"Morning View, looking west, Shem's Creek", 12x16, oil on board, Charleston, Shem's creek, shrimp boats, fish shacks, American Impressionist Society, Maryanne Jacobsen art

"Morning View, looking west, Shem's Creek", 12x16, oil on board

I just returned from a week in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina, where I attended a plein air workshop with Master Impressionist Kenn Erroll Backhaus, and attended the opening reception for the American Impressionist Society's 14th annual exhibit.

The workshop was filled with opportunities to paint many of Charleston's beautiful scenes, and Kenn was a thoughtful, helpful and considerate teacher. I'll be posting my plein air studies soon , along with more in depth info about the workshop.

The opening exhibit at the M Gallery was fabulous. I met many new friends and was awestruck by the beautiful art on the walls. Out of over 1300 entries, only 163 paintings were juried into the show, so I was honored to be included amongst the nation's top Impressionist painters for the second time in four years.

Here I am with my entry, "Dancing Queens and a Pear".

To see all of the paintings that were in the show, you can go here.

On Friday, many of the artists went to Shem's Creek to paint the scenic marshes and shrimp boats. I had already done two paintings there earlier in the week, so instead I elected to take photos at the docks in the early morning light. The painting above is of a fish shack that was bathed in that lovely warm buttery light that spills across the horizon about an hour after dawn. The blue "SeaHorse" shrimp boat was directly across the water and was also bathed in luscious light.

My painting of the Dancing Queens can be purchased through the M Gallery. You can follow the link above for more purchase info. If you would like to purchase "Early Morning Light, Shem's Creek", just send me an email at maryannejacobsen@aol.com for purchase information.

"Mister Chris", plein air, 14x11, oil on linen

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"Mister Chris", plein air, 14x11, oil on linen

I feel as though it's been ages since I have written in my blog! The past couple months have been a whirlwind of Paint-outs, paintings and plein air workshops, and I will confess that I am tired!

I truly enjoyed my back to back workshops with Katie Dobson Cundiff, Kim English and last week with Morgan Samuel Price, and I do feel that the expert teaching and all the plein air painting that I did has helped me gain confidence in my future plein air endeavors.

The above painting was painted this past Tuesday at the quaint old Cortez fishing Village in scenic Cortez, Florida. It is very hard to find a place with so many amazing birds, little islands with mangrove trees and fish shacks, and turquoise waters filled with old working fishing boats galore! There are scenic views of Longboat Key, Bradenton Beach, and Sarasota Bay (north end) and even a crazy restaurant (I say crazy because the rules are more in line with Seinfeld's Soup Nazi then a traditional seafood restaurant!) that serves some really fresh seafood straight off the dock! I will confess that eating at the Starfish Company restaurant is an experience, but not necessarily one I would want to repeat during spring break or snow bird season!

In order to paint this boat, called the Mister Chris, I had to stand for a few hours on a rickety old dock in the blazing sun, smelling gasoline fumes from the rags in the boat docked next to me, and hoping to remember that if I stepped backwards the wrong way, I'd end up in Sarasota Bay. Yeah, it was fun!

I am going to work a  lot more on water reflections in the future, but Morgan's workshop was very helpful in teaching us how to capture these tricky reflections. This painting is part of the "Paint the Town" Paint-out exhibit and can be seen along with many other gorgeous plein air paintings at  Art Center Manatee through May3rd. If you are in the area,stop by and see the paintings created by some of the area's finest plein air artists.