EASTON -- It has been 18 years since they first traveled to a cottage in Tylerton on Smith Island to paint together, 18 years since they first felt that undeniable chemistry, 18 years since they dubbed themselves the "Traveling Brushes."
All "women of a certain age" -- 61 to 80 years old, they'll admit after a little prodding -- the self-described sorority has weathered everything from the loss of spouses to cancer to the inevitable march of time.
Serious painters whose work sells for thousands of dollars, they have painted together outdoors, "en plein air," throughout the country.
The Brushes -- Mary Ekroos, Martha Hudson, Barbara Jablin, Roberta "Bobbie" Seger and M. Joyce Zeigler -- have logged about 50 trips to places as near as the Chesapeake Bay island where they started to as far as Colorado and Nantucket.
"All I was thinking at the time was that it seemed like a great excuse to travel and paint," says Seger, 71. "I don't think any of us ever imagined that it would take on a life of its own."
Individually, they have earned reputations as professionals and become mainstays of juried art shows and galleries on the Eastern Shore. As a group, they have come to enjoy a measure of regional fame. They were the subject of a documentary film a few years ago, and a feature story on them will appear in January in American Artist magazine.
"Please, let's get away from the Wednesday art league kind of thing," says the 80-year-old Hudson, who sold her first painting at age 12 and studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art. "All of us could write a book about all the dumb things people have said to us about being weekend or hobby painters."
Before Hudson organized the Smith Island trip, the six original Brushes knew each other from various shows and classes they had taught at the Academy of the Arts in Easton, a cultural hub in the Upper Shore area.
"Martha Hudson has been good for what seems like 100 years, and Mary Ekroos was making a living long before the Brushes," says Dorothy F. Newland, a painter and co-owner of an Easton art gallery.
The five Brushes say they knew they had hit upon something unusual on that first trip. (The group becomes six when member emeritus Elizabeth R. Ruhl is included. She left the Shore for Wyoming a few years ago, but she frequently travels with the group.)
Painting and swatting horseflies and mosquitoes in the Smith Island marsh by day, they quickly developed a Brushes tradition, mincing few words during reviews of their work each evening -- "critiques by wine," Seger says.
That set the tone, they agree, for friendships that have deepened. And it enriched their work in ways they never expected.
"We're starting our 19th year together now, and I think we've grown to be more like sisters," says Ekroos, at 61 the youngest member. "We've gotten more philosophical over the years, more likely to talk in depth about our feelings. We've all absorbed the things that life has to teach, and you can really see that as the art has grown and changed."
The group has thrived, the Brushes say, because they have no agenda and no boss -- although all acknowledge Zeigler maintains some amount of order by keeping records of their various ventures.
"There's no one in authority, no president, no officers," says Jablin, a former graphic artist and courtroom artist who met Hudson when both were students at Maryland Institute. "It seems to be self-perpetuating."
With a biennial show this weekend at the Oxford Community Center that has become an Eastern Shore showcase, they see little reason for slowing down.
"Somehow, I imagined that as we got older, there'd be fewer things distracting us," says Seger, an avid golfer and gardener. "But I'm as busy as I've ever been, as busy as I want to be."
The women say their identity as a group continues to separate them from other area painters.
"In 18 or 19 years, you're bound to go through a lot of life," Ekroos says. "It's a unique friendship, a unique professional relationship. What's wonderful about our sharing is that we all have our own lives."
Gathered this week at Seger's studio outside Easton, they are reminiscing, laughing, planning their next project -- workshops in which each painter will take on five or six students.
They would like to organize a painting jaunt across Europe with a nod to Monet and the other great Impressionists who have influenced them.
"Before it's all over, I'd love to go paint together in Europe," says Jablin, who will turn 80 on Christmas Day. "If we do it, I'm going to wear a big hat and a Victorian dress. And we're all going to smoke cigarettes in long holders."