Volume 45 Issue 1

Next Meeting – January 13 At our Gallery - social hour 9:30 a.m., business meeting at 10:00. Refreshments will be furnished by Margarete Seagraves and John DeFrancesco. Jana Towery will present a program on blending and glazing acrylic techniques.

On the Agenda Winter Show at TLC PLAG Membership

Winter Rules

If, on the day of a scheduled PLAG meeting, the Lewis-Palmer Dist. 38 schools are closed due to inclement weather, our meeting will be cancelled. If snowfall has made parking at our Gallery difficult to impossible, we will meet at Tri Lakes Center instead.

Winter Fine Art Show

Our show chairman, Craig Mildrexler, has reserved the Lucy Owens Gallery at Tri Lakes Center for our Winter Show. It will run from Friday, Feb. 6 through Feb. 27. The opening reception will be on Saturday, Feb. 7 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Due to the limited space in the Lucy Owens Gallery, a size limitation of 16x20 must be imposed. You may enter 3 works, but if the space becomes too crowded we may ask that you eliminate one. Entry forms are attached – please note the January 15 deadline for signing up.

Participants in the show will be expected to contribute finger food for the reception. Sue Jenkins, Carolyn Stolz and Donna Arndt will be coordinating the food. TLC will run a cash bar for liquid refreshments.

Membership List Please add the following names back into our roster:
Robert & Teri Erickson, 18460 Sloan Ln. Monument 80132, (719) 488-2287 Robert Perry, M.D., 4580 W. Wagon Trail Littleton 80123, (303) 798-8362
	J Happy Birthday! ¯¯
	Marcia Edwards, January 14 Kathleen Krucoff, January 31 [If your birthday isn’t mentioned, please notify Mary Krucoff, (719) 488-8101]

Member News

Barbara Weber is the Great-Grandmother of two beautiful babies, Alayna (1-1/2) and Brandon (15 mos.), and a third is expected to arrive this coming March!

John DeFrancesco will continue to hold his plein air painting sessions indoors at our Gallery in January. The next one will be on Thursday, January 8 from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m.

Craig Mildrexler is currently exhibiting 36 of his unique works at the Sundance Mountain Lodge (formerly the Falcon Inn) next to the fire station on Woodmoor Drive in Monument. His paintings are located in the bar area and he has had one sale so far.

Edgar A. Whitney (1891—1987) was an accomplished watercolor painter who worked for 25 years in commercial art. During these working years he attended all the art classes he could find in New York before striking out on his own in fine art when he was 51. He started conducting two week long summer workshop excursions to the coast of Maine which eventually became so popular that he had to turn over their management to professionals. At the end of WWII, he also started teaching figure, portrait and pictorial composition at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (later called Pratt University). Through the 60s and 70s he branched out to include teaching workshops all over the country and beyond to Western Europe, Jamaica and Bermuda. In 1958 he published a book on his methods and philosophy, stressing design and composition. This first book was later expanded and reissued in 1974 as The Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting and became a huge best-seller and the bible of watercolorists. He was an extremely entertaining and effective instructor and would use anything to put the point across including jokes, insults, shouting, brandishing his cane and tears in the eye. He had a loyal following of professional artists including Frank Webb, Tony Couch, Skip Lawrence, Tony van Hasselt, Judi Wagner, Cheng-Khee Chee and many others who would come to his workshops year after year along with aspiring artists of every level. And always, he had concise statements on his painting philosophy that his students would remember for many years to come. Here is a sampling of such “Whitneyisms”:

There’s nothing wrong with being in kindergarten...as long as you don’t stay there. 6 The amateur is afraid of boldness, the professional is afraid of timidity. 6 I don’t want it true —instead, I want a beautiful lie! 6 The only power that doesn’t corrupt is the power to make something lovely. 6 You make me look where nothing happens —Don’t do that! 6 Genius is perpetual audacity. 6 You get facts from nature. But you get art from artists! 6 Make your point of interest a different distance from all four edges. 6 Decide the essence of a thing—then explain it with the fewest possible strokes. 6 Plan like a turtle—paint like a rabbit. 6 The discipline endured is the mastery achieved. 6 Art is emphasis on essence. 6 Courage is grace under pressure. 6 Art is a metaphor—it’s like it, but it’s not. 6 The moment you’re afraid...do it! Morale is more important than success! 6 Paint with the word “too”—too light, too hot, too cool. 6 Anything that doesn’t express the feeling of the locale—leave out of the painting. 6 Great designers are eliminators. 6 Cameras report—artists express. 6 Failure is a function of success. Without failure, it is not possible to measure gain. 6 When nature’s right, use her—when she isn’t, spit in her eye! 6 My bow to nature is perfunctory but sufficient—then I do what I damn please.

Read more about Edgar Whitney at www.edgarwhitney.blogspot.com.

The Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting by Edgar Whitney and Learn Watercolor the Edgar Whitney Way by Ron Ranson are both available from Amazon.com.

PLAG’s website: www.palmerlakeartgroup.com. Add the address to your business card, tell your friends to look us up, help us advertise our group.

Reminder: contributions to the Newsletter are greatly appreciated. Also, please let me know about exhibits, sales, etc. Call or email: Mary Krucoff, (719) 488-8101 or emkaymonument@q.com. Deadline is the 25^th of the month. Also Please Note: if you haven’t received your newsletter by the 5^th of the month, please let me know. If you currently receive your newsletter via postal delivery and would be willing to switch to email delivery it would save us the cost of postage.