PLEIN AIR PAINTOUT 2024
Lookout for the Paintout

by Karen Braun Malpas

For a fine summer week, forty painters came to Alameda to paint images of its many attributes: beaches, palm trees, flower-lined walkways, boats, ships and harbors, welcoming streets and the beautiful skies over all.

These features are lovingly documented in this year’s show so, what follows is a mini-focus on only one feature: Alameda's houses with and without color and how even the straight lines and functional predictability of a building can convey a feeling of place. 

Alameda supports a thriving industry of specialized house painters who research what colors were historically used during which eras of a house’s construction. They then make suggestions to the homeowner of how to reproduce the original glory in 3,4,5 colors. Nutan Singh found a  perfect example of this in “Timeless Grace,” a turquoise Victorian house with lots of decorative  details including points of metallic paint. Douglas Woodman found a similar house at “1228 High St.” and another one,”View from Franklin Park.” This house is seen in sunlight, its front yard has been made into a colorful garden. It reads like a home, not a house, someones oasis, their place of peace unlike Jamie Morgans “Eugene’s Market” which looks like a photo from a historic survey of Olde Alameda. It’s sun bleached pink stucco and closed windows speak of a long passed display of produce and sugary drinks in a now circumvented corner store.

Susan Grabowski  illustrated how luscious many colors side by side can look in her doorway at “3030 Fairview Ave.” A bright tangerine house, a teal door with deep emerald green and pumpkin-colored details. Both Steven McDonald and Marie Massey saw a row of houses, similar in scale, shape and neutral color except, one was a bright color like the statement jewell in a silver necklace.

But Alameda isn’t all about careful colors. Some images in this show are pale or neutral. One that seems to be  flooded with  bright light is “St. Joseph Basilica”  and its sister piece “Church Doorway Central Ave.” by the expert watercolorist Raffi Kondy where we experience cool marble, classical forms, and chalky colors in sky, walls and ground. Neither is Alameda all about grand facades. Wei-Tung Chung has a unique way of applying watercolor in stipples which give the surfaces a slightly shaggy or worn appearance. “Enchanted Cottage Garden” shows a partly hidden house behind consecutive layers of actively textured trees, shrubs, plants. The viewer feels as if they have discovered a shy, secret house unlike “2119 Central Ave.,” Nancy Takaichi’s stalwart, frontal Victorian fronted by commanding red bush which seems to say look at me with respect because I’ve been here longer than you have. 

Louis Chan found 2 quirky sister cottages. One is  called “Red House“ of a white house with a red roof and its sibling called “Blue House” of a white house with a blue roof.  The duo evoke simple cheer, sunny weather and daisies.  A realtor might call them “cute little homes,” words never uttered before the Victorians.

For fans of Alameda and Art, this show hangs until September 28 at the Frank Bette Center