Casting a Long Shadow

Painting en plein air attracts a certain breed of artists—adaptable ones happy to trade the comfort and predictability of a studio environment for the shifting variables of light, weather, biting bugs, and chatty onlookers that are all part and parcel of choosing to take your creative process to the source, so to speak. Houston-based Suzie Baker is one of that breed. A professional who travels widely to paint, teach, and participate in artists’ gatherings like New Iberia’s Shadows-on-the-Teche Plein Air Painting Competition, which she won in 2018, Baker says that she loves working out of doors for exactly these reasons. “Painting en plein air, you see color interpreted through your eye as opposed to through the camera. So you have to constantly adapt,” she said by phone from Maui, Hawaii, where she had traveled to—can you guess?—paint. And she’s not alone. “I have a lot of peers who do this. As a group, plein air painters tend to self-select against needing a lot of control.” 

[Read this: Louisiana landscape artist Margie Tate prefers to paint from life.]

At the Shadows' annual competition in 2018, her image of the Rip Van Winkle bird rookery, which she painted as sunset fell across Jefferson Island, won the contest’s $2,500 first prize. During the years since this popular juried show got underway, the competition has attracted a growing number of adaptable souls like Baker, who come from around the country to spend a week making paintings at outdoor locations around Acadiana, then entering them into the competition and exhibit that follows. 

“Painting en plein air, you see color interpreted through your eye as opposed to through the camera. So you have to constantly adapt.”

During the course of the week each artist paints as many pieces as he or she likes, entering the two best into the competition. All work painted during the week will be exhibited at the Shadows Visitor Center on the competition's final day, when contest winners are announced and prizes awarded. All work will is for sale, with two thirds of proceeds going to the artists and a third benefiting the Shadows-on-the-Teche—a National Historic Landmark. All are welcome to attend. “You walk into the visitor center and you can smell the fresh paint,” said local artist and competition founder Jerome Weber. “Then you can buy the works on display. Most are in the $500-$600 range. The first year we sold about $11,000 worth of paintings. In 2018, we sold $24,000.” 

Of course the income—both for participating artists and for the Shadows, is nice. But what Weber truly loves is the process of setting dozens of accomplished artists from all over the country loose to paint his home country, then waiting to see what they come up with. Noting that the most popular subjects with visiting artists tend to be the shrimp boats, weathered barns, plantation homes, and live oaks that make South Louisiana landscapes unique, he observed that, even when the paintings depict scenes he’s known all his life, there’s always a thrill to seeing them through visiting artists’ eyes. “If you’ve ever watched an artist paint outside, live, it’s captivating,” he said. “To see something take shape, from a blank canvas to a complete scene—it draws people.”   

This year's annual Shadows-on-the-Teche Plein Air Painting Competition takes place March 12–18, 2022 in and around New Iberia. All welcome on Friday, March 18 at the awards ceremony and exhibit at the Shadows Visitors’ Center, 317 East Main Street. ShadowsontheTeche.org.