Assateague Island gets its first resident artist

Grays, browns, yellows, greens and a touch of blue.

Bit by bit, the paint on Karen McLain's canvas formed a common scene on Assateague Island, a horse grazing by the roadside.

As visitors pulled over to snap photos of the horse, McLain was busy painting a field study — a rough painting to be used as a guide later. In the first two minutes she made a yellow outline of the horse and landscape. The next five minutes she painted the white and brown color of the horse's hide. The last nine minutes or so were spent roughly painting the horse's surroundings, from a sharp gray roadway to grass and dark green bushes.

It's an important scene for the landscape. Stopping on the roadside to see the horses may be the only thing some visitors do, McLain said.

McLain is an artist who specializes in painting horses, and after reaching out to the park service and the Assateague Island Alliance, she is now the island's first resident artist. She'll be at the island doing plein air field studies through Nov. 8.

When she returns to her studio in Arizona she will create more complete paintings of the horses, filling in the details by referencing photos she has taken. But the field studies she is currently painting on the island, though rough, help her remember the intangible moments of being near the herd.

"I'm trying to remember what it felt like," she said.

McLain spends her summers traveling around the West with a vintage trailer, finding herds to paint. This fall she got an opportunity to travel to Maryland for a two-week residency at the island.

Her experiences out West are very different than what she has seen on Assateague so far. For one, the horses are shorter, with round bellies from eating salty grass. The horses are also desensitized to people, and don't mind coming within a foot or so of her while she is painting.

There is, of course, different scenery and wildlife to paint surrounding them. Even the air is different, she said.

"The mist has really made it, in a lot of ways, a lot softer," she said, talking about her paintings.

Earlier in the day on the Life of the Forest Trail, McLain was painting a band of horses out in the marsh. When she began painting, the band was right in front of the lifted walkway, but with time the horses drifted away.

"Not only am I painting a landscape with the sun moving and the light changing, I'm painting something that moves within that," McLain said. "There's an extra amount of challenge there."

But it's fun, she said. She is always learning something about the animals and the environment, she said.

"I like learning what their patterns are, where they go, why they do that. Weather transitions, time of day transitions," she said.

She packs her gear without things such as plastic bags and paper towels, to help reduce her impact on the environment.

"When I'm out painting I don't really want them to watch me, I want to watch them being them," she said.

And she enjoys the in-the-moment nature of painting outdoors, she said. She paints on a tripod, designed so that she can pick up the canvas and move away if the horses get too close.

"At home I can go in and I can sit down and rest, but out here I either get it or I don't get it," she said. "Not all of them have worked out, and that's okay too. You always learn something."

She has also partnered with the Assateague Island Alliance to teach two classes, and will also donate a painting to them when she's done.

rpacella@dmg.gannett.com

443-210-8126

On Twitter @rachaelpacella