A Painters Journey

We are sitting in the airport waiting for our flight to Miami. When I say we, I mean Team Curacao – Al Bond, Jessica Rogers and I. Team Curacao feels tired, eager to get home, but filled with good memories of the sights of this beautiful island and the relationships we have built with the warm and friendly Curacao people. Above all this was a fact finding mission, and we worked hard to brainstorm with our key sponsors, Hellen Chirino- Roosberg  and Percy Pinedo (The PR manager of the Curacao North Sea Jazz Festival) to figure ways to make this Curacao Plein Air Festival a win/win situation for all parties involved. We had many talks over many days, and we all had slightly different views as to how the festival should happen.

Sunday night, after Al and Jessica arrived, we sat with our hosts and talked, mostly about the full schedule we were to have for the remainder of our visit. I had to find lodging and great painting locations for potential workshop students from the USA, and Al and Jessica had to get the lay of the land so they could figure out how best to stage the event.

Monday

Up at the crack of dawn, Hellen picked us up for the 7AM 30 minute interview by Mariano Heyden, of radio station Z86 for his show Perspektiva (Perspective). As we settled into the interview we found that our host went from not really understanding what plein air was all about, to embracing and really loving the idea. As Al talked about “seeing familiar landscapes anew through the artist’s eyes”  I was struck by how familiar this all felt. I can remember when we started planning Plein Air Easton that we had to do a lot of educating and convincing, and here we were 7 years later doing the same thing, only in a foreign country! But people are the same everywhere – they love their land and can embrace the idea of celebrating its beauty in an art form easily understood by all.

Back to the hotel for breakfast and then our tour guide, Clarina Gomez picked us up. Clarina is a retired school teacher who speaks four languages fluently. Easy going, knowledgeable and open to schedule changes, she was the perfect guide.

Rather than going along for the morning tours, I was dropped off at a local public beach with my paints and supplies and was told by Jessica  to “paint and see if anyone notices!” Being a school day, there weren’t many people about, but the few that were out did come by, take a peek and smiled their approvals. Setting up under a palm thatched cabana out of the blistering sun, I was very comfortable and only had a few moments of wind so strong that I had to paint with one hand on the panel to keep it steady. Here are my results from that morning:

9 x 12 (note the Art Cocoon)                                             A quick 6 x 8 while I was waiting for my ride.

Tuesday

We were again up at 5 AM to prepare for our hour long interview on the national TV’s most popular talk show ,Moru Bon Dia (Good Morning, morning) with Eileen Lomann of Tele Curacao which was again scheduled for 7 AM. I took along my easel and the two paintings I had done the day before to use on the set as visuals. Hellen and I went on first with Hellen talking about why she wanted to bring plein air painting to the island. I talked about what it means to be a plein air painter. Again I saw the transition from not understanding what plein air meant, to getting it and loving the idea of the festival. The second half of the show Al and Jessica were interviewed and their enthusiasm for Plein Air Easton and what it had meant to Talbot County were the main topic. Sitting in the audience, I could see Eileen sharing that same enthusiasm.

The hour went quickly and as we were leaving the station, we were greeted by a young artist, Ringo Harrigan, President of the Save Our Youth Foundation. Ringo said he had seen the first half hour of the show and was so excited by it that he hopped in his car and drove to meet us to offer his assistance! That encounter helped us to understand the immensity of what might happen in Plein Air Curacao. We weren’t just bringing another art festival to the town so that artists could sell work or provide daytime spectacle for the visitors to the jazz festival; we were awakening a desire in artists of Curacao to join in the worldwide plein air movement as a way of celebrating their personal landscape through art. It began to dawn on us that this could be something really meaningful.

So on to the Punda we went. Punda is the downtown center of commerce and government and where the artists would be painting for the last two days of the festival. I had seen much of it with Hellen, so Al and Jessica went off with Clarina, and I plopped myself down on a bench under a tree to paint the busy floating market. This time there were lots of onlookers with many of them sitting beside me on the bench asking questions and making comments. “Why don’t you paint across the street where the view is better?” My answer: Because there is no shade and it’s too windy to put up an umbrella. “Why is that area so brown?” My answer: I’m just blocking in the shadow areas thinly so that I understand what is shadow and what is in sunlight. Most of that brown will be painted over.” One young Dutch woman was  happy to see me, saying “I see painters all over European countries but never here!” When I told her about the free demo Wednesday evening, she said she would be there and bring friends.

The sun was in and out all morning and I managed to complete a satisfactory 8 x 10. It would need some tweaking in the studio, but might be a good demo to use in my talk Wednesday night. That painting was all about changing light conditions and the need to establish the light/shadow pattern quickly and stay true to it. Here it is:

After a traditional lunch at Plaza Bieu (Old Market) we met a Tourism official, Public Relations Manager Janine de Windt, who expressed her enthusiasm for the project. Then we were dropped off at our hotel, the Marriott, for some much needed rest and relaxation. Sitting on the beach with the warm tropical breezes rustling the palm trees, and the brilliant aqua of the water  feast for our eyes, our high stress levels began to descend. The three of us shared our impressions of what we had seen. We were beginning to sense the enormity of the project and that had us all worried, but we were also beginning to warm to the idea of the partnership of Plein Air Easton and Plein Air Curacao as an opportunity for a meaningful cultural exchange.  But there was still much to be worked out and we only had one and a half days left.

Wednesday

 was our day to tour the western, less inhabited part of the island. We hoped to get back in time to have a rest and make final preparations for the lecture that evening. I still didn’t know what I was going to paint and hoped to get some pictures of some landscapes that would be suitable. Our first stop was an idyllic beach, Playa Santa Cruz, where we met up with Captain Good Life (no kidding) who took us out for a little snorkeling. First stop was the blue cave where we swam into a hole under the cliffs and were met with the most amazing colbalt blue water, produced by the slanting light that came in through the slit-like opening. I had my first other-wordly experience where I floated along with a school of perhaps 500 small tropical fish in utter silence in the buoyant salt water. After that we were taken to a black sand beach where we had only to swim a few yards to find a coral reel of incredible diversity of both coral and fish. How I wished I had an underwater camera.

This experience convinced me that workshops here would need to allow for plenty of leisure time to enjoy all the island has to offer. Plus, it will be much too hot to paint in the afternoon!

On to another local restaurant “Jaanchi’s” where we had the local fare of fresh fish and shrimp, plantains, rice and beans, potatoes and a side dish of Tutu ( polenta with  black eyed peas and sugar) and a stew of  Iguana which tasted much like chicken.

After that we toured the national Park which has rock formations and crashing waves, as well as southern California like terrain of scrubby wind-bent trees and small mountains. Last stop on our tour was the gallery of (Gloria) Nena  Sanchez, a popular Curacao artist who paints colorful folk-like paintings on canvas and furniture alike. The view from the gallery was of distant mountains and shallow salt ponds  where flamingos are abundant….another great painting site.

We arrived back at the hotel at 4:30pm and began our preparation for the big event. While we were beginning to sense the public response, we still had no idea how many people would show. Ten? Fifty or one hundred and fifty? It was anybody’s guess.

At 8:00, the time of the lecture, there were about 10 people in the room. Then someone came in and told us that people were sitting in their cars listening to an address by the prime minister. When the address ended they began to flood in and by the time we started, there were over 65 people in the room.

After the intros and talk about Plein Air Easton by Team Curacao, I began my talk and demo. Quickly I explained the various plein air easels, the use of a limited palette, other tools I use in painting outdoors, the making of panels, and how to carry wet paintings safely. Then I addressed concepts such as choosing one idea and sticking to it, establishing light and shadow quickly, massing, aerial perspective, and editing. I found the audience to be responsive and hanging on my every word. Rather than blank stares, I saw nods of understanding. I showed the audience five images of landscapes I had taken that day and the one they chose for me to paint was of the salt ponds and distant mountains (shown above).

Becasuse of our late start, I worked as quickly as possible on the 11 x 14 cnavas. It was far from best painting ever, but it did serve to demonstrate aerial perspective and how I will move elements in an image to make a better design. As soon as the demo was over there were five women standing at my easel eager to sign up for the workshop. We took a break for drinks and birthday cake and singing ( it was Al’s birthday) and then met again for more questions and answers.

It is obvious that these artists want to know how to paint plein air, and once they have the proper equipment and some instruction, I predict that plein air painting will be a huge success on the island.

We left tired but happy and feeling more optimistic than ever about the prospects for a successful joint venture.

Final Day

We met with Hellen and Percy  for one last meeting before Clarina arrived to take us to the airport. We all now have a good understanding of the challenges that face us, and the work that lies ahead. I’m not going to go into the details of the schedule here: that is for the Avalon Foundation along with Plein Air Curacao to decide. My job now is to start planning for the workshops. There is not much time and we still have questions to answer. We want to make this workshop priced reasonably enough that students will travel to Curacao at the end of August. We want to make sure that they have a wonderful time when they are here, with plenty of opportunities to meet and mingle with the locals. And don’t forget the jazz festival! As I understand it, people don’t sit here for concerts, they dance the night away and people fly in from all over the world. What a once in a life-time opportunity!

The next time you hear from me will be when the details of the workshops (cost, instructors, lodgings and schedule) are firmed up. And then I hope many of you will plan to join us for Plein Air Curacao, either as an invited plein air artist, an instructor, art student or as an art lover who just wants to be in on this little piece of art history!