Edmund Greacen Presentation

It was great to see all who attended our very exciting meeting this past Saturday. President Carron Wedlund welcomed us all and brought us up to date on upcoming news, like our annual member show, upcoming workshop, some fun new plein air opportunities. 

We had around 30 in attendance which was a really good number for us. They must have definitely wanted to hear our topic.

Our presenter was our own member Renee Faure. Renee gave a wonderful PowerPoint presentation on her grandfather, Edmund Greacen.  Graecen was an American Impressionist painter who worked in the early half of the 20th century, and also ran, for 20 years, the Grand Central School of Art in Manhattan.

He has had a special exhibit of his works up at our own Cummer Museum for the past year (which sadly, just came down yesterday) but for those of us who didn't make it to the Cummer Renee brought a couple of his works in. 

They were beautiful and it was amazing to think about this talent in the family. Early in his career he also lived in Giverny, in France, where many other noted painters lived. 

This beautiful map of Giverny is Renee's own creation and shows where many of the other artists lived in that era. The Greacen family lived at number 7 on the map.

Renee talked about her family history, and her own mother Nan Greacen, was a noted artist in her own right, and wrote a number of books for the  Walter T. Foster publishing firm, with many examples of her own talented works.

And of course Renee is a gifted artist herself, and she says her daughter is an artist as well, so that brings us to four generations of wonderful artistic gifts in this family.

Everyone there loved the presentation and we thank Renee for putting together all this information for us to enjoy.

Edmund Graecen

What:   General Meeting
Where: Cultural Center at Ponte Vedra Beach
When:  Saturday, Feb.1, 10 AM to 12 noon

Member Renee Faure will be presenting a Powerpoint presentation about her Grandfather’s work. Edmund Graecen, an illustrious painter of the time, documented the devastation of  World War I in his soft-impressionistic style. Renee will share with us details of his life and work. The collection has been on exhibit at the Cummer Museum and Gardens nearly a year and will remain until February 2.

We hope to see you there. And don't forget. February 1st is also the opening date for being able to submit your images for our spring juried show!

Looking ahead - Aline Ordman workshop

We have an exciting spring coming up and one of those events will be a workshop with Aline Ordman, who will also be our judge for our annual juried show.

Aline's workshop will be:
April 25-26
and she will also do a demo on Friday evening:
April 24

Take a look at Aline's work. It's stunning. The workshop will be held at the North Shores Community Center in Vilano Beach.

Price for this great workshop will be:

Members: $375
Non-members: :400

Check our website. There is already a PayPal button up to accept your $100 deposit if you want to reserve a spot in this workshop. A write-up of what you can expect:

Dynamic Pastels
Using Abstract Thinking to Create Illustrative Paintings
Painting is learning to see. Often, we paint what we think we see because we all have preconceived notions of what something looks like. However, to really paint what you see, you must break down everything you are looking at into just abstract shapes. Don’t see a “house”, see a series of interlocking shapes. 

Aline is known for her vivid paintings and creative use of color. Working from their own photo references, students will transform these into pastel or oil paintings using the principles of color and design. Along with daily painting demonstrations, Aline will emphasize the understanding of color in terms of temperature, intensity and value while translating those ideas using pastel or oil techniques. We don’t have to paint green grass just because that’s what is in a picture. Experimenting with exciting different color while maintaining the value and intensity will serve as a great exercise in helping students expand their color sensitivity. Ten stroke exercises are fun to develop confidence in both decision making and interesting strokes. Let’s say goodbye to overworked tight pastels and oils and learn to create loose, bold but still illustrative paintings. Aline gives a lot of personal attention and works to develop the individual style of each student.

Plein Air luck

What a difference a week makes. Last Saturday was raw and rainy, but today the morning weather was about as nice as January can get in northeast Florida, and we were treated to one of of the most fascinating plein air sites we've ever had in our 8-year history. Yup, this month marks our 8th anniversary and this was a great way to start off our 9th year.

We had our plein air at Lion's Gate - an amazing private home in St. Augustine's history Lincolnville neighborhood.

In addition to the home itself it had amazing grounds, some of the contents of which were shown in the previous blog post.

The house was also right alongside the beautiful marshes with many birds along the marshes and flying overhead.

We had a great turnout also, with several new members and guests. Almost everyone spent quite a bit of time just wandering around admiring the amazing grounds and trying to decide what they wanted to paint.

There were no wrong choices, that's for sure.

But eventually folks picked their spots and began to work. Interestingly, despite the amazing house and grounds and statuary, most of our members gravitated towards the lovely marsh views.

But as I said, you couldn't go wrong. I have a soft spot for marshes and that was what I chose myself.

I had to leave a little earlier than normal so folks were all still working when I went around to see what everyone was doing, and to take some photos. My usual caveat is that the works are in various stages of completion, but today most were a little more preliminary than usual. But as you can see, the marsh was the favorite of all those who came. Here are the paintings from the morning that everyone was working on.

If I missed anyone I apologize! But it was a fabulous morning indeed. Later in the afternoon a cloud cover rolled in, and even some rain and sprinkles, so we were lucky that the morning was just right for us. I hope to see you all in February.

Plein Air **** NEW DATE ****

Hi All,
Well sadly the weather forecast has been looking worse and worse rather than improving, so it looks like Saturday the 4th is not going to be a good day for our upcoming plein air.

Fortunately the owner of this lovely place has agreed that next Saturday works for her just as well as this one.

So mark your calendars. The new date for this unique plein air event is:

SATURDAY, JANUARY 11 - 9 AM to 1 PM

You should have received info about the location in your email. All that remains the same, just one week later instead.

We hope to see all of you next week>

Upcoming Plein Air January 2020

What:   Plein Air
Where: St. Augustine, FL
When:  January 4, 2020, 9 AM to 1 PM

We celebrate our 8th anniversary in January and have an exciting adventure for our first plein air event of the year. For the first time we will be having a plein air event at a private home.

Please see your email for details about the event and the location. Since it's a private home I don't want to post all the address details here.

However I can say that it's a beautiful Victorian home in St. Augustine (built in 1898) and the grounds have lovely gardens, statuary, and beautiful scenery.

Feel free to bring a lunch to share, or even consider going out to eat for lunch somewhere afterwards. We always enjoy having a show and tell of our artwork at the end of the morning also.

Let's all hope now for lovely weather. My current St. Augustine forecast shows a high of 68 with rain showers in the morning, but we all know how forecasts can change between now and then!

Happy Holidays 2019

(photo courtesy of Kathleen Trued)

I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season, and before we know it it will be 2020.  We began our official FCPS journey in January 2012 and it's been an amazing 8 years.

Earlier this month we had our usual FCPS holiday party which got off to a rocky start as no one showed up from the Cultural Center to unlock the doors! Fortunately the weather was pretty mild so while we tried to track someone down we had our annual painting gift exchange in the courtyard.

We were even about to set up the food in the courtyard when we finally reached someone from the Cultural Center who was able to come over and let us in.

 (photo courtesy of Kathleen Trued)

There was some scrambling to get set up but then the holiday brunch was excellent as usual.

                                                                     (photo courtesy of Kathleen Trued)

This was followed by a fun game of Pictionary.

                                                                    (photo courtesy of Kathleen Trued)

Great fun for those able to attend, though there were some who couldn't make it that we missed as well.  The new year is also upon so so looking forward to more adventures in the new year.