Painting en plein air is the practice of painting landscapes or cityscapes out-of-doors in a looser, faster style than can be accomplished in the studio. Pronounced like the “plen” in “splendid,” plein airs are impressionistic, vibrant, and immediate, capturing sunlight and shadows at a particular moment in time. Given the time constraints (usually two to three hours), plein air painting is necessarily more unforgiving, and the recognition of colors and how they compare to each other must be almost immediate. And, of course, the genre requires the cumbersome schlepping of easel, canvas, paints, and all other supplies to the outdoor location of choice.
Despite these challenges, or perhaps because of them, juried plein air painting competitions attracting hundreds of painters are hugely popular and are held all over the world. Savannah’s art lovers, artists, and collectors should be excited and delighted when the 6th Annual Georgia Plein Air, presented by Olmsted Arts, comes to Savannah this month.
Director Phil Culbertson explains that Georgia Color is a juried event exclusively for Georgia artists. All paintings created over three days will be displayed and available for purchase at the Exhibition Gallery, headquartered at 2125 Victory Drive. He says, these creations will be “right off the easel with fresh paintings added each day.” On Thursday, Oct. 17, the public is invited to welcome the participating artists to Savannah. “Attendees get a chance to meet the artists, preview new works, and mingle over light bites and beverages.”
On Friday evening, there is a sunset PaintQuick! at Tiedeman Park off Washington Avenue, and all interested artists are invited to register.
Culbertson said, “We will have over 50 artists in the park. They get two hours to create a masterpiece, frame it, wire it, title it, tag it, and place it on their easel in time for judging. I am excited that we have several students from the Savannah Arts Academy signed-up to paint.”
In addition to a plethora of free painting demonstrations, talks, and receptions, is a Saturday evening Awards and Collectors Celebration at the Exhibition Gallery to award prizes to the artists who have been instructed to hold and conceal their two best works until that time.
Among the 30 prominent landscape painters juried into the competition are Savannah’s Adrienne Berkland (who gives a talk/demo on Saturday morning); Kip Bradley, Alan Campbell, Mimi Diamond, and Lori Keith Robnison (who gives a talk/demo on Thursday afternoon). Julia Kamenskikh from Pooler and Diane Reeves from Richmond Hill round out representation from our area.
I have known both Bradley (b.1973),Telfair Museums’ Studio Programs Manager, and former gallerist Robinson (b.1963) for many years and recently spoke with them about their participation. Bradley considers Savannah to be the perfect city for a plein air event. Noting that the Savannah Arts Association has not hosted one in the past few years, he is hopeful that it, or the Savannah Cultural Arts Center, will make this an annual event again.
Bradley regularly joins a painter buddy in plein air events throughout the state, using them, he says “as an excuse to travel and have a guys’ weekend.” However, Savannah’s Georgia Color marks the first time that this Associate Member of the American Impressionist Society has been juried into one. An avid painter holding a BFA from SCAD in 1996 and an MFA from the University of Florida in 2005, Bradley creates a minimum of three on-site plein airs and at least one still-life each week.
“But my goal is always to do four or five. It’s about practice and about consistency. Like an athlete, I feel it if I take a week off.”
With so much experience teaching and painting at many Savannah locations, he has a sense of the time needed and the sunlight offered at different spots. (Painters can paint as many canvases as they want, wherever they want, throughout the city.) “When I paint plein air, I usually average an hour and a half, but now I find myself stretching out to two hours and I’m painting better.”
The recipient of a prestigious Georgia Sea Grant’s Artists, Writers, and Scholars grant, Bradley paints with wide brushstrokes and favors a darker palette. He prepares his panels with a small variation of size and scale to maintain consistency, “and my paint palette, my colors, my brushes, stay the exact same. I keep everything laid out the same way so there is no confusion.” The only hindrance to his preparation is in his head: “I can pull up to the spot and sit in my car and think, ‘Oh, it’s too gray or it’s too windy. I should go home.’ But just when I’m about ready to give up, I talk myself into it.. I don’t just want to be a sunny-day painter. All weather is good weather.”
Energetic landscapes in vivid pinks, purples and blues
Recently, in preparation for Georgia Color, Bradley has been painting alongside Robinson, who longtime Savannahians will remember as the co-owner of sorely missed Chroma Art Gallery, which operated on Barnard and Congress streets from 2001 through 2012. The walls of her home-based studio are filled with energetic landscapes tastefully displayed in gold plein air frames. Starting off with translucent colors before adding opaques and exaggerating the pigment to convey the warmth of light and the coolness of shadows, she favors bright pinks, purples, pale blues, and vibrant greens. The resulting canvases are lighter, more feminine, and somewhat less impressionistic than Bradley’s.
Robinson has taken graduate classes at SCAD but mostly credits her expertise in plein air from studies with recently deceased mentor Camille Przewodek, along with Kevin McPherson, Robin Wolfgang, and Ken Auster. Working from an earth-colored ground, Robinson paints extremely quickly with instinctive, loose brushstrokes. She has developed an innate sense of color and light and gets genuinely excited and exuberant when she nails the right color: “When it’s right, it’s right!”
Being juried into Georgia Color marks Robinson’s welcome return to the Savannah art scene. Twenty years ago, former Chroma partner Jan Clayton Pagratis and she “became addicted to plein air and for 15 months did not miss a day” but the death of loved ones and personal illness caused her to set painting aside. However, with an upcoming solo show before the end of the year, she is back with a vengeance.
The 6th Annual Georgia Plein Air begins Thursday, Oct. 16 and runs through Sunday, Oct. 20. Awards will be presented across various categories, including Best of Show, Best Nocturne, Best Use of Light, Best Representation of Historic Savannah, Best Representation of the Georgia Coast, and Best Architecture.
Generally, plein air events have plein air artists as judges as they understand the difficulty of the discipline, but Georgia Color’s organizers have selected architect Christian Sottile, SCAD painting professor Denise Carson, and writer and journalist Bill Dawers as adjudicators, so it will prove interesting to listen to the thoughts behind the selection process during their Sunday afternoon panel discussion ― always a highlight of the event.
Full information on the lineup of talks, demonstrations, and receptions can be found at olmstedpleinair.com. Tickets for Thursday evening’s welcome reception, Saturday evening’s awards celebration, Sunday morning’s Art Walk Brunch, and registration for Friday evening’s PaintQuick! competition can be found under the Events link.
The Exhibition Gallery, displaying freshly painted original works (and up to five paintings previously submitted by each artist) is free and open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day and works are available online from Oct. 11. The Gallery is located at 2125 E. Victory Drive at Skidaway Drive (next to the Sherwin-Williams paint store and behind the Chic-fil-A).
Follow Lori Keith Robinson @lorikeithrobinson and www.lorikeithrobinson.com and follow Kip Bradley @jkipbrad and www.kipbradley.com.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah to host 6th annual Georgia Plein Air competition exhibition