Plein Maine: Southwest Harbor Public Library to host plein air painting exhibit in December

Plein Maine: Southwest Harbor Public Library to host plein air painting exhibit in December

Anyone paying a visit to the Southwest Harbor Public Library in December can view an exhibit of works by the Plein Air Painters of Acadia on display.

Medium and Message: En plein air

Paintings made in oils in front of the motif, en plein air, are a surprisingly recent innovation. Although often ascribed to the inconvenience of handling oil paint before it was offered in tubes in the middle of the nineteenth century, in fact it had become popular if not mandatory for the aspiring landscape painter well before that. Instead of taking their paints in tubes, those pioneers used pig bladders, that had become widely available from…