Painting in the natural light of the gardens at The Shadows-on-the-Teche may be in its fourth year as a “Plein Air,” competition, but the experience started with a family member decades ago.

“What we really like about Plein Air is that it ties into Weeks Hall who was our artist in residence all of his life,” said Patricia L. Kahle, director of the Shadows-on-the-Teche, a National Trust for Historic Preservation property. “He also taught plein air in the gardens during the 1940s. He advertised he was having classes in the garden. They may not have used the phrase, that started with the impressionist capturing light and the immediacy of it. That’s all part of painting plein air.”

Kahle said reading Halls papers made it clear he was fascinated by light, especially the light on Spanish moss. 

“He wanted to photograph it over a 24-hour period to see how it would change. He said only an artist from China could capture the light,” Kahle said. “He was fascinated with light either in photography or painting.”

Where It All Began

Art like anything else goes from one style to another in cycles. Starting with the classics, then impressionism, cubism and abstract, said Jerome Weber, the Shadows Plein Air coordinator and instigator.

“In the case of plein air, in Leonardo da Vinci’s day, painting was in the mind. They didn’t take their stuff out there and paint it. They’d go back to the studio and paint what they saw,” Weber said. “Around 1860s when there was still no electricity, Monet, Renoir and others started going outside to paint and it was not received good at all.”

A studio painter might take a tree and paint every leaf, but a plein air artist will paint an impression of all the leaves with palates of color, he said.

“When they tried to put a plein air painting in a studio painter’s salon it stuck out because of one reason,” Weber said. “When you’re painting plein air you don’t have time, you have about two to two-and-a-half hours to paint that shadow, that value, that study. It’s going to change. So you have to paint while the painting is good.”

What happens when you’re painting that fast, he said, you have to speed up. With impressionists, colors are brighter and value is strong, light to dark. 

“Impressionism got it’s name because you don’t have time to paint all the stitches on a guy’s suit, you just put some blue, put a few highlights of grey and it’s a suit,” Weber said. “You know it’s a suit, but you don’t see the actual kinks, the individual buttons, but you know it’s a suit.”

Since the artists’ works were not well received by patrons of the classical paintings, impressionists ended up starting their own salons and like any genre, people started realizing they liked the “impression” that objects were painted in detail, he said.

“Realism is what I wanted when I started to paint, that’s what came before impressionism,” Weber said. “You painted until it looked like a photograph. They were studio done. What happened with impressionist, they were painting live. They might have to come back two or three times painting in the same spot with the same light, hoping for the same atmospheric conditions. Then all of sudden it caught on. They might take it to the studio and touch it up, but 90 percent was done out there.”

 The impressionist moved from London and Paris and people from the United States would travel there to learn the style then brought it back here. Now, more paintings are impressionistic, in different degrees. The more impressionistic you get, it ventures over to abstract, Weber said.

Although artists often take photographs to paint from in the studio, for this competition event, they have to paint outside.

Evolution of the Event

The big difference this year is the educational component courtesy of the The James Devin Moncus Family Foundation grant. Three to four times the number of students will be participating in the Paint Out as in previous years. That’s where anybody that wants to paint can come to the Shadows on Main Street March 16. Because there are so many students this year, there will be a separate demonstration for them at the Sliman the same day.

“We’re giving the kids lunch, helping with art supplies and transportation courtesy of that grant,” said Kahle. “That’s been so critical because we’ve wanted to do that every year and this is the first year we’ve been able to expand.”

This year artists will not only display the work from the Plein Air week, but they can display other work brought with them. They also can sell off of their easels, too. If you see someone painting around town and like what you’re seeing, you can make an offer to purchase the painting when done, or after the competition awards program. 

“What’s exciting is seeing it grow. This year we advertised and had over 60 applicants from all over. We narrowed it down to 36 that are actually participating,” said Kahle. “It’s been a variety of artist here and we love having them. We also love the fact we have a number of local artists participating, too.”

Weber said approximately one-third of the participants are new this year, a blend organizers hope to keep positive along with the number of local and returning artists.

“Each year we’ve seen their work get better and better and we’re learning to appreciate the spontaneous catching of the light. Artists have registered and been accepted from New Hampshire, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, Utah, Illinois, Wisconsin, Georgia, Missouri, Florida and North Carolina,” Kahle said.

  It’s such a cross section of humanity and they’re all coming to be in New Iberia and voice their love of the area. They not only love coming to paint — most of the people say it is so different than what they’re use to painting -— and, they like that. 

“They also think we’re pretty hospitable because we feed them almost everyday. A lot of community people come together to make that possible,” Kahle said.

Increased prize money has put the New Iberia event in the “middle of the pack,” Weber said. That brings increased competition with better artists vying for the limited number of slots. 

On display at the Shadows Visitors Center March 16 will be a “small wall.” Artists have been given the opportunity to do a small plein air painting that will give collectors, especially those with limited budgets, the chance to purchase an original piece at a much lower price.

“Every artist will have their own wall space, four-feet-wide by whatever,” Kahle said. “If they sell one, they can put another in its place. We’re making room throughout the Visitor’s Center.”

An artist will display the week’s plein air painting but can use the wall space to exhibit as many or as few as they desire including studio works they’ve brought with them to the competition.

“If they have something done Monday or Tuesday, they’ll be able to hang it on the wall. And we have a lecture on Wednesday by the judge, Erik Koeppel. He’s really knowledgeable about Hudson River School artists, which were early plein air artists of the United States, so he’ll be talking a little bit about that,” Kahle said.

The Shadows Visitor’s Center will be open to the public to view the artists work all day March 16 but the awards program is in the evening. If an artist hasn’t sold their work or will still be in town, some paintings will remain on display Saturday but there is no guarantee how many will be on display. Throughout the plein air week, artist will begin hanging their work as they finish a canvas, normal hours apply.

As in years past, to insure the artwork is from this event, at registration the artists canvases are stamped and dated to authenticate the New Iberia plein air experience.