A Breath of Fresh Air: En Plein Air
Presented in collaboration with Old Sculpin Gallery

By Abby Remer
 
A Breath of Fresh Air: En Plein Air, on view at the Francine Kelly Gallery through September 20th, is a stupendous coming together of two iconic arts institutions, celebrating the Vineyard’s natural beauty in all its variations.
 
CEO and Executive Director Ann Smith says of the joint effort, which brought together works by artists from both Old Sculpin and Featherstone: “It’s a really beautiful collaboration of a 70-year-old organization, the oldest on the Island, and a 30-year-old organization, which is a year-round community arts association. It’s a wonderful compilation of the great spaces and places on Martha’s Vineyard that people paint.”
 
The germ of the idea began with artist Marston Clough, who had been board chair at Featherstone as well as Old Sculpin. He got the ball rolling, and with Judy Howells’s help, the joint effort opened at Featherstone on August 24th and then, the following week, Old Sculpin opened its show on August 30th. Afterward, the unsold works traveled to Featherstone, creating a robust exhibition of 127 artworks.

Speaking about the choice of the subject, en plein air, or in the open air (as opposed to inside a studio), Smith shares, “It is a common theme we thought would attract the most Island painters.”
 
Artists historically sketched outdoors to prepare for their work, but the mid-19th-century French Barbizon School and 19th-century Impressionists like Claude Monet turned it into a finished art form. The advent of portable paint tubes and box easels in the mid-1800s gave artists the freedom to carry their supplies out into the countryside.
 
Walk into the gallery, and you’ll see a vast array of interpretations of our Island’s rolling green fields, farms, ocean beaches, the Lagoon, and ponds. The variety is endless in time of day, season, personal style, medium, and color palette.

Just a few familiar names include Allen Whiting, Leslie Baker, Marjorie Mason, Marston Clough, Anne Besse Shepherd, Valentine Estabrook, Elizabeth Taft, Lynne McCauley, Judith Howells, Rebecca Everett, and Dana Morris.
 
Eye-catching as well are the gems of less conventional plein air subjects—those with the signs of human life. Alena Grady places us at the bottom of the hill looking up at the shops at the Gay Head Cliffs. Instead of a bucolic landscape, J Gregory Coutinho gives us the West Chop Lighthouse, with late-afternoon light creating a dance of shadows and light that accentuates the structure’s interesting architecture. The highlights and shadows in Eva Cincotta’s “Edgartown Church—St. Elizabeth’s” animate the building’s façade, imbuing it with a distinct character of its own.

Gail Rodney uses rich pastel hues in “Backyard Laundry,” with a filled clothesline that carries our eye across the colorful composition. Alex Elvin stands across State Road, capturing the familiar red façade of the Vineyard Grocer with just the barest hint of nature in the composition.
 
And the list can go on and on of arresting artwork by the Vineyard’s talented artists who take their media out into the elements to capture our Island all year round.
 
Speaking of the collaboration between Featherstone and Old Sculpin, Smith says, “It’s a joining, a coming together of what we love so dear here—our lands, our artists, and our community. I hope we have a lasting partnership going forward.”
 
A Breath of Fresh Air: En Plein Air is on view through September 20th.