Paddling and painting Southwest Florida waters

Sometimes Plan B works out best.

Jeanette Chupack’s love of windsurfing took a turn when the Vermonterturned Southwest Floridian realized her husband, Steve, literally wouldn’t get on board. He sat on shore and read.

So she switched to kayaking on New England lakes, and her husband joined her. It was a good distraction from her passion and profession — painting still-life acrylics and teaching college art classes.

When the couple retired to Cape Coral in 2003, the paints

and kayaks came, too. Ms. Chupack realized she wanted to spend more time outdoors rather than sitting by a window painting, so she hatched a new way of doing art.

Today, the Chupacks paddle creeks, rivers and bays, digitally photographing scenes that Ms. Chupack later sketches and paints. Her pieces, which can be viewed at www.jchupackart.com, sell for $800 to $7,000 around Florida.

CHUPACK Recent national recognition shows Plan B was a good one.

She is featured in an eight-page article in American Artist magazine’s January issue, and she won first place in the acrylic division of the revered Utrecht 60th Anniversary Juried Art Competition. The national contest attracted 12,000 entries.

Her winning painting invites the viewer to a river’s bend with lanky palms, reflective water and — of course — kayakers.

“It’s different from a lot of Florida artists,” said Ms. Chupack, 66. “It’s not very decorative. It’s very realistic. The kayaks give the painting a kind of focus and reason for being there on the water.”

Winning the contest and being featured in an article by American Artist’s editor in chief, M. Stephen Doherty, gives Chupack a focus, too. She’s finally hitting her stride artistically in the environment she adores. It took her “a couple of years to adjust to the landscapes she observed while kayaking along the waterways near her home,” Mr. Doherty writes in his article’s opening.

Rounding the Bend by Jeanette Chupack COURTESY PHOTO Why? Florida’s flat, jammed with wildlife and sub-tropical plants, and saturated with moist atmosphere during most of the year, Ms. Chupack said. It changed how she viewed composition — the elements of spaces and vegetation.

She always takes her waterproof Pentax camera, whether paddling with Mr. Chupack, to whom she’s been married 43 years, or with one of her kayak clubs — the Southwest Florida Paddling Club and the Paradise Coast Paddlers.

When back home, she goes upstairs to her studio, which is strewn with reference books such as “Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds.” The images go into the computer and then are projected onto the wall.

There, she sees a “densely compacted display of repeated colors, shapes and patterns.” She may take elements from a half-dozen pictures before creating a painting. She details how she handles her acrylics and canvases in the American Artist article.

Sometimes, though, the complexity comes in just capturing the images while on the water. “You have to be quick because you’re moving, and you have to be aware — maybe you’re paying attention to a wood stork when an alligator comes toward you,” she said. “It’s hard when you’re in a kayak to come up with composition.”

Yet, she excels.

Ms. Chupack won the 2008 Calusa Blueway Paddling Festival photo contest, and her winning picture is featured in the popular kayaking calendar, Paddling. net, as the month of July for 2010. The accolades for the painting, though, are more meaningful to Ms. Chupack, who holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts.

“To get into a national magazine and be written about by the editor in chief, who is also an artist, is great. I’m thrilled. Delighted.”

To be able to fuse her passion for painting and kayaking is “a good thing.”

“I wasn’t very good at windsurfing anyway,” she said.

— Betsy Clayton is a freelancer based on Pine Island and also is Lee County Parks & Recreation’s waterways coordinator. Contact her at boatingbybetsy@ yahoo.com

if you go

>> Acrylic painter Jeanette Chupack’s favorite

paddling spots:

 >> CHARLOTTE: Alligator Creek (Punta

Gorda), Hogan Key (Placida) >> COLLIER: Pavilion Key (Ten Thousand Islands), Rookery Bay (Naples, Marco) >> LEE: Telegraph Creek, Hickey’s Creek (both east Lee County) >> ELSEWHERE: Hillsborough River, Tampa (location of winning acrylic painting)