Local Artist Finally Pursues Dream

WHAT: "Landscapes and Seascapes"

WHAT IS IT: An exhibit by Carol Plumb

WHERE: Galeria 409

409 E. 13th St.

Brownsville, Texas

WHEN: Sept. 3–27

HOURS: Wed.–Sat. Noon–5 p.m.

The last day of the exhibit, Sept. 27, Galeria 409 will be open from noon–10 p.m.

with Noche de Peña concluding the night.

LAGUNA VISTA — Willowy grass billows in the wind while shadowy water birds coast through the blue shallows.

Another painting by Carol Plumb in her exhibit "Landscapes and Seascapes" at Galeria 409 depicts a lone blue car with eerie headlights cutting the evening air. A towering twilight sky rises above, layered with cobalt, pink and gray blue.

"That’s my car," said Plumb with a laugh.

"I walked into the field," recalled Plumb, 53. "I was taking that photograph." She gestured toward the opposite wall at a painting called "Bahia Grande Sunset" with patterns of light and dark blue spreading toward a distant strip of land. Hues of orange and gold seem to flutter in the evening sky.

"I was taking that photo and then walked back to the car and saw it beneath a pink sky," she said. "I took a picture and always loved it."

Plumb, who lives in The Village in Laguna Vista, has only been painting in oils for about a year and a half. Prior to that, she worked in pastels, watercolors and acrylics while studying at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in the 1970s. After college, however, she never pursued the arts as a career or hobby. Her art waited for many years before finally emerging.

While living in Vermont for 20 years, she did earn a certification to teach high school art. She said she taught workshops and summer camps but never took a regular teaching position, although she did substitute teach. She and her husband moved to the Rio Grande Valley four years ago where her parents have spent several seasons as Winter Texans.

"I took Mark Clark’s drawing class at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art," she said. "I told Mark I’d always wanted to paint in oils, and I just never really got a chance because I was always working. I worked as a printer and a photo lab technician, and you know I got into technologies of art and I was making a living."

Mark Clark is the owner of Galeria 409. He invited Plumb to paint with him in his studio Monday afternoons, and the tutelage paid off. Since her show opened Sept. 3, she’s sold five paintings, each worth several hundred dollars. One of those paintings depicts the Queen Isabella Memorial Bridge sweeping in a gentle arch toward South Padre Island. Street lamps along its railing cast golden shadows across the dark rippling water, contrasting with the undulating bands of gray and blue in the sky.

"I wanted to go for something very exciting and dramatic," she said. "I just wanted to experiment with some really bold composition, also. I’ve been influenced by (Claude) Monet, (Vincent) Van Gogh, (Georgia) O’Keefe and (Edward) Hopper. I like all those people that just take a big bold approach to landscape and hopefully you can offer something interesting and different."

Although she does draw influences from other artists, she acknowledges the importance of every artist discovering his or her own voice. Her paintings reveal a number of techniques. Some clouds, like those in "Peach Sunset at Bahia Grande," are very stylized, rather like bubbles, while those in "Queen Isabella Causeway" present a mysterious and eerie quality. In "Padre Island Gulls" the white clouds dissolve into the blue sky, but in "Submerged Fence Bahia Grande" the clouds loom white and puffy.

"When I started painting, I painted realism," she said. "I wanted to experiment with different types of landscapes, and I wanted to express more in abstraction."

Plumb’s exhibit will be on display at Galeria 409 until Sept. 27.