The Boothbay region is well-known for its natural, often stunning, beauty. On Sept. 10, members of Oil Painters of America (OPA) joined members of Plein Air Painters of Maine (PAPME) and the Plein Air Painters of the Southeast (PAPSE). The groups’ members painted together for the week in the OPA event, the Great Paint Out.

The Grimes Cove/Shore Road, East Boothbay location was one of 15 such events for OPA since last month.

Corinne McIntyre of Ocean Point Studio/Visions of Maine, organized the Sept. 10 event and a week's worth of painting venues for PAPME and PAPSE.

Oil, watercolor, acrylic and pastel were the mediums represented among the 30 artists attending the Grimes Cove event.

The day of the Great Paint Out, 53 artists from all over the country, selected a spot for their easels and began recreating the scene around them on canvas.

The top reasons cited by the artists for participating in events like the Great Paint Out or the week-long event the PAPME/PAPSE group: being outdoors, camaraderie and meeting new peers, painting in beautiful locations and meeting the people who live in them.

All along the Shore Road artists were busy painting, but would stop to talk with people walking by. Easels temporarily unattended got walkers' attention, many stopping to check out and discuss the paintings in progress.

Their comments ran the gamut from “Beautiful” to “I'm not sure what they're going for with that one!”

Boothbay Harbor artist Mitch Billis had set up on Shore Road, just above the cove and was painting a scene eastward.

“There are a lot of really good painters here,” Billis said while applying white oil paint to the waves using the impasto technique. “And, it's a great excuse to get out.”

Greg Laderer, another Boothbay Harbor artist, was out on the rocks east of the cove where the ocean had begun producing some truly amazing surf.

“I try to anticipate what it'll be like when I get ready to finish, but I didn't anticipate this,” Laderer said. “It was quiet when I got here this morning, then around noon, the sea started acting up. This is unreal!”

OPA member Rich Nelson, of Tryon, North Carolina, called the experience a “pure painting retreat.”

“You come to a place so beautiful with great artists and spend the whole day painting. 'Course if the sun comes out it’s going to completely change this painting,” Nelson said, laughing.

George Hayes of Warwick, New York was participating for the first time. He completed his first sketch in the morning before the tide came in. But he admitted his composition was changing a bit.

“When I got here it was very gray, but now its changed, but the gray is coming back. It's what happens when you're plein air painting. You have a two-hour window, really,” Hayes said. “So, you just play with it. And this place is great, just beautiful. It's wonderful, great people, too.”

Peter Yesis of Searsport (also chairman of the PAPNM, the northern PAPME chapter), said one of the draws for plein air painters to Maine is that it's a “four season paradise” for artists of all disciplines.

“The water colors are so different now (compared to earlier in the day), emerald green and purplish blues, the sea is wild ... the dynamics of my painting will change because of the water,” Yesis said.

Midge Coleman of Sheepscot has been painting with the PAPME group since 2007.

“Thanks to Corinne (McIntyre), we learned where all the great spots are to paint,” Coleman said, while spritzing water on her acrylic paints. “They dry very easily out here,” she added mid-spritz, “so you have to work fast.”

Coleman was on her second painting and noted the tide had risen two feet since she arrived in the morning.

Bill Farnsworth of Venice, Florida, dared to get close to the ocean.

Farnsworth was experiencing painting Maine, for the first time. Mostly a studio painter, he said he enjoys working plein air where he creates field studies and takes photographs he takes back to the studio.

“I don't think I've ever painted a rocky coast and crashing waves before,” he yelled over the sound of the churning sea. “It's AWESOME!”

Alternatively, watercolorist Diane Dubreuil paints plein air 'almost exclusively.' She resides in New Milford, Connecticut, but summers in Monmouth.

“This is an amazingly beautiful place ... talk about energizing people to come out ... I just love it,” Dubreuil said. “Oh. My. Gosh. And this surf! Totally unexpected. The fog is great, too. It makes the colors richer and more saturated.”

Returning back to Grimes Cove, Diane Randlett of Southport was painting, a former longtime Boothbay Register reporter. Randlett was working on a piece that included Ram Island. She was in the process of ‘under painting’; after having applied her dark colors, she was building up the piece's lighter ones.

Randlett said she was more of a studio painter, but enjoys getting out for a bit of plein air when she can.

“Painting plein air helps you see quickly, and respond quickly — if you can — on the canvas,” Randlett said. “You can get the 'feel' of the painting.”