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Carolyn Jackson named her part of a co-exhibit at the Kentlands Mansion "Day Trippers," but the title has little to do with her being a Beatles fan.

"I'm pre-Beatles," she declares. "I'm Elvis era."

Instead, the artist's short excursions around the area to paint local scenes inspired the name. Following in the tradition of en plein air painters, Jackson works exclusively outdoors, and the works in the exhibit were created at locations no more than two to three hours from her Gaithersburg home.

Jackson began painting in the 1960s, but her passion for art intensified in the early 1980s when she earned an art history degree from the University of Maryland. Shortly afterward, she began taking classes at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria where she discovered en plein air. Although she works in other mediums such as printmaking, Jackson says en plein air painting is her first love.

"I enjoy seeing different locations and actually being there. It's like a mini-vacation for me," she says.

Still, certain challenging parameters are unique to the style.

"True plein air has to be completed in a couple of hours," Jackson says. "No taking it back to the studio, no touchups."

If the time crunch doesn't complicate things for an en plein air artist, then the weather can. Jackson says she works roughly from late March to early December, and refrains from painting outside during the winter. Since her work depends largely on the interplay of shadows and light, she occasionally must compensate for a cloudy day.

"Sometimes you have to manufacture the sun because you have to know where the shadow's going to fall to make it interesting," Jackson says.

Influenced by Monet and other impressionist painters, Jackson tones her canvases in cadmium before capturing scenes such as Little Quarry Road in Gaithersburg. She doesn't restrict herself to residential areas; historic sites intrigue her as well. She also paints in other parts of the country.

"The best en plein air oil painters are up in Maine. I saw more people up there painting outside," Jackson says. "Maine is the place to go."

Jackson may not be big on the Beatles, but Vian Shamounki Borchert is. Her paintings are on the second floor of the gallery, and her collection includes likenesses of John Lennon and pop-art provocateur Andy Warhol. The impact both artists continue to have on modern culture provided motivation for her to create the series.

"I'm playing with the idea of ‘You can kill the body, but you can't kill the soul,'" she says.

Borchert's work is mostly figurative, but varies in atmosphere and feel. The subdued, bluish tones encompassing the woman in "The Ideal Nose" share space with the yellow and pink spiral patterns of "Lennon's Kaleidoscope Dreams."

The focus on the human form, Borchert says, stems from her childhood. Born in Lebanon shortly before the country's civil war in the mid-1970s, Borchert says her mother's side of the family had several artists.

"I remember doing stick figures when I was 4 years old, and [then] I started doing little girls and princesses," she recalls.

Borchert's family moved to neighboring Jordan when she was a few months old and to Maryland when she was 14. She attended Quince Orchard High School and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1995 at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. Today, she teaches watercolor, drawing and acrylic painting classes at the Gaithersburg Arts Barn.

While a figurative artist at heart, Borchert occasionally paints landscapes and cityscapes. From crumbled remains in Haiti to ancient buildings in Jerusalem, she says a thread unifies her environmental paintings.

"When I do landscapes, I'm usually attracted more to the catastrophic things of nature," she says.

Cathy Abramson, the third artist featured in the exhibit, is also a figurative painter. Although she has been creating art for 35 years, Abramson is still an active student who takes classes at places like the Yellow Barn at Glen Echo and the Art League of Alexandria.

The characters from her paintings such as "Boxer," which depicts a man sitting on a stool in a ringside corner, are based on models from her classes. Initially, the model's choice attire for the class left Abramson bewildered.

"A lot of these paintings were from classes where they were in certain costumes, and some of them were ridiculous," Abramson says. "You looked at them and said, ‘What am I going to do with this? There's a guy sitting with a towel on his head.'"

With each of her models, Abramson tries to learn more about their lives. Even if there isn't much to talk about, she prefers to formulate a back story for each subject.

"I'm making a whole story about them. Who knows? Maybe they're thinking about their grocery list for all I know, and maybe I'm projecting, but I want to know and paint what makes them individuals," she says.

When not in class or at her Chevy Chase home, Abramson works as art director for the NOVA Research Company. She has been with the company for 10 years and is responsible for designing everything from logos to exhibits. The precision that comes with her graphic design work seeped into her artwork.

"It just kills me if something is not drawn properly. It may have no effect on the quality of the painting itself," Abramson says. "But, if something isn't placed exactly right when I'm making a painting, I find it very bothersome."

With recent pieces such as the bustling scene in "O'Rourke's Diner," Abramson has begun stepping out of her comfort zone by painting larger and more intricate scenes.

"I found that [to be] a really interesting challenge on that one, and there's kind of a narrative quality about that, but that's where I am now and I think I kind of broke with some of the paintings that I had done previously," Abramson says.

Although their styles and content are dramatically different, the works of Jackson, Abramson and Borchert co-exist peacefully under one roof.

tforhecz@gazette.net

The works of Carolyn Jackson, Cathy Abramson and Vian Shamounki Borchert are on display at the Kentlands Mansion, 320 Kent Square Road, Gaithersburg, through March 27. Viewing is by appointment only. Call 301-258-6394 or visit www.gaithersburgmd.gov/kentlandsmansion.