Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2024 i PleinAir Magazine

Despite inauspicious beginnings as an orphan growing up in Salem, Massachusetts, Fidelia Bridges (1835–1923) became one of the few women artists of her time who could support herself with her work. While studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, she befriended William Trost Richards and spent a summer with him and his family, working as a “mother’s helper” while continuing her outdoor study of the landscape. Her mentor’s lessons in PreRaphaelite theory convinced her that “each object in nature should be given its greatest precision of form and intensity of local color.” Of the detailed paintings of birds and flowers for which she became best known, one critic wrote, “She paints as if the year were all springtime.” Having enjoyed both commercial and critical success, she was elected to…

Editor-in-Chief kelly@pleinairmagazine.com outdoorpainter.com facebook.com/pleinairmagazine twitter.com/pleinairmag Instagram.com/pleinairmag Just a few hundred miles from where I live, the Great Smoky Mountains — the site for this year’s Plein Air Convention & Expo — feel like home. From the time I was little, my parents had taken my sisters and me to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for family vacations. As an adult, I’ve taken my own daughters to the area for hiking, shopping, and visiting the sites around Cherokee and Asheville, North Carolina. For Walland, Tennessee, artist Kathie Odom, the connection is even closer, with the park lying just outside her back door. In “Of Mist and Memory,” she reveals what makes the Smokies so special and lets us in on a few of her favorite painting spots.…

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CHAIRMAN/PUBLISHER E-mail: bericrhoads@gmail.com Phone: 512.607.6423 Facebook: /ericrhoads Twitter: @ericrhoads Time flies when you’re having fun. And I’ve been having so much fun since embarking on this roller coaster ride nearly 20 years ago, when we published the first issue of PleinAir Magazine. If you’re new here, you might be shocked to know that things looked a lot different back then. • No one knew the term plein air. Myself included. • Almost no one painted outdoors. “Why bother?” they’d say. • There were only three to five plein events or festivals. • I could not get art materials companies to advertise, because “the category is too small.” • Galleries would not advertise because “people won’t buy plein air paintings; they’re unfinished.” Nevertheless, I launched PleinAir in August 2004, and ran…

For centuries, the relationship between music and art has been well established. We know musical composers have been influencing painters since the Renaissance, and in 1940, Walt Disney released the film Fantasia to draw connections between classical music and the visual arts — in that case, animation. My mother, who once aspired to be a classical cellist, showed the film to me at an early age, and I fell in love with it. Since then, the connection between music and painting has never been far from my mind. Of course, when I was 10 years old I didn’t associate Mickey Mouse, the demon in “Night on Bald Mountain,” or hippos dancing with crocodiles with my own attempts to paint. But the parallels Disney drew in his film took root. Today,…

• Large areas of grass need orchestration to keep them from looking flat and boring. It’s important to use contrast and implied pathways to lead the viewer with interesting visual connections. • Start with the dirt — the underlying dark shapes. Painting over these darks will prevent the grasses and flowers from floating. • Suggest a few details and let the viewer fill in the rest. There’s no need to paint every flower and blade of grass. • Every mark needs a purpose. Plan where you will place your wildflowers and grasses to lead the viewer through the painting. • Think of wildflowers in fields as a mass of one shape, not a collection of dots. Create patterns of color. Paint a few detailed flowers within the mass and at…

BARBARA TAPP A small water container reduces soaking of the paper and increases pigment intensity. A small plastic spray bottle to pre-wet your palette, create wet washes, move and remove pigment. CAMILLE PRZEWODEK To paint aerial perspective, the colors are more saturated and darker in the foreground. If something looks dark in the background, paint it lighter and more neutral than you think it is. This will enhance the feeling of space. JEREMY SAMS Dress in layers. The weather can be deceiving. It might be cold in one area and hot in another. SCOTT HAMILL If you’re new to painting outside, get to know any new equipment before arriving at the convention. Make sure you set up your easel a number of times to make it easier when you’re out…

ASHEVILLE ART MUSEUM Asheville, NC Cass Herrington cherrington@exploreasheville.com The Asheville Art Museum presents a robust schedule of engaging exhibitions featuring American art of the 20th and 21st centuries. BECHTLER MUSEUM OF MODERN ART Charlotte, NC Sherri Belfield, 704.414.4185 The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art is the only museum in the Southern United States dedicated to European and American modern art. It is rooted in the collection of the Zürich-based Bechtler family. The collection pairs with national and international exhibitions that explore and celebrate the importance of modernism. BILTMORE ESTATE Asheville, NC Plan now to be among the first to experience “Chihuly at Biltmore,” the new exhibition opening this spring in Amherst at Deerpark. Make it an all-day affair by touring the Biltmore home, gardens, and conservatory, Antler Hill Village, and…

The desire to make a mark, to make our mark is as old and as fresh, as individual and as collective as humanity. Marks of passion and protest. Professional dedication. Pure imagination. Marks of strength and weakness. Tentative. Bold. Every force of nature, of human nature, splashed and scribbled, streaked, stroked and daubed. To make our marks is to grow. Outwardly. Inwardly To better our art. Ourselves. Our society. To create and innovate. Express or de-stress. We breathe it and sustain it. This shared desire. Through the mark of quality. The mark of permanence. Through the mark of belief in what we can make of this blank canvas of a future of ours. Through the eyes of the artist.…

One of the reasons Joe Paquet’s oil paintings are so successful is because he knows precisely what he wants them to do — offer a “heightened experience without exaggeration.” The artist traces this approach back to an exhibition of Russian painter Isaac Levitan’s work that was on view years back in Washington, D.C. “I had an epiphany looking at Levitan’s work, especially Evening on the Volga,” says Paquet. “My jaw dropped. That painting had no exaggeration in it. None. It was so sensitively observed that exaggeration was unnecessary. I felt like I had been barking up the wrong tree.” Exaggeration of what the artist sees in the subject matter is a form of subjectivity, and Paquet feels that while “sound subjective choices heighten the experience in a very personal way,”…

Kimball Geisler will change the shape of a mountain in the service of art. That comes as no surprise, of course, when you consider that his goal is not to reproduce what’s out there, but rather to communicate what’s most important about it. That might mean a slightly different shape or color. “The value structure, organization of shapes, and textures have a lot more impact on a person than the shape of a mountain, the species of a tree or deer, or a horseback rider,” says Geisler. “I believe the abstract, intuitive part of a painting matters a lot more than the literal way we think something looks. The abstract is perhaps the spiritual, the instinctual, the intuitive. That is what matters when people respond to art.” Even color is…

JEREMY SAMS The Oconaluftee River flows right beside U.S. Route 441 just outside Cherokee. This river provides lots of beautiful scenic views that can be accessed from the pull-offs on 441. SHERRY MASON I always find a plethora of spectacular, inspiring, and breathtaking views as seen from this overlook in Blowing Rock, NC, especially at sunrise and sunset. There are many! BEVERLY FORD EVANS Little River is one of my favorite places to paint in the Smokies. It winds along the Little River Gorge Road. This scene was painted early one morning, as the sun breached the mountain to light up the distant trees. KATHIE ODOM Just one hour from Cherokee, you will find yourself beneath the 70-foot Dry Falls in Highlands, NC! A very short walk will place you…

ASHEVILLE BLACK CULTURAL HERITAGE TRAIL Asheville, NC Cass Herrington cherrington@exploreasheville.com Unveiled in December, the Asheville Black Cultural Heritage Trail grants visitors an opportunity to retrace compelling Black narratives — including stories that have never been shared in a public space. AVL FEST Asheville, NC Cass Herrington cherrington@exploreasheville.com AVL Fest, a four-day summer music festival, debuted in 2023 with more than 200 performances across 22 stages. CAROLINA RAPTOR CENTER Huntersville, NC Sherri Belfield, 704.414.4185 Carolina Raptor Center fosters communities where raptors and people thrive through research and education. A world-class destination for avian rehabilitation, it provides visitors a gateway to the natural world. DANIEL STOWE BOTANICAL GARDEN Belmont, NC Sherri Belfield, 704.414.4185 Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden includes a conservatory with tropical plants and orchids, the dry Piedmont Prairie, annual and perennial…