The Best Laid Plans of Plein Air Painting Often Go Awry
La Samanna June Flamboyant Blooms 2022
This has been an exciting season for Roland to paint in many more ways than one. While the island flamboyants are bursting in bloom, the bougainvillea has been more brilliant than ever.
La Samanna, Magenta Bougainvillea, June 2022
In late May, Roland found a charming place under a giant tamarind tree laden with fruit, just opposite a brilliant hedge of bougainvillea blooming at the entrance to Shore Pointe in Cupecoy, Sint Maarten.
Full of dense blossoms and delicate tendrils in varied colors of pinks and corals, yellow and white, just beyond was a vast horizon of the beautiful turquoise Caribbean Sea. A happy man was he!
Roland’s first “Plein Air” painting there was a glorious success in a modest size of 20” x 45”
May in Bloom, Shore Pointe Bougainvillea
Fueled with delight, Roland set out to do a second in the series, increasing the size to 29” x 48”, painting over a number of days with almost cloudless skies and calm seas.
June in Bloom, Shore Pointe Bougainvillea
The June blooms grew more lush and the tamarind tree’s shade continued calling its new-found friend. Joyful as a kid in a candy store, Roland set his eyes on a larger-scale creation almost twice the size of his first in the series. He fabricated a stretcher the full width of his oil primed linen canvas, 82” wide with a height of 40”
Roland under the Tamarind Tree, Cupecoy, Photos by John Losher
This required some extra skill not only in painting but set-up! The canvas had to be mounted on top of his van because it was too large to transport otherwise. His portable paint box easel was much too small to hold the stretcher, so Roland built stilts and used his paint box as a center anchor while drilling wood screws to secure everything.
Every paint session it had to be unscrewed and transported back on the van top…wet! The skies woke with bluster as clouds rolled in with the winds of rain on its way.
At one point a gust of wind threatened to throw over the painting, paint box, everything, but Roland caught it in time and his palette went flying instead. It ended face-down on the ground with the wet paint covered with dirt and dried tamarind leaves.
Roland is a tenacious soul and what an amazing painting it t’was until transporting it home it went…. CRACK!
Wet and roped, Roland crawled the car so the wind would not fill the sail and puncture the canvas on the shattered chassis. We tried not to be miserable as we carefully slid the canvas down off the roof and let it float on one end until we could lay it flat and assess the damage.
Step by step the magician worked his wands and brought it back to life. Overnight, our dear friend and framer built another 7 foot chassis and Roland re-stretched and restored the fragile oil canvas to its original glory!
We’re thinking to call it “June Kaboom”!
Discover more wonderful stories and an archive of Roland’s artworks with these helpful links: