FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

En Plein Air art competition at Shadows on the Teche

Local artists, Colleen Shannon and Zora “Becky” Bergeron, recently swept the En Plein Air art competition at the Shadows on the Teche in New Iberia. Shannon received 1st and 3rd place while tying with Bergeron for 2nd place in the contest. The annual event gives artists a 6 week pass to the grounds of the historic mansion so that they can paint on location. En plein air is a French expression which means "in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors. French Impressionist painters such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir advocated en plein air painting, and much of their work was done outdoors.

Shannon and Bergeron traveled to New Iberia to paint on weekends during the 6-week period. As friends and artists they thought it would be good incentive to enter this competition since they had a larger goal that they were working toward this spring. They are presently putting the finishing touches on a show that they have worked on for 6 months called “The Magic Paintbrush”. The show is a 100 painting journey that these artists challenged themselves to do during the Judi Betts watercolor workshop at the Artists Guild’s Everett Street Art Gallery in Morgan City this past January. During the workshop Betts sold a paintbrush to them with a guarantee. The Betts guarantee is that, “You will do award winning paintings with this brush. But first you must use this brush to paint 100 paintings.” Taking the guarantee literally Shannon and Bergeron wanted to see the results of their own personal art work after painting 100 works with just one brush. The En Plein Air competition was the first art contest that they entered since they started the challenge. The results seem to indicate that they are already winning awards with their paintbrush. The public is invited to see all of the 200 paintings in a show at the Everett Street Gallery. Their works will be on display and open to visitors from July 17th to August 22nd.

###

Contact:
Colleen Shannon
Shannon Design
618 Front St.
Morgan City, LA 70380
Phone: 985.702.1618