My wonderful artist friend, Sally Arnold, invites our Southern Colours art group to her home in the North Georgia Mountains every year for a painting excursion. That's Sally on the left, looking like a Scottish lassie. We usually plan our trips around the full moon with the goal of painting outdoors in the moonlight. Alas, the clouds rolled in this year and the only moonlight appeared at 4:00 a.m. just before we were scheduled to leave on Saturday morning. Who would have thought that, after experiencing a three-year drought, we would have rain almost the entire time we were there?
But devoted artists are an intrepid lot. Although we didn't paint in the moonlight, the rain didn't prevent us from producing beautiful paintings. We went for a walk when we arrived on Thursday in order to decide upon which perfect vista we would each paint. Sally then delivered us via her 4-wheeler, along with our many art supplies, to our chosen spots.
I had barely gotten set up and spent about 20 minutes on my painting at her pond when it started to rain. Sally came tooling over the hill to rescue me. There is something to be said about knowing when to quit or being forced to quit. My painting of her pond that you see below turned out to be my favorite of the weekend. I had grandiose plans of painting all kinds of tree reflections in the water but now I'm not so sure that would have been an improvement.
We overcame a rainy day on Friday and produced wonderful paintings from the front porch, the back porch, under the porch, the bedroom windows, and the shed beside the storage barn. As usual, there were beautiful still life opportunities set up in Sally's studio. I painted under the shed on Friday morning and from the front bedroom window in the afternoon.
In between we ate, planned what we were going to eat, ate again, and did exciting things like tai chi exercises in our pajamas before breakfast. Sally planned a great project of making molded concrete garden ornaments from real leaves so that each of us would have something beautiful to bring home.
Sally is one of the most talented and versatile artists I know. She is the only member of our group who has explored the art of encaustics (the ancient art of painting with pigments in bees wax) and she gave us a demo Friday evening while some of us were wondering exactly how long we could stay awake. The mountain air seemed to put us to bed earlier somehow.
Just as we were leaving on Saturday morning, the sun came out and Sally's father-in-law came barreling over the hill on his 4-wheeler with a big bag of apples for us to share. All of us were reminded, once again, that a very special group of people has come together in our Southern Colours Art Association. I am fortunate, indeed, to have such friends.
If you'd like to see more, click on Visit Southern Colours at the right of this page and then click on A Glimpse At Our Activities.
