Note: If you already think that plein air painting is painting a scene in the outdoors while outdoors, then you can skip this post. At first look, it would seem that the answer to the question “What is plein air?” would be as obvious as the answer to the question “What is cooking?” but it is not so obvious to everyone. In fact, there seems to be some confusion about it. But let’s put the plein air question aside for a moment and ask “what is cooking?” and see if there is a clue in that question to the truth […]
Don’t Come Too Close
Best to just hunker down and keep your distance.
The Fall of Gods
This is a digital collage made using text prompts in an AI image generator. It was then collaged in Photoshop from several images. It was further painted and filtered in PS. All of this was an exploration of AI.
The Untitled Masterpiece
It’s not that titles are bad per se. It’s the thinking behind them that makes it cringe-worthy.
Untitled #22 (Strong Box)
“Untitled #22” (Strong Box 22), digital collage
Never Too Late for Elegance
Begin now, wherever and whenever you are. Begin to create elegance. Begin to spread it. To seek it out. To bring it to life. Begin to show it. Begin to be elegant.
Trailer Trashed
I slept in a cupboard. My parents made me sleep in a cupboard. That’s how I have always remembered life in the trailer in Anchorage, Alaska. At bedtime, I was ordered into the padded shelf and they slid the plywood sliding doors closed and I was enclosed in a small space. I felt trapped and panicky. Sometime after I finally fell asleep the nightmares would begin. It was always the same dream, abstract shapes before my eyes constantly changing. The shapes were geometric, meaningless, and in perpetual motion, a square turning into a circle, pierced by a jagged yellow arrow […]
Introducing La Pintura
After such gloomy posts about the death of the plein air movement, I thought long and hard about a solution; it seems like complaining without offering a solution is wrong. So I spent months ruminating over the issue and began developing a new concept for plein air competitions. It is a concept I call “La Pintura”, a new way of creating and running plein air competitions that reduces the negative effect of market forces and puts the plein air artist at the center of all considerations. You can read the full details on the website where I have posted a […]
Why the Plein Air Movement is Dead, Part One
Original Vision “Sometimes people want to know if the paintings are for sale. They are not. And I don’t have any plans to sell or exhibit or take commissions…” —Spring 2001, from a note to my father about recent plein air work Background First If this essay were a painting that I was about to paint on location, I would wash the canvas with a thin layer of burnt sienna, or yellow ochre, or a neutral light gray. Not all artists do this, but I find that when a bit of the canvas shows through it creates an overall tone […]
Why the Plein Air Movement is Dead, Part Two
Savage Grace “I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” —Vincent Van Gogh Decisions One, abandon all work in anything but oils. Two, spend at least two years sketching the landscape before attempting to paint it. Three, move to California. After reading an article, in the early 90s, about something called “plein air”, and deciding that plein air was the direction I would take, these were the three decisions I made…and kept. Embodied in those two words, plein air, I saw artistic challenge, physical, mental, and spiritual challenge, and a fiercely […]