P-a-p-a.com
Title
P-A-P-A Art Page
Description
Ask Denise Burns why she founded the Plein-Air Painters of America, and she characteristically offers a tidbit of humor: We were eating bugs, too, she says, pointing out that in the mid-1980s New Mexico's on-location painters were getting attention in the press, but those in California were only beginning to see their names in print.
It was an era when early California impressionism was just beginning to be documented by scholars. In 1982 Ruth Westphal published the resource book Plein-Air Painters of California The Southland, followed four years later by The Northland. Major collections were being built, and prices for historic paintings were rising. Burns, who was president of the Catalina Art Association at the time, felt the moment had arrived to educate collectors about contemporary artists pursuing the art of painting from life. With the encouragement of her friend and Catalina neighbor, art collector Roy Rose (grand nephew of California impressionist Guy Rose) Burns handpicked 20 artists to participate in the First Annual Plein-Air Painters Festival, October 30-November 2, 1986. The idea was to come to Catalina Island, as did so many early California impressionists, paint outdoors for a week, then sell the paintings in a Saturday evening exhibition.
That format continued with minor variations through 2003, when the last PAPA-sanctioned exhibition and sale took place on Catalina Island. Today, PAPA exhibitions and sales are held from coast to coast. In them Signature Members and Guest Artists create brilliant jewels in oils and watercolors, documenting a place and time and calling attention to landmarks large and small. For collectors, these paintings reinforce community pride in the beauty of landscapes, seascapes or ‘urbanscapes’ that may have been taken for granted.
