The Allure of Water
On Location with the Plein-Air Painters of America

October 15, 2011 - January 22, 2012

Experience water as you’ve never seen it in The Allure of Water ≈ On Location with the Plein-Air Painters of America, which opens at The Haggin Museum on October 15, 2011, amidst a number of special events. The exhibition is on view through January 22, 2012, and documented in a color catalog.

Water is essential to our physical sustenance and psychological bliss, and has inspired artists from the earliest times. Today’s on-location painters are no less intrigued by the challenge of capturing the illusion, movement, and infinite moods of water in pigments on canvas and paper.

Members of the Plein-Air Painters of America (PAPA) and select guest artists went into the field to experience and translate everything from rain, fog and clouds to lakes, rivers and oceans, snowfields and glaciers, swamps and marshes, fountains and waterfalls. The result is PAPA's 23rd Exhibition & Sale, with more than 100 new paintings from across the country.

What is plein-air?
The adjective plein-air refers to the philosophical belief that going into the field and painting on-location, challenging as it may be, is crucial to successfully documenting a visual and emotional point in time and place. The artists in this exhibition are recognized as some of the finest on-location painters in the country

“What the members and guest artists of PAPA believe,” according to former PAPA President John Budicin, “is that plein-air is nothing more than painting from life, utilizing direct observation to gather information, along with responding visually and emotionally to the subject at hand. For us, the final measure of a good painting is not whether it was executed entirely outdoors, but whether it reflects the artist and withstands the test of time.”

We're looking forward to another exciting year of on-location paintings. For more information, e-mail info@hagginmuseum.org. To purchase tickets to the opening reception, call (209) 940-6316.

Participating Artists ≈ Opening Events ≈ Artworks ≈ Catalog ≈ Sponsors