Painting in the Great Outdoors
Site 13
Walking west along Art School Road opened up a number of painting sites for the art students within the boundaries of the Academy’s property and far beyond. One former student has vivid memories of wandering the countryside.
“We were outdoors as much as we could get outdoors…. We climbed all over these hills. And I remember, my box, paint box, weighed about 25 pounds: and I thought nothing of carting it around. It wasn’t the day of plastics. It was a wood box that you carried in a wood case. And you wore slacks and tucked them in your socks so that you wouldn’t get ticks….”
(Ida Geyler Tollenger, Country School, 1930-1931; interviewed April 25, 1996)
In the fall of 1930, Ida Geyler wrote glowingly to her family that she had received another good criticism from Mr. Roy Nuse. “He is trying to show me how to paint with bright color,” she said. “I had to take some of the colors like black and dark browns off of my palette and buy greens and blues and purple instead.” (Letter, August 30, 1930) Many Chester Springs students experienced a whole new way of looking at things a heightening or “keying up” of their visual sense as well as the colors on their palette.
Continue on to the cluster of houses on the left-hand side of the road.
