Brushing Across America: The Journey of the PAC6 Painters
Known as the PAC6 Painters (PAC6), Linda Brown, Marian Fortunati, Nita Harper, Debra Holladay, Laura Wambsgans, and Sharon Weaver have explored and documented the landscape together for the past 10 years. Dedicated to painting the beauty and grandeur of the American landscape, the Southern California-based collaborating artists share a love of the wild outdoors and painting en plein air. Following in the historic footsteps of the California Impressionists, the PAC6 creates landscapes of iconic locations from a new and contemporary perspective. The paintings not only allow viewers to visit and revisit these places, but also takes them on a journey through each artist’s individual interpretation of their experience. As Laura Wambsgans explains “Capturing the light within the landscape, nature’s palette, and the true sense of a place is our desire with each landscape painting. If we are successful, the viewer will feel the sun and wind and forget what is on the wall outside the frame.”
The group’s first trip to Canyon de Chelly in 2013 solidified their partnership and was where they dedicated themselves to creating bodies of plein air and studio work for exhibiting as a group. Armed with easels, paints, and brushes, they’ve hit the trails, explored deserts, climbed mountains, and waded in the lakes and streams.
Highlights of their trips include a pack trip by mule into the Sierras back country to Lake Ediza (and a bear that won’t forget them), jumping mules, a late-night stroll through the Silver Terrace cemetery under a full moon, forest fires, tumbles and twisted body parts, and crunched cars. Other painting expeditions include Yosemite Valley (with a snow trip planned for 2025), Carmel, Vermilion Cliffs, Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, Virginia City, and Lake Tahoe. Upcoming trips are already planned this year for June Lake, Rankin Ranch, and a fourth trip to Carmel. Linda Brown sums it up when she says, “Wandering the great outdoors and painting its beauty, from grand mountain vistas to butterfly wings, is a joy we simply could not live without.”
Regardless of the destination, at the end of each adventure the PAC6 Painters brush off their jeans, smile at each other, and proclaim “… and nobody died.”
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