The Artist's Road Painting the World's Beautiful Places

Travel to Paint

Perspectives from The Artist’s Road

Photograph courtesy Ladew Gardens

   Today, I am painting and demonstrating gouache techniques at Ladew Gardens in Monkton, Maryland, as part of the Maryland Center for the Arts 10th Annual Plein Air Festival. Ladew is famous for its topiary displays, among many other wonderful features and gardens. Tomorrow, I will be judging the 150 submissions of the 30 artists who made it through the initial jurying process earlier, and who have been painting around Harford County, Maryland, since the beginning of July. I am honored to have been selected for this important task as I know very well how much blood, sweat and tears the artists have poured into their works. I will be posting images on The Artist’s Road FaceBook page as well as my own, so tune in and see some of the extraordinary locations we will be painting over the next few days and some of the artists’ works.

   The Ladew Topiary Garden does have some extraordinary topiaries, but it is much more than that. From Wikipedia:  “The grounds contain 15 garden rooms, each devoted to a single color, plant or theme, arranged around two cross axes with vistas. The axes meet in an oval pool. The garden is particularly noted for its topiary, which was strongly influenced by Ladew's extensive travel in England, where he frequently went fox hunting. Ladew designed topiaries depicting a fox hunt with horses, riders, dogs, and foxes clearing a hedge, a Chinese junk with sails, swans, and a giraffe, among others. It was proclaimed an "exquisite garden estate" by The New York Times. The Garden Club of America has described it as "the most outstanding topiary garden in America." The grounds also contain a 1.5-mile nature walk.”

   Painting in beautiful gardens is a dovetailed collaboration between the artist and the original and subsequent garden designers. The designers have laid out the canvas with the “bones” or composition of the garden, a living work of art, subject to changes of light daily, color seasonally, growth and decline. The exuberant flowers and colors of Spring have now given way to the mature, structural foliage of late Summer at Ladew. This is a great time to be collaborating in the  formal gardens of Ladew.

   John

Swans Along the Great Bowl
Photograph courtesy Ladew Gardens