Saturday, September 16th, 9:00am to Noon
Canceled for This Year
Addison Art Gallery cordially invites the public to watch award-winning artists paint at Rock Harbor Orleans on Saturday, September 16 from 9:00 to noon. The wet paintings will be brought to the gallery at 43 South Orleans Road and displayed as part of the Celebrate Our Waters Reception from 3:00 to 5:00. Paul Schulenburg, Jonathan McPhillips, Andrea Petitto and Maryalice Eizenberg are among the artists planning to paint en plein air.
Plein air, French for “open air,” is used to describe paintings created outdoors. In Italian, the term would be alfesco. In the 1870s, the growth of plein air painting flourished with the introduction of paints in tubes. (Previously, painters made their own paints by grinding and mixing dry pigments with linseed oil.) French Impressionists, including Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Edouard Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, advocated en plein air painting. Charles Webster Hawthorne, who is attributed with starting the art colony in Provincetown, came to Cape Cod to teach painting en plein air.
“With plein air painting, the eye perceives light and shadows from direct observation. Painting from memory is a challenge; you cannot possibly remember the nuances of reality. Photography can flatten space and distort perspective and color. While being helpful in the studio, nothing substitutes for being there.” —Paul Schulenburg
For more information and/or additional images, please contact Helen Addison at helen@addisonart.com or 508.255.6200.