Paint In The Streets

If you see painters in the streets of Sarasota this morning, do not be alarmed.

It's just the 2oth Great Worldwide Paint Out.

By Phil Lederer

“No matter where you are in the world, you can join us and paint,” says Linda Richichi, a New York- and Sarasota-based artist and member of the International Plein Air Painters, which has organized the Great Worldwide Paint Out since 2001. Richichi attended her first Worldwide Paint Out in 2011, traveling to the hometown of the IPAP founder, on the Ontario side of Niagara Falls for the annual event. Painters from around the world gathered to celebrate the light, the color and the magic of plein air painting—and Richichi won Best In Show.

These days, the Paint Out algorithm is flipped. Instead of all the artists convening in one place, Paint Out events are held simultaneously all around the world, so practitioners can spread the gospel of plein air painting to their local communities and everybody saves a lot on airfare.

Today in Sarasota, Richichi marks the occasion by leading a group of painters and visual artists to the corner of Main Street and Palm Avenue, where they’ll set up shop from 9am to 11:30am and spend the morning capturing the world on canvas as it passes by.

“It’s just a beautiful corner,” Richichi says, and one teeming with activity. Between the restaurants, the galleries, a nearby hotel and standard Friday foot-traffic on Main Street, the opportunities run the gamut for an artist in search of inspiration. Here a table scene, there a skyline. Here a simple still life, there a power-walking pensioner brushing past a pair of businessmen who do not, in fact, own the sidewalk. And everywhere the colors, the trademarked-if-they-could Sarasota sunshine and those shadows that stretch across the street and up the opposite side like a receding nocturnal tide.

But Richichi’s most excited about the umbrellas.

It’s a holdover from this last summer’s trip to Italy, where Richichi fell in love with all of the colorful umbrellas dotting the streets. “So whenever I see umbrellas on the street now,” she says, “I just want to paint them.” But in exchange for indulging her penchant for parasols, Richichi the landscape artist will also be facing a new challenge. “I’ve never really painted people before,” she says.

All are invited to join the group this morning, to pull up a chair, set up an easel or just sit on the stoop with a sketchpad and doodle away. It’s less about the medium and more about engaging in the spontaneous act of plein air creation, where the light is always shifting and the image is only for an instant—catch it quick or it’s gone forever.

“It’s about being in contact with nature,” Richichi says. “When you’re outside, you see more clearly, the colors are alive.” And she finds in plein air painting an artistic high that she hasn’t found anywhere else, something inimitable in a world of celluloid and digital realities that seek to do exactly that. There's a reason she never works from photographs or reproductions.

“I don’t work from photographs, because I feel nothing,” Richichi says. “But when I’m outside, I feel alive.”