The Cape Ann Summer School of Art presents:

Stapleton Kearns –
Cape Ann Style

with special guest Dale Ratcliff

MonDAY, September 8 - Friday, September 12, 2025 from 9 am - 4 pm

RAA&M Members: $800 | Non-Members: $850

BECOME A MEMBER!

We will study how to make better landscape paintings. Cape Ann has a long tradition of painting, and I will show you some of the design ideas that you can use in your own work. One evening during the workshop we will look at the Cape Ann masters like Gruppe, Peters, and Hibbard. We will be painting in beautiful  and historic locations. You will learn a lot, and it will be fun!

Exclusive Lecture: The Cape Ann School of Art - Stapleton Kearns with T.m. Nicholas

Stapleton Kearns and T. M. Nicholas have spent most of their lifetimes studying the artists of the Cape Ann School of painting. Together they will present a slideshow of the Cape Ann artists in the "golden years." They will discuss and tell stories about Aldro Hibbard, Lester Stevens, Emile Gruppe, Anthony Thieme, Jane Peterson and more while showing the art they made.

T.M. and Stape will dissect their compositions and dig down into how they created their paintings, noting the commonalities that constitute the “Cape Ann style.”

In addition to painting instruction, all workshops include guided gallery walks throughout the area, evening lectures and an exhibition of historic Cape Ann paintings at the RAA&M. Enroll now!

I discovered R.H. Ives Gammell (1893-1981) was training young painters at the Fenway Studios in Boston, Massachusetts, so in 1973 I moved there to study. Ives taught traditional painting and passed on his own training following the First World War. I will be forever grateful to him for showing me the way the historic painters of the Boston School thought. Mr. Gammell introduced me to Robert Douglas Hunter with whom I continued my training. Hunter was an established professional painter and showed me what that looked like. Having the opportunity to tag along behind a pro was life-changing for me in my early twenties and he became my mentor. My goal was to make a living as a painter. The late David Curtis, my roommate in Boston's historic Fenway Studio, was from Gloucester, MA, and had grown up in a famous family of landscape artists. David took me outside to paint on the Charles River Esplanade in the summer of 1974. Not a lot of people were painting outside in that era and I had never seen anybody do it before that day. I was absolutely enthralled with it and have been painting the landscape ever since. Sometimes I paint outside and sometimes in the studio, but all those years of painting on location inform my work.

After training in Boston I returned to Minnesota where for about seven years. I tried to make a living as an artist in Minneapolis without much success. I starved and lived without a car, a phone, or a bank account. But I did develop my skills during that time. In 1983 I returned to the East Coast to see if it offered me more opportunities. Robert Douglas Hunter suggested I move to Rockport, Massachusetts, a hundred-year-old art colony known for landscape painting. It is different from other art colonies because it has a tradition of artist-run galleries. I met a couple of glass blowers who made little glass animals and together we opened a tiny gallery on Bearskin Neck, a historic street on a rocky peninsula sticking out into the ocean where little fish shacks and houses, some dating back to the revolution, have been turned into seasonal galleries. My paintings were inexpensive and I sold a lot of them. Over the years I built my reputation and increased my prices. Rockport is on Cape Ann, north of Boston and there is a Cape Ann style of painting. I set out to learn that and have tried for my entire career to append myself to the open end of that tradition. I have made my living selling pictures and teaching workshops. 

Currently, I am living on Cape Ann, in the 400-year-old seaport of Gloucester, about forty-five minutes north of Boston. I own and run the Stapleton Kearns Gallery in Rockport where I show my own art and that of my wife, Dale Ratcliff. I have served on the board of governors of the Rockport Art Association and as its president for five years. I am also a member of the Guild of Boston Artists and sat on their board for many years as well.  I was recently awarded the Christopher A. Hamilos Award for “Best in Show” in the Rockport Art Associations and Museums 2023 National Show.  

I am currently running my gallery in Rockport, Massachusetts in a building from 1760 right in the middle of town. The gallery is hung with my own paintings and those of my wife, Dale Ratcliff. Besides painting, I do a little teaching and I have an online landscape painting course available through New Masters Academy, which was filmed in Joshua Tree National Park and Point Lobos, California, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and in Jeffersonville, Vermont. I have taught workshops around the country and for over ten years have run the popular “Snow Camp” winter painting workshop every year at the Sunset Hill House overlooking the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

The blog I wrote on painting can be found at www.stapletonkearns.blogspot.com and consists of a daily written entry for over a thousand days, attempting to put everything I had learned about painting online and give it away.

— Stapleton Kearns