa (Santo Domingo) Pueblo, Algodones and the ruins of Kuaua Pueblo, now interpreted as Coronado Historic Site. Located on the historic route El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado received hospitality from the indigenous people in 1541 before pushing east in search of golden Quivira in 1542. Below Bernalillo the river flows through the northern outskirts of Albuquerque before reaching Old Town below Interstate 40.
Winding through the bottom of White Rock Canyon, the Rio Grande runs narrow and swift. The geology resembles the gorge forty miles to the north, basaltic uplifts towering above heaps of rock-fall ascending from ribbons of greenery along the riverbanks. An old narrow-gauge spur of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad known as The Chili Line stopped at Diablo Canyon, at the confluence of Cañada Ancha, a seasonal creek-bed across the Rio Grande from White Rock.
Steam-powered locomotives were no less thirsty than living things in such a parched land, and thus like El Camino Real, it followed the river. The decision to build a narrow-gauge railroad may have been predicated on water-consumption as much as those challenges presented by terrain.

(Left) Water-tower built for the narrow-gauge The Chili Line of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, Embudo Station, New Mexico

Descending through Frijoles Canyon in Bandelier National Monument, Rio Frijoles joins the river a few miles downstream. Breaking the horizon, the voluptuous contours of Ortiz Mountain rises up from the distant plain. Beyond it lies La Tetilla (the nipple), a hill just north of La Bajada. (the descent) where the road from Santa Fe to Albuquerque plunges from the rim of the plateau, down into the Rio Grande Valley below Cochiti Dam.

Standing atop the basalt escarpment, open patches of porous black rock are strewn with pebbles of similar porous material. Ascending westward, the terrain rises from high piñon desert through alpine forests to Valles Caldera, a vast mountaintop meadow, once of several located within the crater of a dormant volcano. More than a million years ago the violent eruption of the Jemez super-volcano buried the surrounding area under a pyroclastic flow of ash and rocks. The ground underfoot had been deposited by the cataclysm. Ash-falls spread as far east as the Llanos Estacado (staked plains) of West Texas. As a resurgent lava-cone forms under Redondo Peak, the most visible volcanic activity presents as a concatenation of hot-springs resorts running north into Colorado.

Satellite view of Jemez Caldera (Reproduced under fair use, etc.)

The town of White Rock was hastily built at the canyon’s edge as temporary housing for a growing number of postwar employees at Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory. By 1957 residents had abandoned the settlement for more permanent dwellings. The site was leveled. By 1962, a growing population motivated developers to build permanent homes on the site of the abandoned town, along with schools, shopping, parks, playing-fields and picnic-pavilions. Trails were developed for hiking that followed the western rim of the canyon-wall. Others descended to the river several hundred feet below. Signs caution hikers to be on the lookout for rattlesnakes. These serpents tend to concentrate in areas that allow them to winter in dens. At sixty-five hundred feet of altitude, White Rock Canyon approaches the uppermost extremity of their range. The first week of March was too early for these predators to be active.

At the northern end of the town is a parking-area and overlook. Looking north one can see Otowi Peak to the right. A mile or more beyond it stands an unmistakable formation known as Black Mesa, where during the Reconquista, indigenous warriors fought the Spanish to a standstill.
People would visit me while I worked. One couple had just moved to Los Alamos from the Midwest. He worked for the Lab. I knew better than to ask what he did.
Another day I was painting half a mile south of the point, on a rocky outcropping. An Anglo couple approached. She seemed much older. Both appeared to be working-class. The man calmly told me that when he was a boy, he and a friend used to comb the canyon for artifacts, looting graves when they found them. His friend still has a couple of skulls on his dresser at home. I asked how he felt about that. He confessed that it troubled him, it didn’t seem right.
I suggested that whatever things he had taken, he would do well to return them. No good can ever come from tampering with the dead. I suggested instead that if he is interested in the indigenous culture, maybe he should read about it, or talk to the people. A better understanding of their ways might inspire more respect. While many depend on fry-bread tourism and the art-market for their economy, any diffidence shown toward non-natives is well-founded.

As on many of my forays, I had begun multiple compositions of different views from the western rim of the canyon. Facing south, I decided to push one of these compositions. Warm sunlight and cool shadows carved marvelous forms in its eastern walls. A large hawk glided past, following the canyon rim. Landing in the piñon-tree beside me, a large crow greets me with a squawk. My keys lay on top pf my field-bag. I put them in my pocket.

(A preview of SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER by James L. McElhinney (c) 2020. Schiffer Publishing).

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Copyright James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2022 Texts and images may be reproduced (with proper citation) by permission of the author. To enquire, send a request to

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Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, have just acquired for its permanent collection copies of Hudson Highlands: North River Suite Volume One (2017), and Palisades: North River Suite Volume Two (2020); both published by Needlewatcher Editions.

Drawn from the journals of James Lancel McElhinney, author of the Sketchbook Traveler books released by Schiffer Publishing, each portfolio contains seven archival pigment prints of images, with title-page, and an index page with colophon, bound in a handmade archival cloth-covered Solander box with blind-stamped titles on the cover and spine. Both were produced by Brilliant Graphics in Exton, PA and Shenzhen China. The Hudson Highlands limited edition contains an illustrated chapbook, with texts by the author and an introduction by Steven Miller. The Palisades includes a color intaglio copperplate etching on Somerset etching paper, with digital chine-collé, produced by Philadelphia master printer Cindi Royce Ettinger.
Both of these works, including the prototype for Palisades, were exhibited at the Hudson River Museum in the exhibition James McElhinney: Discover the Hudson Anew, from September 13, 2019 to February 16, 2020. Hudson Highlands was previously shown in exhibitions at: The institute Library in New Haven CT and at Boscobel House and Gardens in Garrison NY. McElhinney’s O.T.W. On the Water: The Schuylkill River (also produced by Brilliant) was the centerpiece of an eponymous installation at Philadelphia’s Independence Seaport Museum, from October 24, 2018 to January 5, 2020. Fine press editions published by Needlewatcher Editions, and can be found in the following collections:
Albany Institute of History and Art
Avery Fine Art and Architecture Library, Columbia University
Boscobel House and Gardens, Garrison, New York
City of Philadelphia. Water Department Archives.
University of Denver. Library Special Collections. Denver Colorado
Free Library of Philadelphia. Print and Picture Collection
Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers New York
Huntington Library and Museum, San Marino, California
Independence Seaport Museum
Newberry Library. Chicago, Illinois
New York Public Library. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photography
Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education. Portland ME
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Archives and Special Collections
Swarthmore College, Swarthmore PA
Temple University. Samuel L. Paley Library Special Collections
West Point Museum, United States Military Academy
Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. New Haven CT,
And in private collections in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New Zealand.

From March to October 2018, McElhinney traveled along the northern Rio Grande in Colorado and New Mexico, filling his sketchbook with paintings from the journey. Images from these travels were published in Grand River Sketchbook, a limited edition of 25 consisting of ten archival pigment prints, produced by Orion Studios Santa Fe, with a color intaglio copperplate etching with digital chine-collé produced by Philadelphia master printer Cindi Royce Ettinger. Contents are bound in a handmade cloth-covered portfolio by Peter Geraty of Praxis Bindery in Easthampton, MA.James Lancel McElhinney is represented by Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, and by William Havu Gallery in Denver. His personal website is: https://www.mcelhinneyart.com

For more information about the limited editions, please contact:

NEEDLEWATCHER EDITIONS
PO Box 233, Essex NY 12936


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Since April 2020 I have been writing as much as painting, some weeks even more so. Between 1991 and 2004 I produced a series of plein-air landscapes of American battlefields. In 1992, a number of these appeared in Natural Defenses, a solo show at the Peninsula Fine Art Center in Newport News, Virginia. Curator Deborah McLeod put together a catalogue that also featured Civil War Redux, a concurrent solo exhibition by Richmond photographer Willie Anne Wright, and a group show focused on Landscape and memory. Given the historical undercurrent of my work, we decided to expand the standard tombstone labels to include short, descriptive texts. These had to be composed in a few days. It was the very first exhibition in which I paired words with imagery. The show traveled to other venues in Fairhope, Alabama and Johnson City, Tennessee. Similar narrative wall-labels were used in subsequent exhibitions at Asheville Art Museum, Danville (VA) Art Museum, Greenville (NC) Art Museum, Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, VA, and Waterworks Art Center in Salisbury, NC. For a variety of reasons, I kept the practice of writing on the back burner, until a life-changing event in 2005 led me back to it.

View of Murano, with Chiesa San Pietro. April 25, 2016. Journal painting 3.5 x 10.5 inches

Ten years ago, Kathie and I were invited to a private jazz sitar concert on the piano nobile of the Palazzo Donà dalle Rosa in Venice. As I sketched the fashionable crowd, a British gentleman noticed what I was doing and struck up a conversation. He was in Venice to conduct research for a book on its gardens. During our brief conversation, he shared that keeping notebooks was part of his daily routine. One of these was devoted to written sketches of every location he visited. This gave me pause to reconsider my own approach. Had I been more thorough at the time, his name might not have escaped me now. Unable to work in my studio the early days of the pandemic, I composed texts to accompany some of the hundreds of journal-paintings that filled my sketchbooks, publishing them as daily blogposts. As first it was a way to keep busy; a way of dealing with the endless wail of sirens, as ambulances rushed to collect the sick and dying. I was still processing the experience of exhibiting at the Hudson River Museum, in which around thirty of my works were paired with historic precedents mined from the permanent collection. Among these was Hudson River Port Folio, a series of color aquatints by William Guy Wall, with letterpress texts written by John Agg. Sitting at my desk in Washington Heights, I had to fly without a wing man.

(Hudson River Port Folio. West Point (number 16) William Guy Wall and John Agg. 1825)

The takeaway was a realization that drawing and writing might be blended into a single practice, provided they asked the same questions, by finding words that paint a picture, while making drawings that tell a story. Below is my riposte to Wall and Agg, in a format that has been put to work in the Sketchbook Traveler series produced by Schiffer Publishing.

Approaching this task as a gesamtkunstwerk, travel and research are as much the art, as its salable byproducts. Attention to how climate, geology, flora, fauna, and human activity shape the terrain, filtered through our intuitive, spiritual and aesthetic responses to space, light and weather, can also expand knowledge, generate ideas, and foster environmental awareness.

Read Quaranteam Traveler: Pandemic Sketchbook Blogposts April 1 to June 8, 2020.

(Click on the Image Below)

New E-Journal: Free Subscriptions (Click on the image below to learn more)

SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER: JOURNEYS AND JOURNALS

Each monthly issue will highlight works by historic and contemporary traveler artists, featuring contributions by subscribers and other living artists whose work involves mindful travel that promotes environmental awareness. The inaugural January 2022 issues features Louis I. Kahn sketchbooks, Albert Marquet and Santa Fe artist Molly Bolger Jenssen, with updates and notices of exhibitions and books, new and evergreen.

COMING SOON: RELEASE DATE: MAY 28, 2022

(Click on the image to preorder your copy)

On March 8, 2020 Kathie Manthorne gave an in-person lecture at Frederic Church’s Olana. Following the reception at a nearby private residence, we drove back to Manhattan. For the next three and a half months, we seldom left our apartment. Our neighborhood emerged as one of the city’s hot zones during the spread of Covid-19. By April we had grown accustomed to a constant wail of sirens, as ambulances ferried the sick and dying to overcrowded hospitals. Every night at seven o’clock, the neighborhood erupted in primal rhythms, drummed on pots and pans. Cheers and cries filled the air, in cacophonous gratitude to front-line health care workers battling the widening pandemic.

It was the second time in twenty years that health care crises had reshaped my artistic practice. The first was personal. Hospitalized for nearly a month at the end of 2005, during my recuperation I realized the possibilities of painting in books. The second was this global pandemic that has caused may of us to reassess our missions in life. The manuscript for Sketchbook Traveler: Hudson Valley had been delivered just as New York went into lockdown. The book would be released in November. Unable to get to my studio in Haverstraw, publishing quotidian blogpost became my artistic practice. From April 1 to June 8, I published sixty-nine in total. Read them all here: LINK

Since June 15, 2020, I published forty-two more. Turning my attention to new projects in the coming year, each week I will publish new content. Unlike the hundred-and-eleven that have appeared since April of last year, future installments will be available in full only by subscription, accessible via links emailed to your inbox. Blogposts will be visible  for a limited time, during which subscribers will be able view the stories online, or download them in PDF format, to read at their leisure. Subscriptions are free. Sign up now .

Now available to own:    Sketchbook Traveler: Hudson Valley

McElhinney’s work is featured in the new book The American West in Art: Selections from the Denver Art Museum. Edited by Thomas Brent Smith, with an introduction by Daniel Flores and texts by Erika Doss, Jennifer R. Hennemen and Molly Medakovich. Five Continents Editions. Milan. 2020

Coming soon: Sketchbook Traveler: Southwest. Release date: Spring 2022

James Lancel McElhinney is represented by Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico,

and by William Havu Gallery in Denver, Colorado.

Sketchbook Traveler: Journeys & Journals is published by Needlewatcher Editions. PO Box 233, Essex, New York. 12936.

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