Innholdsfortegnelse for August/September 2024 i PleinAir Magazine

Widowed with two young children, Julie Hart Beers (American, 1835–1913) began painting at the age of 22 to support her family through the sale of her landscapes. Although her brothers, well-known artists James and William Hart, discouraged her from engaging in physically demanding plein air work, she took up the challenge, writing that she “tramped on after them many a weary mile through mud and wet.” The trio spent their summers sketching in graphite, chalk, and oil in the Hudson Valley and throughout New England. Beers used her on-the-spot nature studies, including Summer Woodlands, as inspiration for finished studio oils and developed a reputation for painting intimate forest interiors. Quiet and contemplative, these vertical landscapes often feature small bodies of water, bold lighting effects, and pains-takingly detailed depictions of foliage.…

Pastel is having a moment in the plein air world, as was evident at the recent Plein Air Convention & Expo in the magnificent Smoky Mountains. The all-star faculty lineup of some of today's best pastel artists demonstrated the powerful possibilities of pastel for plein air work, both on site at the designated paint-outs and during indoor tutorials. Preferring the ease of pastel for his plein air work, the revered Albert Handell astonished the audience with his masterful rendering of an abstracted rocky crag. And Jacob Aguiar enlightened them with his use of alcohol to prepare his surface for the color layering used to render a mountain vista. Pastel has long been used by plein air artists to capture the shifting touches of light that enliven a rural or city…

In the fishing village of Newlyn Harbor, which rests in the United Kingdom county of Cornwall, Clare Bowen is hard at work applying oil to canvas. Her home studio sits against a hillside, with access to a view that features the harbor itself. The ever-changing light that she feels privileged to witness continually feeds her creative mechanism. As a painter raised on the shores of Hayling Island off the south coast of England, her current home feeds a love of water that has always been part of her makeup. “When I was very small, my dad had a boat, and we were always doing water stuff,” Bowen says. “I windsurfed, water-skied, and swam. I did anything as a water baby.” Her family regularly spent time in Portugal while on holiday,…

STEP 1 For this demo, Hillkurtz painted a cafe located down the street from where he lives in Paris. “One morning the light was hitting just right, and the scene had everything I love about cityscapes — incredible light and shadow, and activity,” he says. “There was a hint of the city just waking up.” The artist started with a graphite sketch, then put down washes of color with a big mop brush, letting the colors blend into each other. “I laid it down pretty quickly with a lot of water,” he explains. “I go in pretty strong, but the colors mellow out as they dry. I go for a lot of life and spontaneity in the underpainting so that everything I put on top of it builds on that…

APRIL APRIL “BEST OF” CATEGORY AWARDS The 14th annual PleinAir Salon consists of 12 monthly contests from April 2024 to March 2025. The awards will be presented in May 2025 at the Plein Air Convention & Expo, in Lake Tahoe and Reno, Nevada. Winners of each monthly contest are automatically entered into the annual competition. First prize in the annual Salon is $15,000 cash and the publication of the winning image on the cover of PleinAir Magazine, along with a feature story. Second Place earns an artist $3,000 and an article in the digital edition of PleinAir Magazine. Third Place yields $2,000 in cash, with three Honorable Mentions taking home $700 each and a People's Choice Award garnering $500. Four Best Medium Awards for acrylic, oil, pastel, and watercolor are…

E-mail: bericrhoads@gmail.com Phone: 512.607.6423 Facebook: /ericrhoads Instagram: @ericrhoads X: @ericrhoads Is there a plein air season? Is it the summer months, and the milder seasons of spring and fall? If so, we're already close to our peak season now, and before long we'll be fighting cold, ice, and snow in what some would call “studio season.” Of course, some of us are fair-weather painters who prefer not to endure the summer's extreme heat, or spring's early bug and allergy season, or even spring storms. Yet others decide to brave the difficult conditions, and are often rewarded with atmosphere that makes for better paintings. During my spring artists' retreat, Paint Adirondacks, we were hit with two days of rain and storms. Yet I encouraged our 91 attendees, who included many people…

13TH ANNUAL To cap offan action-packed opening night at this year's Plein Air Convention & Expo in the Great Smoky Mountains, winners of the 13th Annual Plein-Air Salon were announced live from the stage. In an instant, Camille Przewodek found herself $15,000 richer as her painting Sonoma Farm Vista was awarded Grand Prize. “I paint the same locations over and over again,” says Przewodek. “Every time I return to a spot, I learn more about the subject and the environment, and I come away with something different. I made this piece in Petaluma, California, my favorite painting spot. Looking down from a hilltop, I can turn in almost any direction and give my work a unique viewpoint.” On entering art competitions, she advises: “You don't have to wait for a…

Primarily an ode to men and their pursuits, much of Western art relegates women to the role of mother, or simply a pretty face. But this summer, Cowgirl Artists of America and A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art present an exhibition that challenges those views. Through the hands of female artists and makers, “Women's Work” brings together selected artists with women on working ranches. Given unique access to gather reference materials on site, the artists are able to expand the Western art catalog to include a more realistic portrayal of women and their varied roles in the American West. The exhibition also provides a platform for indigenous women to tell their own stories in a variety of traditional arts and crafts. For this issue, I had the opportunity to catch…

kelly@pleinairmagazine.com outdoorpainter.com facebook.com/pleinairmagazine twitter.com/pleinairmag Instagram.com/pleinairmag In May, I participated in my fifth Plein Air Convention & Expo, held for the first time east of the Mississippi, in the Great Smoky Mountains. For those accustomed to Western landscapes, the lush greens of the Smokies no doubt provided a stunning, albeit challenging, subject. For this Kentucky girl, they made me feel right at home. Shortly after this issue goes to press, I'll be packing up the family and heading further south for a beach getaway. Even if you're no longer bound to school schedules when it comes to planning vacations, maybe you're preparing for an adventure of your own. After all, summer is the season for travel. And perhaps no one knows better the joys of exploring unfamiliar landscapes than the plein…

Despite the tenacity of the starving-artist cliché, many working artists actually lead charmed lives, residing and painting in some of the most beautiful places on earth. It's hard to argue with how Winslow Homer, for one, conducted his life, summering in Maine and wintering in Cuba. I submit that watercolorist Alex Hillkurtz certainly qualifies as another artist who has found ways to live well. Following a successful career in Hollywood as a storyboard artist, he moved to Paris with his wife. “We have lived in Paris for 10 years now,” he says. “I fell in love with the architecture here. Everything is spectacular and beautiful.” With so much gorgeous subject matter at his disposal, Hillkurtz favors cityscapes, but also ventures outdoors to paint the landscape. And in the city's parks,…