Painters in the Park’ Find Beauty in October Foliage

MAPLEWOOd, NJ - October 19th, painters from Maplewood, both professional and amateur, met in Memorial Park to take advantage of the beautiful weather and fall foliage. Artists used both watercolor and acrylic in the style of ‘en plein air’, or landscape painting in the open air. The painters were scattered across the sprawling park, sitting just off the path with an easel and flag to mark their spot, each of them giving life to an open field, a cluster of trees, or a lotus blossom drifting in the river.

“My original intention was to paint a lotus flower, but then it kind of turned into this depiction of violence through beauty,” said Anastasia Patti Aquino, gesturing to her work with hands stained by crimson paint. Aquino and Jude Pingree, who came together, are both students at Columbia High School and two of the youngest in attendance. “That means you’re a real painter,” commented retired resident Arlene Hirst, motioning at Aquino’s paint-stained hands.

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Hirst is one of the local artists to be featured in the upcoming Studio Tour Soma, an art exposition diffused to different locations all over Maplewood and South Orange. “I’d probably say about half of the people that are in this are also in the studio tour,” said Hirst. “It’s a very culturally blessed town.”

Painters in the Parks is sponsored by the Memorial Park Conservancy and organized by Elaine Wladyga, who has been living in Maplewood for 42 years. “I’ve been painting all my life, just out of my own pleasure, but I retired three years ago,” said Wladyga. “And I always wanted to do it - my husband encouraged me, he goes ‘Why don’t you try painting, you’re a really good painter’, so I took a class and from there, I just started. This has become, you know, everything.”

Philip VanDusen, a ten-year Maplewood resident who has a masters’ degree in painting and did commercial art for thirty years, was drawn to the pedestrian bridge by the duck pond, which was recently reopened. “I love the river and the fact that you’re getting reflections of the fall colors in the water of the river, and the pedestrian bridge makes this nice little arc of a shape through what is a much more natural scene, and I also really like how the canal is dug through the ground so that creates a really nice kind of visual element that leads you through the painting.”

In the casual, all-are-welcome spirit of Painters in the Park, VanDusen put it simply: “The bridge has been closed for forever, and it’s just nice that it’s open and the fall colors are absolutely spectacular, and I’m just doing some plein air painting.”

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