PAP-SE Weekend

Had a weekend of painting and socializing with some of the Plein Air Painters of the Southeast. It was a get together to meet the new artist's in the group which consists of me, Jim Richards and Lori Putnam. We were joined the first day for a paint out in Leiper's Fork by Anne Blair Brown, Diane and Frank May, Brett Weaver and Roger Brown and Beverly Evans. After a full day of painting we spent the evening in Nashville at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. They have a show there now called "The Birth of Impressionism" and it's on loan from the Musee d'Orsay. If you have not been, go. It's wonderful. There is a painting there by Jules Bastien LePage titled "The Haymakers" that did it for me. It is a huge painting and the greens in it are phenomenal. I mix greens. I mix greens all the time. I mix greens for a living and I have never seen a green like this. It's grey and cool and deep and rich. And it's juxtaposed against other colors that make it this vibrant green yet when you look at it closer it's almost grey or blue or something else I can't get my head around. The effect of it was gorgeous. Speaking of greens, the next day we painted at a farm in Fernvale, had a catered lunch, and then dinner at one of the artist's home. In that home happened to be two Clyde Aspevig paintings. These were two of the most fabulous paintings I have stood in front of and in one of these paintings was a green. A perfect green. There is not a word between "aardvark" and "zymurgy" that describes this green so I won't try to with my limited linguistic talents but these are the times when you realize what is meant by "genius" in reference to great landscape painters. My rods and cones feel like they are cooling down after an Ironman triathlon.

We painted as a group one more time on Saturday morning and then all left until next spring when we plan on having the entire group together again right outside Charleston. I am looking forward to meeting the other artists and being part of the group.