Jeremy Lipking and Logan Hagege

"Impressionist landscape painters are drawn to the beauty of light falling across the landscape. Their avowed intent is to capture that impression in the two-dimensional plane of the canvas. We live at a time when this art of seeing and recording the look of nature is widely practiced and has been brought to an extraordinarily high level of excellence. Since the 19th century, Cape Cod had been a center for plein air painting because of the special quality of its light and the sculptural aspects of its landscape. It is a rare treat to be able to see the work of an internationally trained group of impressionist painters focused on one of the other amazing regions of the world. We will see the reality of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, presented through the filter of the artist's eye—some things familiar and some things arrestingly novel—and thus be able to vicariously experience the place.

We are fortunate to be able to work with the Addison Art Gallery in presenting this exhibition which represents a local painting tradition in a much larger context."

— Elizabeth Ives Hunter, Executive Director, Cape Cod Museum of Art

Jeff Bonasia

Once again, the Addison Art Gallery has the privilege of presenting the work of internationally renowned painters to art lovers on Cape Cod. These accomplished artists have created inspired interpretations of subjects ranging from sun-soaked portraits and town vignettes to sweeping landscapes. Together in exhibition, these diverse incarnations offer the viewer an integrated sense of a magical place, its people and their lives.

“Our trip to San Miguel de Allende was an exquisite painting adventure. After landing in León, Guanajuato, and crossing miles of barren desert, San Miguel emerges from the empty landscape like an oasis, modern yet partly trapped in a time hundreds of years old. The cobblestone streets and the red, orange and ochre stucco buildings are so different from the landscape we are used to. It was a visual barrage of creative stimulation.

The people we met there were very friendly and good to us. We couldn't have felt more at home, unless of course more of us had been able to speak the language. Despite the cultural and language divide we were still able to connect with the welcoming people.

It's always great to get together with painting friends and also terrific to meet some new ones. The creative energy was palpable as the artists started arriving, equipment was unloaded and we headed off into town. Each day the wet paintings mounted exponentially as we brought home our newest work. The evenings were spent trading stories of our conquests — best places to paint and interesting people we had met, as well as where to buy the best cowboy hats, cigars and street tacos. One night, while some were playing pool and drinking tequila (a nightly ritual), others had a conversation that went on for close to three hours about the direction of fine art yesterday and today, and where it will be going to tomorrow. Why the term "contemporary art" is used for forty-year-old paintings and what we and our contemporaries can do to influence the direction fine art will take into the 21st century.

It was an exhausting, exhilarating 'round the clock whirlwind of creativity. It was truly a privilege to be living and working with some of the most talented painters of our time. As we each painted our own work, we kept an eye on what was happening on the easels around us. We could observe the varying approaches and see the different results in the finished work and talk about those results. It was great fun as much as it was hard work. And although we span a spectrum of ages and development of our careers, while we were together we were like equals. Just friends doing what we like to do — paint.”
— Paul Schulenburg

“It was an extraordinary trip...

It was absolutely enormous experience...it shook me to the ground depths...I suspected something of that nature after my first brief encounter with Mexico in Ensenada...but nothing of this magnitude...What true to the core, solid and grounded characters...still somehow untouched by the all-avergizing militant consumerism of empty can worshipers…

Everything that a spirit of camaraderie among some of today’s most dedicated realist artists and our joint cultural insurgency in name of true Art is all about - represented for me right there.

Mexico...what a mythic land of so real people and so true characters...humble without subservience, proud without arrogance...how much we've lost in a name of "consumer."

Traveling together in a great gang is inspiring and a highly concentrated mixture of tequila and talent is …well a recipe for enormous fun…boy wasn’t memorable!!!!!!! Midnight taco stand trips, all the great times in our humble 20,000 sq ft “casa”, ... to set up to paint in a middle of the night in the middle of traffic at the bustling intersection or really do setting up to paint mariachis in the middle of the night.” —Alxey Steele

“It wasn’t all laughs. A lot of work was done, and conversations about painting that lasted late into the night. That is the thing about getting a bunch of painters together: Everything is somehow about painting.”   —Peter Kalill

"We had so much fun painting together that at the end of the trip
nobody wanted to go back home."— Ignat Ignatov