Frank Bette Plein Air 2021

PLEIN AIR PAINTOUT 2021
“Hey Ma, People are Painting Pictures All Over the Place!”

by Karen Braun Malpas

One of the bonuses of living in Alameda is that people come from all over to discover and appreciate the sights that are the daily reality of Alamedans. 

This happens annually when the Frank Bette Center invites artists specializing in painting the out of doors, in the “Plein Air,”  to come to the island and record her abundant scenery, the waters, skies, victorians, boats, gardens and unique wonderfulness. A distinguishing attribute of artistry is the ability to transform,—to transform the particular and mundane into the universal. This is evidenced in paintings of a conventional driveway, the back end of an airstream, a big blue mooring post. These un-magical subjects are  transformed into art by means of color, design, atmosphere and paint handling.
When dealing with the landscape, one inevitably faces  the challenge of how to design all those  horizontal strips from foreground to background.  Beautiful solutions were
found by Radhika Srinivas in “Marina at Ballena Bay” and Cathy Boyer’s “Boat Party” as they depicted the masts of boats clearly at the top of the canvas and used the bottom
1/3 of the canvas as an echo in a wiggly reflection. Rather than filling the bottom  of her design, Deepali Kapatkar merely used it in “Morning Shift” by means of a strong diagonal shape pointing the viewer to the upper realms. 

Tanvi Buch took the road less traveled by resisting the colors of a Victorian home and painting it in only neutrals which serves to show off the lacy details of the trim.
 
One painting strikes me as especially evocative of my experience of Alameda, hanging around harbors waiting for junior sailors to come or go, light changing, the smell of the creosote of the pilings, the groan of ropes, the clanking of the masts… "Inner Harbor in the Morning" by Nancy Takaichi.  

Many artists, many styles, many interpretations of the island city are available for viewing and sale at the Center located at 1601 Paru Street at Lincoln, Alameda, open Friday thru Sunday 11am-5pm.

2021 Plein Air Paintout Artists

​Jim Bensman
​Brooke Borcherding
Cathy Boyer
Tanvi Buch
Catherine Fasciato
Philippe Gandiol
Andrea Garman
Annie Haines
Carole Hedrick
Mike Hill
​​Gregory Holzhauer
​Deepali Kapatkar
​Mary Jo Kelly
Paul Kensinger
Chuck Kovacic
Sarah Lam
Marie Massey
Kristian Matthews
Mark Monsarratt
Steven McDonald
Sara Mordecai
Deborah Newman
​​Jan Norsetter
​Katherine Rice
Bonnie Joy Sedlak
Julia Munger Seelos
Radhika Srinivas
Randall Stauss
Nancy Takaichi
Barbara Tapp
Richie Vios
Mandar Wagholikar
Marti Walker
Duree Waseem
Beth Winfield
Douglas Woodman
​Xueling Zou

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