Artists Mary Padgett and Leigh Yardley began their Pond Painting Tuesdays together during the early months of the pandemic restrictions in 2020. Painting outdoors was a chance to come together as friends, support and interact with one another in a creative endeavor, and to focus on a common feature of our Central New York landscape. Ponds offer a beautiful value, color, and textural contrast to surrounding fields, trees, hills, and sky.

Each pond is unique: some natural, some man-made, and every one with its own ecology. Eggs cluster on shallow surfaces in early spring, bullfrogs sing in June, noisy geese take off and land in the fall. Ponds freeze in the winter, thaw in the spring, bloom with algae in the summer.

Plein Air painting is a sensory activity. Fragrances and odors, the movement of air, and the sounds of a place are all experienced in the process of working. The pond is the subject but so is the weather and the progression of landscape color from spring yellows to dense emeralds and then orange hues.

Please join us at Cazenovia Artisans, 39 Albany Street, Cazenovia, NY, on August 6 from 2-5 pm to celebrate our work from Pond Painting Tuesdays. The exhibit will be on view at Cazenovia Artisans through the month of August.