continued from page 9
Mary Baxter’s paintings were also part of the
2010 Contemporary Artists Series at the
Midland Museum of the Southwest’s Here and
Now Gallery.
Wendy Lynn Wright, who lives at Casa
Piedra some 45 miles south of Marfa, occasion-
ally does her watercolors en plein air but usual-
ly works from photos “to avoid dust and
extreme weather.”
A native of Syracuse, N. Y., Wendy formerly
worked in advertising in Kerrville, and came to
Chinati Hot Springs, 54 miles below Marfa, in
2000. There she worked on building up the Hot
Springs clientele and then moved to Marfa in
2003, working at the Holiday Capri before it
closed and then at the Marfa Studio of Arts.
Now she says her adobe casita and studio at
Casa Piedra “is truly home... artesian water,
trees, a lawn and garden. The landscape is
always fresh and new, the light in fall... April has
beautiful light. I love the skies, the clouds, the
colors they hold.”
The first solo show of her watercolors was at
the Hotel Paisano in Marfa in June 2011. To
take preparatory photos for the watercolors, she
made several trips down FM 2810/Pinto
Canyon Road. “I took pictures every three miles,
and chose to paint the strongest 14 images. Mile
Zero offered one major variation to my work:
buildings, not just landscape. This got me think-
ing about painting simple, lovely casitas.”
For her next show, she plans to do a series
from Boquillas, just across from Big Bend
National Park, an area many tourists are eager
to explore again since the Boquillas crossing
recently re-opened after a decade when visitors
could not cross into Mexico.
“I’m happy because I’ve found home – light
and space feeds an artist's soul,” Wendy said.
Her watercolors can be seen at her website
(www.WendyLynnWright.com
Mimi Litschauer is a name well known to the
cognoscenti of plein air painting in the Big
Bend. Mimi, a native of Wisconsin, has written
about her discovery of art: “I spent all of high
school in the art room. I flunked algebra and
took a summer drawing workshop. One winter
I stood under the white tree holding the screech-
ing owl. And that was it -- I was an outdoor
landscape painter.”
Mimi also wrote: “I believe everyone needs
art in their life -- not because I think so, but
because it’s what’s good for us. And I believe in
starting with a strong idea but being open and
anxious for ‘happy accidents.’ I hike the desert
and paint its moods in a series of happy acci-
dents.” Mimi died earlier this year.
“The biggest joy Mimi ever had was to get
outside and paint in nature,” said Garland
Weeks, a sculptor from Lubbock, TX and a
close friend. “Her real job was being out in the
elements, rough and rugged. If that’s where she
saw her painting, she went and stayed as long as
it took. She was proud of her self-reliance, she
loved going into the Big Bend, she found a niche
she really fit into.
“If the weather turned bad, she’d just get in
the front seat of her van and paint looking
through the window,” Garland recalled. “One
time she took off to the Four Corners area -- she
was gone 21 days and came home with 53
paintings. She was doing what she wanted to do,
time and effort meant absolutely nothing.
“She loved going into Big Bend, to the park.
The longer she was there, the more people she
met; she was able to get on private ranches and
paint scenes that no one would know of if you
weren’t on that ranch.
“She never wanted to impose on anybody,
she was truly independent. It was to her own
detriment at times, sometimes it’s nice to let
them help,” he added.
Marci Roberts, Mimi's friend, said a new
website and online sketching workshop are
being planned. Bruce Blakemore and Marshall
Miller, Big Bend ranchers and owners of Mimi
Litschauer works, have also established an art
scholarship in her name. Information about
these projects can be obtained by contacting
Marci at marciroberts@meodesign.com.
For more information about Plein-Air painting, go to
Plein-Air Painters of America at www.p-a-p-a.org.
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