Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2024 i PleinAir Magazine

Inspired in part by the Impressionist works of his friend Claude Monet, the American expatriate John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) experimented with portrait compositions whose informality and naturalness stood in sharp contrast to his commissioned studio portraits of elegant society types. In this piece, Sargent’s subjects were French painter Paul Helleu and his wife, Alice, who visited the artist at Fladbury, in England’s Cotswolds, where he was spending the summer of 1889. Liberated from strict pictorial conventions, Sargent featured the compositional asymmetry, natural light, and casual inattention of his “sitters” in this plein air painting about the act of plein air painting. See how Sargent carefully records the precise pose of Paul’s hand and his intense concentration as he applies paint to his canvas. Nearby, Alice appears listless as she gazes…

Whether you are a seasoned plein air painter or a novice, it is often daunting to tackle new terrain. To make your experience more enjoyable, we’ve compiled this Essential Guide to Outdoor Painting: Tips from the Top. You will find this go-to guide indispensable while planning your next plein air excursion! On the following pages, we’ve solicited advice from seasoned plein air artists to ensure a successful plein air experience. Having weathered steep terrain, windy conditions, sudden unexpected rains, and even bear encounters, these artists have seen it all! The artists have given useful, supply-related suggestions such as the best brush and palette choices for plein air work. And as any plein air painter knows, the environment and knowledge of the local terrain plays a large part in your experience.…

I once seriously considered taking on a young artist who sent me material claiming that he’d shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, and other major museums,” says Louis Newman, former director of New York’s David Findlay Jr Gallery. “When I called to ask more about these impressive credentials, he revealed that he actually never showed in the museums but at them,” meaning on the front steps of the esteemed institutions, where he would set up a display of his work for tourists, visitors, and other passers-by. “Needless to say,” Newman adds, “the artist was out the door as far as we were concerned What should we call the kind of statements that young artist made? A fib, puffery, white lie, misinformation, half-truth, fairy tale, or just outright…

DESTINATION INSPIRATION The five painters — Suzie Baker, Shanna Kunz, Stephanie Marzella, Lori McNee, and Elizabeth Robbins — say they are in similar stations in life in terms of their professional and personal lives. All are empty-nesters and established, successful artists with upper-tier gallery representation. Not much is terribly similar about them otherwise. “Our styles are quite different,” Kunz says. “Suzie is an amazingly solid plein air painter. Lori is more contemporary in style, while Liz [Robbins] is very traditional. Stephanie is a tonalist and uses more color than I could ever imagine using. And I have my own thing. But we are all easygoing and easy to travel with. We’re all friends now.” CONFRONTING CHALLENGES Marzella was the only artist from the East Coast, and her learning curve was…

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Is that Larry with his dog?” my co-worker chuckled as he looked at my painting. The fact that the first thing to catch his eye in the busy streetscape was our colleague and his pet was amusing, but not surprising. As humans we naturally gravitate toward figures in a painting, whether they’re specks in the distant background or a fully developed person in the foreground. A figure instantly provides scale, adds a point of interest, and creates a narrative. I mainly paint plein air in urban settings, so there’s no way to escape including figures in my work. Most often, I like to nail down their positions in a composition at the beginning. Every once in a while, though, I’ll run contrary to conventional wisdom and add a figure or…

PLEIN AIR EASTON CELEBRATES A MILESTONE This July, Plein Air Easton (PAE) held its 20th annual event. Organized by the Avalon Foundation, the 10-day Maryland art festival and competition achieved sales exceeding $500,000 for the second consecutive year. At the kick-off Meet the Artists party, easels dotted the landscape of a private estate in Talbot County. As art collectors, supporters, and onlookers strolled through garden rooms and roamed the grounds where the property’s signature black sheep grazed, paintings of the bucolic landscape were created before their eyes. Other events included paint-outs in Oxford and Tilghman, as well as interviews and painting demonstrations by PAE alumni Mark Shasha, Lisa Egeli, Mick McAndrews, Russell Jewell, and Debra Huse. In addition, PAE hosted a plein air painting camp at the Avalon Theatre, fostering…

Celebrated artist Camille Przewodek passed away in July following a 4-week battle with metastatic liver cancer. A self-described “plein air colorist,” she characterized her work this way: “Color that expresses the light key of nature can make even the most mundane subject strikingly beautiful. My paintings could be called ‘celebrations of mood,’ and I often go back to the same location at different times of the day in order to capture its mood in literally a whole new light. Windows and doorways both hold back and let in light. They intrigue me, as do shadows, which take on an ‘objectness’ even though they are insubstantial. Shifting light is my passion.” Building on a long colorist tradition, she applied the techniques taught by Henry Hensche and developed her own approach to…

Modern artist Henri Matisse didn’t paint en plein air — not in the way we think of it, anyway. He did, however, write, “An artist must possess nature.” And this short and sweet sentence holds a world of wisdom for plein air artists. What does it mean to “possess nature,” as Matisse put it? Perhaps it means an artist must cultivate “the sense of place,” a more or less emotional, spiritual, observational connection to the motif — the bit of field, desert, ocean, forest, or mountain one has decided to paint. In this sense it means something akin to “seeing like an artist,” fully connecting and taking in the motif so as to represent it creatively. The word “possession” comes from the Latin possess(us), which means “to occupy” and is…

My home state, Maine, holds a special place in my heart,” says Olena Babak. “Among its few plein air events, Cape Elizabeth’s Paint for Preservation has been an opportunity to paint close to home and spend time with friends and family. The coastal weather brings both challenges and beauty. This year, I found myself inspired by the rolling waves and stormy skies of approaching weather. Though I usually create multiple paintings during the event, in this case, my focus was clear. I opted for the largest canvas I had in my car — 30 x 40 inches — and did a quick 6 x 8-inch color study of the scene that would serve as a reminder of my initial inspiration as I worked. “It was a challenge to manage the…