WE were going to meet at the main building of the arboretum because it looked like it just might rain. Then, I got a call from our fearless leader.
It seems the two other students couldn’t make it tonight so if I was okay with it, instead of me driving out to Chanhassan, Rick was willing to drive into town and paint something of my choosing. Hmmm. That seemed like an opportunity I’d be a fool to pass up. I told him I’d call him right back. Then I ran downstairs. Jay was on his computer. I asked him if there was anything he’d like a painting of. I told him the situation and as usual, he had a great idea.
“What if you painted our house and the chairs?” He asked.
We’ve been known as the house with the chairs for nearly twenty years. It all began back when we built our deck in ‘00. We had several family parties that year and to accommodate the crowd, we stocked up on those colorful, plastic Adirondack chairs from the hardware store. At some point in the evening, my sisters and I retired to the front yard to get away from the kids*. The end result was eight colorful chairs lining our front yard hill.
We could have put them all back on the deck but we had a view of the fourth of July fireworks in Edina from our front yard, so all those chairs just wound up back on the front hill.
I didn’t know anyone had noticed until Josie and Meg took a tennis class through summer ed. At the end of the class tournament, I mentioned to one of the other Mom’s what street we lived on. She said “Oh! Where are you in relation to the house with the chairs?”
We are the house with the chairs.
Over the years, we’ve switched out the plastic ones for wood. For a while, we had four wooden chairs I’d painted myself. They lasted for years but not forever. Even the teak chairs eventually fell apart. They had to be repainted every two years or so. I switched the colors up a few times. Eventually, I got tired of painting them, right about the time World Market put out a line of gorgeous chairs in a rainbow of colors. Now we have five chairs that don’t need painting.
I called Rick back and suggested painting in my front yard. So that’s what we did.
We set up right at the end of my driveway. I knew Jay wasn’t going anywhere so we were good. The only problems we ran into were the same problems plein air painting always comes with: wind, clouds and the sun, refusing to stay put in the sky.
We started out all gung ho, excited by the chance to use our bright, primary colors on the chairs. Before long, we were cursing Jay’s name for suggesting something so hard to paint.
But it really was fun. We weren’t daunted by the wind that gusted across the park fiercely enough to knock our easels over. We tuned out the constant traffic zipping by six feet behind me. We ignored the bikers, walkers and runners who passed between us and the view we were painting. Zack came home from a fishing trip while we worked. Jay came down to see how we were doing. If he had brought me a drink (I didn’t have to drive! Haha!) it may have helped.
We both concentrated on the fun stuff: the chairs. We blocked in the background, to work on later. We laid in the areas of sunlight and shadow, getting the darkest darks then diving into that bouquet of chairs.
In the end, it was the sun that ended our painting session a bit early. It had moved just enough to throw all the things that had been in bright sunlight when we started into shade and bring all the things that had been in deep shadow into bright sunshine. In short, our view was no longer a reference for our paintings. So we called it a class and packed up.
It was super fun! I learned a lot and I’m finally getting a feel for my pigments. Plus, I didn’t have to drive anywhere, which is always a big plus.
*for some of us, ‘getting away from the kids’ meant smoking a cigarette. Maybe. Don’t freak out: two cigarettes a year never killed anyone.