My painting "Snack Shop," painting plein air during a workshop with Sandford Birdsey in Key West.
Copyright, Beth Bourland
KEY WEST, FLA. (2009) A dozen or so amateur artists gather on Caroline Street in Old Town, Key West. We’re here for a plein air painting workshop led by Sandford Birdsey. It’s humid and 87 degrees with hardly any air stirring, typical for May. Forgoing preliminaries, Sandford thunders out her first instruction: “No sketching!” Seated on a camping stool, this 82-year-old artist glares at each of us in turn. “If you sketch, you’ll just fill your lines. We are painting today. We are not drawing objects.”
Sandford’s brusque manner makes me grin. I’ve attended her workshop previously and expect her fiery style. It can be a bit intimidating: some of the novices in our group shift nervously. We’re mostly vacationers, a few locals, all outfitted in shorts or khaki’s, oversized shirts and sunhats. I’m fair-skinned and covered head to toe in various cotton garments.
Sandford lives above her studio and gallery at 328 Simonton St., and has led outdoor painting workshops for many years. Her vivid, splashy watercolors have been exhibited and collected nationally; she also creates designs for linens and commercial canvas, such as awnings, like the one at her studio (below).
Today, she’ll compose and complete a small painting, offering tips and explanation as she works. Then we’ll fan out nearby and paint for a couple of hours. At the end of the afternoon, she’ll lead a critique.
My head sweats under my wide woven hat, the back of my T-shirt is already soaked and the air is so thick that my glasses are fogging up. I feel exhilarated.
The tourist trolley clangs its bell behind us and we crowd onto a tiny strip of lawn to get out of the driveway. Tourists onboard the rickety little cars wave their cardboard souvenir fans in front of their faces and peer down us — Look, real artists!
By prohibiting pencil lines, Sandford is challenging us to work more freely. Too much planning stifles the beauty of watercolor. I still want some sketchy lines but I hide my pencil in my palm, like a kid concealing a cigarette from the teacher.
Sandford announces that she will paint the palms and scenery at the edge of the trolley plaza. A small camping table holds her white plastic palette and water jug. A bouquet of brushes pokes out of a tin can on the ground. “Look carefully,” she says, nodding toward the cluster of palms. “Trees are not green and brown.” She invites us to notice the uppermost fronds, struck by the sun, glowing with red and orange, and to carefully observe shadows.
“Shadows have color,” she declares, jabbing the air with a brush handle for emphasis. “Don’t make ‘em black!” I squint, to better envision dark purples, cool blues, even dashes of red and orange from light reflecting off the hot pavement.
Sandford loads her #14 brush with yellow. With confident strokes, she conveys the uppermost fronds, which catch the most light. Big yellow zigzags streak across the top of the page like lightening bolts.
She dunks her brush in the water jug and shakes it vigorously, spattering the shins of the front-most pupils. She jabs at three or more chunks of color on her palette. The tree trunk appears on her paper in a downward swipe. No mere gray or brown, it’s a jagged column of russet, blue and sienna. Next, she indicates the bark’s texture with a cascade of dark X’s, like a young girl doodling kisses down the margin of a notebook page.
She chooses her next color and returns quickly to the paper, extending the palm tree’s trunk into its purple-blue shadow. “Everything is connected,” she says. “There are no dividing lines in nature.”
The center of her palette looks like a shattered rainbow and her water can is muddied with paint. As she works, she dispenses advice, chats with the regular participants – “Where’s your hat, Ed?” she scolds a tall, pale-toned man – and reiterates her philosophy of painting with emotion. She explains that as artists, we should compose our paintings creatively and strive to express our vision. The artist has great power. “You decide,” she emphasizes: Move that tree over to the left. Add a telephone pole, or take one out. Paint a bicyclist, whether one is there or not. Invent a colorful flag for a facade; paint a cat on the porch where it belongs. Under no circumstances should you passively attempt to “copy” the scene in front of you. In fact, it’s the artist’s utmost responsibility to add, to delete, to alter and edit.
Justification for a lazy thinking is one thing she will not tolerate. For example, you see a bicyclist pass by, and decide to add a bicyclist to your painting. He was traveling east, wearing a green shirt and carried no goods. Wouldn’t a stronger composition for your painting be to depict him traveling west, wearing a red shirt, and carrying a pineapple in a front basket? Then by all means, paint him that way. “I don’t want to hear ‘But that’s the way it was!’ ” Sandford says. “It doesn’t matter how it was! It’s your painting. You change it. You decide. “
She’s painting palm fronds with varied greens accentuated by blues, yellows, oranges and reds. Leaves struck by direct sunlight shine with lime green. The foliage underneath is a dark and moody viridian tinged with sapphire blue. She squeezes out a dab of some kind of yellow, a dab of some kind of blue, swirling them together on her tree — oh, how it glows!
“How did you mix that particular green?” someone asks, pointing at an emerald swipe.
“Oh, it’s some transparent yellow toned with phthalo blue. It doesn’t matter what you use. Just think warm, cool, light, dark.”
No timid blue for this sky. Sandford’s sky is the handsome and assertive ultramarine blue, tinged with crimson, leaving patches of white, untouched paper. She uses her rich, dark hue to carve around the lighter greens and yellows which have already dried in the heat. Suddenly the fronds pop out against the background as if they’re jumping right off the paper.
Her palette contains watery “mud” from her color mixes. She uses this as a neutral to refine trunk, then adds some cool blue shadows up in the tree where branches intertwine. Vivid, messy, whimsical and undeniably individual, the tree is done. She depicts the street and a few of the shops with contrasting blocks of neutral tones and saturated colors. She’s created a bright and unique impression of the scene around us. But her painting is not done. Not just yet.
Sandford’s paintings always include the island’s colorful residents — human or animal. An assortment of bicyclists, dog walkers, tourists, fishermen, shopkeepers, gulls, pelicans, parrots, cats or chickens inhabit her scenes.
“You must have zee signs of life!” is her constant refrain. A few quick swoops and birds appear in her painting. More dashes or color and a bit of calligraphy, and she has painted a figure in a hat under her tree.
The demonstration’s over in 20 minutes. Now we fan out and set up our folding stools and easels, squeeze fresh colors onto our palettes, fill our jugs from a spigot, slog down our iced refreshments, eyeball the scenery and begin. We have a couple of hours to observe and create, as Sandford strolls among us to give feedback.
Around us, tourists, locals and shopkeepers bustle and call to each other. The scent of waffle cones drifts out of a tiny ice cream shop. Motor scooters putter along the narrow street; radios blare through the open windows of cars. Spots of blue ocean can be seen beyond the small shops and marina buildings. Cottages or two-story houses with shutters or balconies are shaded by palms and Poinciana trees. Hibiscus, frangipani, wild tangles of vines and blossoms spill out over white picket fences.
When the shadows start to lengthen and the harshest sun subsides, Sandford summons us for the critique. “Let’s gather up! Bring your work! It’s OK if it’s not done. Come on, finish up quickly!” We gather in an empty lot across the street from the trolley turnaround and lean our paintings against the wall of a market.
It’s quite a gallery. Some paintings are bold and confident, others shy and tentative. Some are as fresh and primal as children’sart. A few are deft with the dancing white space and expressive contrasts of the accomplished watercolorist. Even beginners have attempted to be vigorous with color and shape. Nary a pencil line to be seen! (I furtively sketched, but kept my pencil lines very light.)
Starting at the far left, Stanford evaluates each painting. Her comments are characteristically blunt, but constructive. She praises enthusiastic efforts, even if the end result is a bit clumsy. The painters who labored over careful renderings are encouraged to relinquish control and let the brush dance.
She pauses a moment at my depiction of a local market (shown at top of this blog). I’ve jotted in a tourist / shopper and depicted a dog on the sidewalk. Stanford nods. “Interesting. Lively. It’s apparent you’ve had some painting experience. This scene reads well to me.”
I’m grateful – it’s a high compliment.
As the critique comes to a close, before we pack up our gear and say our goodbyes, I take one last look at everyone’s efforts. Despite our wide range of ability and style, there’s one unifying factor among our work. One thing that all of us achieved today. Without exception, each painting contains signs of life. Our brush may not be held by the steadiest hands but our imaginations are fully engaged. In our paintings, bicyclists teeter down streets, misshapen dogs snooze in shady corners, women saunter in colorfully ballooning dresses. Birds bobble across our skies, stick-limbed shopkeepers stand in not-quite-plumb doorways. None of these beings stopped to pose for us but we’ve managed to extrapolate them from the life constantly unfolding around us. Our signs of life are not perfectly rendered, and all the better. They bring life to our scenes and give breath to our creations – that’s what is most important.
Today, we’ve learned that from Sandford.
*****
I painted twice with Sandford Birdsey in the quirky neighborhoods of Key West but haven’t been back for a few years. This week, I learned she passed away. From an obituary: “Considered a matriarch among many in the Key West art scene, Birdsey died in her home Sept. 6, 2010, after an 18-month battle against heart disease. She was 85.” (Read more here). Her web site, featuring her art work, is here.
I cherish my memories of painting with Sandford.
Still life studies of fresh lemons and a sprig plucked from Bonnie’s spring gardens. I practiced trying to achieve a variety of edges, applying concepts taught by Leslie Wilson. These lemons have some wild shapes! I touched their edges randomly with a wet brush to allow the paint to fuse outward. I saw Leslie use this technique; I call it “the exploding edge.”
