Professional Artists Flock Downtown to Paint "En Plein Air"

“…there’s no place in Texas that is doing something of this scope,” says Barbara Rallo from her stand on the corner of Concho and Oakes.

It was just before 11 a.m. on Monday, and Rallo was busy at the information post set up downtown, where curious passersby and numerous artists crossed the streets to look at San Angelo’s historic façades in a new light.

“What we’re going to get is a whole ‘nother view of San Angelo,” volunteer Tom Orsak agreed.

Rallo, with the help of other artists and art enthusiasts in town have pulled together to orchestrate the first and largest “En Plein Air” painting competition the state has ever seen, beating out tourist locales such as Fredericksburg and Kerrville to host a week of events featuring artists from 12 states, France and Canada.

“The seed thought [came] from going to Easton, Maryland, which is the largest plein air competition in the country,” Rallo explained, “the biggest and the best. And somehow we discovered that.

“I thought we were going to do it the next five years; kind of keep planting seeds and let it happen in the future. But I’ve researched and there’s no place in Texas that is doing something of this scope. And before Fredericksburg and Kerrville…before they do it, we have to do it,” she said.

The open-air painting event began on Monday morning, when some 30 professional artists took to the streets of downtown, set up around the fort, and traversed areas by the museum searching for the scenery and lighting that would inspired their paintings of the city.

Utilizing a variety of media, artists selected storefronts, landscapes and architectural elements to transfer to sketch boards and canvasses, many starting with a penciled draft before adding color in oil-based paint, acrylic and watercolors.

Maren Phillips, a full-time painter from Universal City, set up her easel on Concho Ave. Monday morning at around 8:30, and focused on J. Wilde’s, Legend Jewelers and Miss Hattie’s from her angle across the street.

“As I was just driving around this morning, I really didn’t have a plan,” Phillips said. “I was looking for a beautiful light situation that would just grab me, and it did. There were—and I’m going to paint them in there—very long shadows coming across the street and it just was gorgeous with the sun coming up and hitting all the tops of the buildings. Just the shape of all of that was interesting, the shape and the light.”

Phillips had been working on her 11X14 inch painting for roughly two hours when Angelo Reinhold and her three children approached, curious as to the differences between plein air painting and traditional studio work.

“The environment [is the biggest difference to a studio setting],” Phillips explained to the entourage of home-schoolers. “The buses and the wind and the people and the bugs—you just have to deal with whatever’s out there. Bears, you’re caught by a storm, the wind will come along and blow the painting away. There’s any number of millions of things that can happen. The biggest benefit [is] when you’re outside and you’ve got gorgeous light and you can really see what you’re painting.”

Like many of the 27 artists invited to take part in the competition, Phillips plans to paint one to two pieces a day until Saturday, when a plein air “Paint Out” will run from 10 a.m. to noon, culminating in the judging of the pieces submitted by professionals and community participants.

The professional competition is limited to 30 artists—three of which are local—who were selected by a reviewer for Plein Air Magazine in Oklahoma City. Throughout the week the artists will paint in different locations, building up artwork to enter for the judges.

“You have to paint quickly when you’re painting plein air because the light changes really fast,” Phillips explained. “It’s already very different from when I started, so I don’t see now some of the things that I saw when I first set up, so I’m having to remember it. When you remember it, sometimes your memory is faulty.”

Phillips said that most plein air works turn out less “polished” than traditional studio work, but the experience of being outside and in tune with elements of the area is what attracts her to the style.

A stone’s throw from Phillips, David Csont of Pittsburgh, Pa. was sketching out a very linear depiction of what he plans to call “Block One”, for the sign in front of it.

“It’s kind of the back-of-house stuff,” he said, standing across from the space between Miss Hattie’s and the Sassy Fox. “You know, the things you might not notice when you’re driving by. Everybody can see Miss Hattie’s, so I thought just a glimpse of it might be kind of cool, and the way those shadows are coming off all that stuff on that building. It’s going to be fun.”

Csont is an architectural illustrator and first came to San Angelo roughly a year and a half ago to teach a seminar on plein air watercolor painting. At that time, he and Rallo had spoken of a possible large-scale competition in the future, and Csont said he promised to return when she got it off the ground.

Using imagination to add story to his interpretation of the area, Csont told the Reinholds what he sees in the space.

“What I also like about it is how high the curbs are over there,” he said. “You don’t see that over on the east coast where I’m from. I guess that’s so when you brought your horse up to them you can tie it up or whatever. That’s what I’m going to pretend, anyway.”

Unlike Phillips, Csont completes his imagery first in pencil, then brushes over in watercolor. The end result, he says, shows some of the original pencil markings, which are telling of the painting’s development.  

“There’s no forgiveness in this,” he said. “You put the paint down, it’s down. It’s not coming back off again. There’s no fixing it. You do it the way you want to do it the first time and there’s no backing up. But what you do get out of it is an incredible vibrant sort of transparent color.”

Looking at some of Csont’s work in sketchbooks next to his work table, Angela Reinhold says the event offers a unique type of learning for her children.

“I’m just trying to teach them that maybe they can learn something here today about the different styles of painting, the oil, the watercolor. This is my little painter, here,” she said, as her daughter stood by her side. “So far, she’s pretty good at birds. We’ve just used acrylic so far, so it’s neat to come and see how the others have done. It’s relaxing.”

With a week of events scheduled all over the Concho Valley and more artists coming in for the weekend, Rallo said she hopes to revitalize a bit of the area’s artistic history while offering a unique experience to both the citizens and the painters.

“In the 1920s there was an artist camp in Christoval,” Rallo said. “It became one of the best-known organizations in the southwest. People came from all over the country to pain on the river in Christoval, so really we have that history. This makes our event even more special and another reason for it to have a rebirth here.” 

The EnPlein Air Texas competition was orchestrated by Barbara Rallo, with the assistance of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts and the Plein Air San Angelo group. 

For a full schedule of events, visit the msueum's web page here. 

The "Paint Out" Saturday runs from 10 a.m. to noon and is open to the public. Participation costs $10 and participants are limited to the same area as the professional painters. The artist's work will be displayed in a private show on Friday, and all Saturday participants will have their work displayed among those submitted by the invited artists.