No rain on this plein-air parade

Phyllis Kaliher has been capturing the landscape of Southern California with a paintbrush for 30 years, but the work always seems geared for others.

“There was never a chance to paint what I wanted to paint,” said the Newport Beach resident while showing some of her paintings Sunday at the Art in the Park event at Grant Howard Park in Corona del Mar.

But now Kaliher, who taught art in Santa Monica and the Newport-Mesa school district for years, has enjoyed painting several landscapes of her choosing, from the sailboats in Newport bay to the courtyard of Rancho Los Alamitos.

And it’s the Southern California Plein Air Painters Assn., which sponsored Sunday’s display with the Newport Beach Arts Foundation, that has helped inspire her to keep busy with the brushes, she said.

Kaliher and friend Marie Taggart, whose work was also presented in the park Sunday, go out once a week to paint at designated areas where other association members have agreed to meet and paint. They’ve kept this tradition for 15 years.

“Once a week, our organization gives us a list of places to paint,” she said. “This way we don’t have to go out alone. It gets you out of the house.”

From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, 46 members of the Southern California Plein Air Painters Assn. displayed their art and worked on some landscapes of the park while waiting for questions and possibly a few sales. Best of all, though thunder showers threatened, the artists got through the day without a drop of rain.

As expected, there were veterans like Kaliher. But there was one rookie who crashed the party, though no one minded.

Prices were negotiable at 9-year-old Ben Palitzi’s booth, a collapsible children’s picnic table, where six of his paintings lay waiting for new ownership or just a chance to be seen.

Ben, the unofficial 47th presenter at the park, is not a member of the group, but that did not stop the fourth-grader from Corona del Mar from pulling up a spot next to the professionals and selling at least one piece of art during the last day of the exposition.

That piece had been sold earlier to a neighbor for $25.

The painting, an abstract and colorful close-up of a dog’s face, received more than one offer during the morning, Ben said.

Although most of the painters at the art walk, like Kaliher, exhibited years of experience and talent, Ben was not the only the novice presenter.

For San Clemente resident Tony Natali, the eight paintings he sold by lunchtime paid tribute to the effort he has put into honing his craft over the last few years.

“I was building furniture and I got to where I also wanted to paint it,” he said. “I decided I was having more fun painting than building so I just sort of expanded from there.”

Painting became a full-time gig for Natali, as he took 10 to 12 units a semester of art classes at both Saddleback and Irvine Valley colleges.

“I took this one plein-air class three times,” he said. “I don’t think I am going to get back in this year, I barely got in the class last semester.”

Natali’s friend David Evans of Lake Forest enjoys revisiting locations, or painting one location more than once in a day to demonstrate how the changes in light and color can affect the very personality of a landscape.

Two of his pieces presented on Sunday were of the same place in the Newport Upper Back Bay, painted at different times of the year, with considerable divergences in color and shading.

All of Evans’ paintings measure 11” x 14,” a size he will not exceed due to the time it takes him to capture a landscape.

“If you try to go much bigger you have a hard time finishing it,” he said. “Two hours is about all the time you have, then you starting doing a painting on top of the painting you were already working on.”

Art in the Park, which marked its second consecutive year Sunday, will be back, although not until 2008, as the group plans on making this an every-other-year event, said arts foundation President Lila Crespin. dpt-24-art-1-cw-CPhotoInfoHO1T7RQ220060724j2votqncCredit: CHRISTOPHER WAGNER / DAILY PILOT Caption: (LA)Artist Steve Kell of Laguna Niguel puts the final touches on his painting “Grace in Shadow” at the Art in the Park Fair at Grant Howard Park on Sunday. dpt-24-art-2-cw-BPhotoInfoHO1T7SCT20060724j2vou4ncCredit: CHRISTOPHER WAGNER / DAILY PILOT Caption: (LA)Kevin Davidson of Orange paints “A View from Las Brisas” at the Art in the Park Fair at Grant Howard Park.