As the artists set up easels around Lake Marie in Beaver Meadows, wind swept across the water, rustling tall grasses on shore and leaves turning yellow and red along pathways.
“It was windy. The easels went flying,” said Jo Adang, who founded a group from Hazleton Art League that paints outdoors.
When painting outdoors, the artists have to cope with the elements such as wind jostling their easels or bugs zipping past their eyes.
They work rapidly to caputure the light that is always changing before it fades.
“We really learn from what nature can give us. We learn the colors, the atmosphere. We learn the movement of nature,” Adang said
During the four years that Plein Air Hazleton, a French term for painting in the open air, has been together, the group has visited farms, overlooks, parks, forests and gardens. Each week from spring to autumn, they go to a different place to paint.
“I”ve lived in the area 30 years and gone to places I’ve never seen,” Kathleen Whiton, a group member from Mountain Top, said. “It’s wonderful to have two hours … of solitude in your own little world, concentrating on what you’re doing. It’s a great stress reliever.”
Lake Marie is among the favorite spots for the painters, who gathered there as recently as Oct. 7 and 8 for a workshop with Adang and art league board member Jane Butkovsky.
The group spent mornings in class at the art league’s gallery downtown, concentrating in the first session on values and big shapes and in the second session on details such as color harmony.
After classes, the group drove to Lake Marie to paint.
“All the students were there putting into practice what they heard,” Adang said.
Linda Keck was painting pathways near the water, but said Lake Marie offers a choice of subjects.
“You can go around the lake so there’s different views or look down the path and see the mountainous area … or the meadow,” Keck said. “The scenery at the lake one day was cloudier. … There were dark colors in the sky to play with. The leaves were starting to turn.”
An art major in college, Keck worked as an art therapist before becoming a licensed psychologist. but she always continued to paint and taught a fundamentals of painting at Misericordia University.
Now retired and living in Swoyersville, Keck also leads a summer retreat for artists at Bear Creek Camp where the group paints outdoors.
As Keck was painting a path, Whiton noticed some trees that had taken on fall color and brushed them onto her canvas.
“That’s the way it always is. We’re at the same place but every single painting is different,” Whiton said.
A former bank vice president with an art degree, Whiton has run her own decorative painting business and taught adult art classes at Crestwood High School. Now she is retired, although painting remains her hobby.
Whiton said she was getting bored painting still lifes when she read about the outdoor group on the website for Hazleton Art League.
“The landscapes appealed to to me, and it’s so much fun,” Whiton said.
Adang said 54 members have signed up to receive weekly notices from Plein Air Hazleton. About half of them are active members, and perhaps a dozen artists show up at any given location.
“I think it’s just giving them an opportunity to be with other artists and be part of a community,” Adang said. “Some just like to be together with other artists. It can be a social thing.”
Plein Air Hazleton is free to everyone who joins the art league, and Adang takes no payment for leading the group. While she walked around Lake Marie conversing with the other artists during the workshop, she usually sets up an easel.
“I tell them on paintouts, there’s no instruction so I can paint,” she said.
When Adang and her husband moved to Hazleton from Atlanta, where she had been an art league member. she called Hazleton Art League, hoping to make some friends.
“Do you have a plein air group?” she asked.
“No, would you like to start one?” someone from the league asked her.
When scouting local scenery, the blue hills, unlike those she saw in Georgia, caught her attention.
“That really set me into a painting mode,” Adang said. “It’s beautiful here, and I don’t think everybody sees it.”
When the group fanned out along the Hazleton rail trail this summer, Adang was isolated when ” “a big ole black bear” crossed the path in front of her.
“I was so scared, I couldn’t get out my phone to take a photo,” she said. “Nobody else saw it.”
Sharing stories as well as paintings is part of the draw.
“One of my goals is to give us a chance to be together and learn from each other,” Adang said.
After each outdoor session, artists look each other’s works before going home.
The public has the same opportunity.
Hazleton Plein Air does an exhibition at the art league every other year; and in November, the artists will hang some of their paintings at Tsuki Hibachi Steakhouse, 700 W. Broad St.
“The manager has been so gracious in inviting us. Our group will feature local landscapes,” Adang said. “I think people might enjoy seeing places they might recognize.”
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