A Week of Plein Air Painters, part one

It just occurred to me as I was looking at the newest issue of International Artist, I should post some of the photos I took of the plein air artists at work, in Maui! Afterall, I only took about 1500 photos while I was in Maui, I'm sure I have a few hundred of the artists!

The first day of the event was February 14th - a great way to spend Valentine's Day. Like the song says, "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with..." and since I wasn't with my husband on Maui, I was spending Valentine's Day with my other "love" - the pursuit of art. (I did wear the beautiful earrings my husband had sent me for Valentine's Day.) Anyway, back to the painters. They were starting at noon and were participating in a "Kick Off Paint Out in Kapalua". The twenty-five of them were divided between three beaches: D.T. Fleming, Kapalua Bay, and Honolua Bay. My brother, Dano, with whom I was staying with on Maui, and I went to D.T. Fleming. As I recall, there were eight artists at D.T. and it was quite windy. A few were tucked safely under a building's awning, painting a view of the lifeguard tower. The braver souls tended to be located along the beach. My favorite photo from this event is the one of Ken Auster, an incredible artist from California, painting against the wind.


As one can see from his hair and the woman's hair, who is leaning over, watching him, the wind was quite strong. What one may overlook is that his easel doesn't have four legs - look closely - it was taped to a tree root to keep it from blowing away! Now that's what I call being dedicated to the cause!

What I loved about Ken's work is the vigor and texture of his work. His work tended to be amongst my favorites.

On Monday, I happened to go to Lahaina, planning to do some painting of my own, but instead I stumbled upon the Lahaina Arts Society artists holding one of their art fairs under the Banyan Tree. Now, this being my third trip to Maui, in two years time, having never caught this exhibit before - always missing it - I wasn't going to miss it this time!


You really can't get the magnitude of the size of this tree (it takes up a whole city block!!) by looking at this photo, but it truly is a sight to behold! Artists, twice a month, on weekends, gather and sell their artwork. So, it was a surprise for me to catch it on a Monday! I thought perhaps the scheduling change was due to the plein air painters. As I wandered around, under the tree's canopy, I ran across another one of the plein air painters, Larry Moore, from Florida, working on a figurative piece.


One the the next scheduled events was the "Pacific 'O Sunset Paint Out", on February 18th. It started at 4 P.M. and continued to 6 P.M.. There was a model available but not everyone was using the model, many were doing landscapes/seascapes. I arrived shortly before 4:30 and the model was taking her first break, walking around and seeing what the artists were doing.


The most amusing part of the Sunset Paint Out were two little boys, about 10 years-old or so, that were posing and mugging "body builder style" in front of artist, Saim Caglayan, who was actually doing a landscape piece, that included the boys in it! Unfortunately, by the time I realized what was going on, the boys "broke" their poses to run over and see what the artist was doing. I did manage to catch one of the event's patrons amused by the boys' antics. As for Saim, he was indeed most tolerant!

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