In The Open Air: Plein Air Art Exhibit To Be Featured At the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center

Standing in the middle of the woods with a paintbrush and canvas, artist Lynn Rix was slowly enveloped in a circular blaze as a controlled burn at the grew, and her hand flew across the canvas to capture the image in paint. Another time, Rix and her fellow artist Pamela Rauschman, fought the cold Wisconsin winter temperatures to paint a sunrise while standing in the crisp, white snow.

The women do what’s called “plein air” painting, translated in French the phrase literally means “In the open air.” Rauschman and Rix pack up their art supplies and travel on the various trails of the property until they find a view they like, capturing it in oil paintings.

“This is challenging for us, as a way to grow,” Rix said.

Those paintings will be featured in an 80-piece featured Sept. 15.

This project began for Rauschman when her son started pre-school at the center and she decided instead of driving home for those few hours, she would stay and paint, exploring the 185 acres of land with  fellow artist Rix.

“For us, we usually paint something with a boat in it or a building in it, objects. So to just paint pure trees, flowers, water, was a challenge,” Rauschman said.

Lost in nature and paint

The controlled burn was the most unique painting experience for Rix. She went out with the crews who directed her to a small island of trees where she could set up her art supplies.

“They were burning right in front of me, so then I’m painting that and not concentrating on what’s happening; they had surrounded me [with the controlled burn]. I was surrounded on this little island.” Rix said.

Another challenge the artists had to work with was the clock. When working outside, they had a limited amount of time to capture a scene because the climate and lighting can change in an instant.

“Imagine you want to paint clouds over the lake and you want to capture that moment in time and then all of a sudden, you look up from mixing your color and it’s completely different,” Rauschman said. “I think when you paint outside, you’re forced to make quick decisions and I think both of us think like that anyway, so it fits our motif.”

Ruschman and Rix painted dozens of scenes throughout the year, traveling around the nature center throughout all four seasons, so they experienced a variety of climates.

A dedicated endeavor

“So many people said to us, ‘Who are these women?’” Brianne Bromberek, marketing coordinator at SANC, said. “They had seen them on the land all year round, so it started to be one of those things that people started to talk about.”

Bromberek said often times the women would ask for permission to come to the nature center early, before the grounds opened so they could paint sunrises.

“The dedication they had to this knowing that, it’s not like we said in the beginning of the year ‘we want you to do this,’ it was really on their own terms,” Bromberek said.

Rix calls the whole experience “addicting” and said she learned a lot from working in colder climates and how it would affect her art supplies.

“I found it was a learning curve for me in the beginning because I don’t paint with a lot of medium in normal weather, but in the winter I found I had to have a medium in there because otherwise the paint would change texture,” Rix said.

The cold weather affected the artists’ hands during the winter months, so they used pallet knifes instead of paint brushes.

“For us as artists we knew we wanted to see what happened here and it helped us grow as artists because we probably would never have used pallet knives in that way before,” Ruschman said.

In addition to working with different types of tools, they also had to learn how to dress for the elements.

“For me it was awesome because we learned we had to have cleats on our boots, I did double-decker foot warmers…. We really learned how to dress for the weather,” Ruschman said.

Lessons from little ones

Ruschman said more than half of the 40 paintings she’ll be showing at the Plein Air Art Exhibit were created in the winter months. Rix will also be showing 40 pieces. A photography exhibit called “Little Hands, Big Discoveries,” by Liesl Schultz, a preschool teacher at SANC, will also be showcased. Schultz’s exhibit will feature at least 20 pictures of rocks, snails, flowers and other items children in her class found during their explorations.

“We learned a lot of terminology when we heard the little classes go through," Ruschman said. "Here we are very quiet and respectful and we hear all these little kids and their teachers come through and we just start laughing because they’d say something and we’d go ‘We learned something new today.'"

Ruschman and Rix’s work will be for sale and both women have agreed to donate 40 percent of each sale to SANC, which in turn will be used to help fund environmental education classes at the center.

Rix said she is looking forward to the exhibit, but more importantly to educating the community to this style of art.

“I’m really trying to educate people on what plein air painting is," Rix said. "It’s done in the moment, it’s done of the moment and it’s a feeling that the artist has of what they felt in the atmosphere."