Plein-air: Painting the great, wide open

“The darks in the light are never as dark as the darks in the dark,” says Morgan Samuel Price. “And the lights in the dark are never as light as the lights in the light.”

This is not a depressingly pragmatic philosophical metaphor about things being exactly as bad as you think. This is a workshop on plein-air painting, the art of creating art outdoors. The Winter Park Paint Out, a week of plein-air painting throughout the city, kicks off Sunday, with works being hung at the Albin Polasek Museum in Winter Park as they’re completed throughout the week. (Details: polasek .org)

An Altamonte Springs resident, Price is one of the 25 artists who has been invited to participate. Her “Washington Bikers” painting was chosen as this year’s poster image.

We’re at Wekiva Island on a glitteringly sunny morning while the Cleveland native educates her eager class of five women. COMMENTARY Price has been a professional artist and instructor since the 1960s. The level of experience has given her a clear eye for what’s important, and that’s value.

In this sense, value refers to the lightness and darkness of a color. Her scale runs from white through grays to black. “This is where everyone forgets to do their homework,” she says as she paints a scale on the side of her canvas like a vocalist warming up her throat. “It isn’t just a matter of understanding. You have to do it.”

Price has chosen a section of woods to paint across the river from where we’re seated. Value is how she will make the leaves in the back look farther away than the ones closer to us. “Your eye is a muscle,” says the graduate of Ringling College in Sarasota. “You need to keep it where it’s not weak.”

Painting plein-air (a French term meaning “into the open air”) is basically what you picture when you think of an artist in a beret, squinting at their thumb and holding a paintbrush. And it isn’t easy, says Price, who has painted in snow, wind and most natural conditions. “You need to be strong.”

Outdoors, an artist battles changing light conditions, effects of the atmosphere and all kinds of weather. “You can paint the mist. You can’t really paint the rain because it washes away,” she says. “Of course, it’s pretty to watch it wash away.”

But this biggest battle? “Doing a good painting, of course,” says Price.