In a dispassionate sense, plein air painting is documentation of what the artist sees and experiences. I’ve heard workshop instructors use the word documentation. I have used the word to describe the business of keeping records, the primary purpose being to have a defense if someone were to question actions taken. In business, record-keeping is such a necessary evil, that it is difficult to apply the same word to something so joyful as plein air painting. For the most part, I am a truth-seeker, not just about what I see, but about what I perceive, stretching from the mundane to the eternal questions of the universe, of which many are closer to being answered by the time a plein air painting is finished!
Sometimes I like to sit with a plein air painting after I bring it home, and ponder whether or not I want to add a detail or two in the studio, to improve the composition, or the legibility, or the impact. Usually I leave it as is, preferring the spontaneity of expression to accuracy or finesse.
Below is an 8 x 10 I painted yesterday evening, in our county seat, DeFuniak Springs, Florida. There is an old clock on the street corner, with the name of the bank cast into its housing, that fascinated me, with the evening light creating an interesting combination of oddly colorful pastels in the background building and the street. The colors were particularly appealing to me. As sundown approached, the yellows and pinks became more and more intense. It was fun — I would like to go back and paint this scene again.
Earlier in the week I painted with the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters at Eden Gardens State Park in Point Washington, Florida. It is one of our favorite places to paint, with a restored antebellum mansion central to the gardens and massive, Spanish-moss bedecked live oak trees. We had received a good bit of rain as a tropical storm passed south of us in the Gulf of Mexico, and that rain revived the resurrection fern decorating the live oak trees with bright yellow-green new growth. The day was clear but the summer heat made it seem hazy, so I avoided the temptation to detail anything, and instead let the awkward shapes of the trees merely serve as a framework for the fern.
I live on a gorgeous section of the Gulf Coast, with beaches of sugar-white sand so fine it squeaks underfoot like dry snow. This mansion at Eden Gardens is second only to the beach, as a popular venue for weddings. I have painted at several receptions, and have acquired a domain which redirects to a page on my website set aside for my work for weddings: www.30AWeddingPainter.com. 30A is the beach highway where I live, and has become a geographic identifier for the area. I decided to start marketing that work, so a couple of days ago I created a Joan Vienot Wedding Painter Facebook Page. I hope to have more to report soon!
At ‘America’s Great Paint-Out’, the Forgotten Coast en Plein Air, I was thrilled and honored to be one of the six artists selected from across the state of Florida to be a Florida’s Finest en Plein Air Ambassador for 2016-2017. Kathleen Denis, Jill Berry, Karen Ann Hitt, Joseph Palmerio, and Randy Pitts and I were honored with an exhibit of our work at the event gallery on Reid Avenue in Port St. Joe and those paintings are now being shown in various venues across the state. In addition to being included in the commemorative Collector’s Guide for the event, the Ambassadors were invited as honored guests along with the event’s invited professional artists to the various receptions.
Forgotten Coast en Plein Air Painting Station, with Linda Quinlan
We Ambassadors were tasked with mentoring novices at the plein air painting stations throughout the event. For a mere $25, people were able to sign up online to have a one-on-one two-hour oil painting session, with supplies and equipment provided by Blick Art Materials, the program itself sponsored by Duke Energy. The schedule offered 15 two-hour one-on-one sessions over 5 days for each Ambassador, 90 sessions in all. My art degree and training as an educator and my experience in teaching was an real advantage, so that my chief challenge with teaching one-on-one was speaking simply and succinctly. The job was not difficult, because all of my “students” had visual understanding. However by the 4th day my feet were complaining — which now gives me opportunity to plug Dr. Teal’s Pure Epsom Salt Soaking Solution Soothe & Sleep with Lavender, available at the Apalachicola CVS!
Click for larger image
My lodging was at the quiet and peaceful St. Joseph Bay Buffer State Preserve. Every morning I was inspired by the early morning light creating shades of metallic pastels on the the bay just outside my door.
While at the event, the work continued to come in. I received a request to provide a workshop for my local arts organization in Santa Rosa Beach, the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County, a second request to provide a workshop for the Beach Art Group in Panama City Beach, and an invitation to speak at the Arts and Design Society’s July luncheon in Fort Walton Beach. I also am coordinating an exhibit of works by my home plein air group, the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters, at Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast in July and August for their Arts in Medicine program. One thing leads to another.
Last year was the year I was going to focus on marketing, and this year on developing a workshop schedule. Marketing couldn’t happen last year – my business didn’t sell as soon as I had thought it would, and this year is turning out to be marketing and developing a workshop schedule both in the same year. I also intend to develop a studio practice. Up until now, I have primarily focused on painting en plein air, so as a result most of the pieces I offer are less than 11×14, most being 8×10. Working in the studio will allow me to paint larger works.
Below are some of my recent works, painted en plein air.
Forgotten Coast painting station demo sample 9×12
Forgotten Coast painting station demo sample 4×6
Forgotten Coast nocturne, Port St. Joe 8×10
Gulf Islands National Seashore, Okaloosa Island, bayside
Three 6×6 studies of clouds over the Choctawhatchee Bay
I attended Plein Air Magazine’s 5th annual Plein Air Convention and Expo in Tucson, Arizona, a few weeks ago, for a week of lectures, demonstrations, and painting with 900 other plein air enthusiasts. The pre-convention workshop was presented by Matt Smith, an amazing painter who discussed his theories and practices and showed examples of everything from subtle temperature shift to panoramic composition. It was fairly overwhelming, and I took a ton of notes. Other convention presentations conflicted and overlapped, requiring choice and sacrifice. My intention was to learn about Marketing, so I attended Plein Air Magazine publisher Eric Rhoads’ Marketing Boot Camp lecture series which started every morning at 6:30 AM. Another seminar was offered by the magazine’s marketing team, who presented essential elements of every aspect of marketing, from developing a Curriculum Vitae to managing social media, gallery representation, and website development. I’ve got some work to do over the next year!
One of the demonstrations I attended was performed by Nancie King Mertz, who used pastels. I had not worked much with pastels as a medium alone, though I had a number of colors which I believe my mother had given me, that she did not use. When I was in college, I had used them merely to add background tone in some of my figure drawings. After attending Nancie’s demo, I went to the Expo store where fantastic deals were offered by manufacturers and distributors, to feed or hook every attending artists’ addictions – media, tools, toys, and DVD’s – and I bought a set of Sennelier soft pastels, the “Paris Collection”. As soon as I got home, I signed up for 4 lessons from our local Artist of the Year, Melody Bogle, who teaches pastel classes at our Bayou Arts Center for the Cultural Arts Alliance.
In the first two sessions, I painted a 9×12 of our Gulf Coast lupines. I immediately could see why pastelists need so many colors. My collection of 120 half-sticks was hardly adequate; I borrowed a the more subtle colors from Melody. A few days later, two commission patrons visited by my studio, and they left with Lupines, my first pastel, sold!
My second painting in soft pastels is above, a scene from my first artist-vacation 15 years ago, a trip to Nova Scotia. While I was painting it this week, I again experienced the feelings which prompted me to spent some time standing in that spot, enjoying the visual feast. It is my hope that people viewing my art also get some sense of that awe, the energy of that specific place.
The paintings I created at the plein air convention in Arizona are below. It’s a wonder I could paint anything at all, because of the disconnect between what I was learning or relearning at the convention, and what my right-brain could assimilate and immediately put to work.
“Tuscon Greens” is available in my store! Click the painting for more details.
I painted this first painting, at left, outside my motel room door. The desert started at the edge of the hotel grounds. In the middle ground were some flat-roofed buildings providing pinks which played well against the greens of the distance, and finally, the late afternoon light on the mountains.
Names were drawn for different benefits and prizes throughout the convention, and I won a critique with Jove Wang and Kathryn Stats. This is the painting I chose to be critiqued. I was pleased when both gave favorable comments. Click on the painting for a larger version.
The darker painting of the mountain ravine was painted on the last day of the convention, a full day set aside to paint at Picacho Peak State Park. I believe I was the first painter to come into the park, probably because most of the convention attendees had been at the closing party the night before. I backpacked my gear about a half-mile up a trail until this scene presented, with the light just giving a glow in the the crevice between the mountains. I was passed by several hikers and painters later, but only had one four-legged visitor, a salamander who gave me a wary eye for a long time before moving on.
I am very pleased with Desert Mountain Ravine’s hint of early morning light. The sun was above the ridge line, to the left of the picture frame, but only the warmth creeping into the ravine interested me, in contrast to the cool sides of the mountains.
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I am back home now, and I am very lucky to live a mere two hours from the Forgotten Coast en Plein Air, the regional plein air invitational and paint-out, where I will enjoy a week of demonstrations, learning-lunches, presentations, and receptions. But I will be working this year, participating as one of the six Florida’s Finest Plein Air Ambassadors selected from various parts of the state, who are assigned the task of mentoring plein air novices in one-on-one 2-hour sessions which are offered 3 times a day, for the first 5 days of the event. This will conflict with and prevent me from participating in certain parts of the event, but the experience of the 15 one-on-one sessions of mentoring will be invaluable! There are still 3 slots left in my schedule, if any of my readers are dallying: 2016 Painting Stations (click here).
Later this month, I will make a serious effort at absorbing more marketing information, by participating in the webinars and activities outlined in Art Marketing in a Box, a program produced by Plein Air Magazine. When I first started painting en plein air, 4 years ago, I had planned to spend the first year trying to remember how to mix colors and how to use my brushes. The second year I was going to go to as many workshop[s as I could afford, and in my third year I was going to develop a marketing plan. Developments in my day-job prevented me from devoting the necessary time to my art marketing plan, so I postponed it to this year. I intended to start teaching a few workshops in my fourth year, and that has already started, with one workshop at the Chautauqua Assembly in DeFuniak Springs in January, and now the mentoring sessions I will be doing this week in Apalachicola. I continue to be surprised at how effective that suggestion was when my career coach told me to put my first weekly plein air painting session on the calendar 4 years ago! Thank you, Saramae Dalferes!
At left is my impression of one of the colorful plant racks and displays covering the grounds of Clay Garden and Gift Shop, east of Seagrove Beach, where our local plein air painters group met this week. It was a bonanza of light and color, and the paintings of the nine painters attending reflected our ecstasy at being in this “eye-candy store”. The owner has invited us back!
Desert Mountain Ravine, Picacho Peak State Park, Tucson, AZ, painted at the 5th Annual Plein Air Convention. 11 x 14, oil on linen panel, painted en plein air. Click on image to go to Purchase Information Form.
When I began my website, I was documenting my progress by blogging. I committed to blogging because writing about my efforts seemed to cement my progress. As I look back on earlier works, I can see my growth in expression and craftsmanship. Now I am ready to step into another part of my career, sharing my work with a broader audience.
I have been invited to be a Florida’s Finest Plein Air Ambassador for the 2016 Forgotten Coast en Plein Air, the annual event of national renown held in the area of Apalachicola, FL, the second week of May every year. As an Ambassador, my job, along with 5 other artists selected from across the state, is to mentor newcomers to plein air painting, to introduce them to outdoor, on-site painting. Some may never have touched a brush before, and others may be accomplished studio artists who simply haven’t had the pleasure of painting outdoors yet. I’ll be available for any of three 2-hour time periods per day for 5 days, May 7 through May 11, 2016. Here’s where you sign up for your one-on-one 2-hour session: www.pleinairfl.com and go to Events and then Painting Stations. Sponsorships enable the incredibly low fee of only $25!! Following are my assigned locations:
Lighthouse, Port St. Joe, Saturday May 7, 2016
Riverfront Park, Apalachicola, Sunday May 8, 2016
Salinas Park, Cape San Blas, Monday May 9, 2016
Reid Avenue, Port St. Joe, Tuesday May 10, 2016
Reid Avenue, Port St. Joe, Wednesday May 11, 2016
I will never forget the moment I saw the original of Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as a young adult. Overwhelmed, I felt its impact in the center of my chest, and tears came to my eyes. I had admired the expressionism in Van Gogh’s works since I was a teen, staring at my book of print reproductions of his paintings for years prior to that visit to the museum.
Why then, did the original have such an effect on me? I can only say that for me, the original has the spirit of the artist, his time and his vision. It was as if I was, in a way, actually meeting Vincent Van Gogh. Probably also some of it also was due to the fact that the painting had become iconic to me. But there was the visceral reality of the original painting, its physical presence, seeing the actual paint, the colors mixed by the artist, the brushstrokes, the canvas sometimes showing through the impasto, indicating the haste or the care taken, all of the things one sees when looking at an original painting, providing a glimpse into the artist’s experience. “This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big,” van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, from France. [Excerpt from the Museum of Modern Art’s webpage, http://www.moma.org/collection/works/79802.]
Isn’t that really what a painting is, a representation of what the artist “saw”, whether in actuality or in his or her mind? That is my intention in sharing my art, to share my vision, to share my experience of my environment, my own appreciation for what I see and how it all fits together, the light in the composition, and the way the elements work together – the lines, forms, colors, and textures. I share my thrill.
While it is true that printing processes are always improving, an original painting is so much more impactful than a print. People see differently than a camera. And in the technical process of reproducing the image of a painting, colors separate and forms change, with the mechanical image sometimes showing the paint layer underneath instead of the one on the surface. My own print-maker brings me multiple proofs, tweaking the cast, correcting a color here and there, and even still, sometimes I feel compelled to go back in with a brush to tighten up some of the details, or I have to make the decision to live with color separation in areas where there was a perfect blend in the original painting. My own photos miss values by as much as 2 steps on a 10-step scale, and fail miserably when it comes to capturing certain colors, most especially the pinks of sunset. The original painting has the energy, the color mixes, the form as the artist intended, while in the end, a reproduction is what we end up settling for.
The solution? Buy original art! Certainly buying prints is better than not buying art at all. I can supply giclée prints from $50 to $650, depending on whether you want a good paper print or if you want a larger-than-original gallery-wrapped canvas. But a print is still a print. There are reasons to buy print reproductions, such as when something is whimsical or if your taste changes frequently. But it is absurd to buy a house for several hundred thousand dollars, or several million, and then to decorate it with cheap prints. Purchasing original art is a way of honoring yourself. You deserve original art, art that you pick out, art that transports you. Original art has an energy far exceeding that of a print.
I made a decision some time ago to hang nothing but original artwork in my own home. It enhances the energy in my home by tenfold, worth every penny. Every time I enter a room, I actually look at the art on my walls, and I have the same feelings that prompted me to buy it in the first place. Each piece commands attention and contributes to the energy in my home. This is in such contrast to the print calendars I have hanging here and there, the images certainly beautiful, chosen for their theme, but purchased as a necessity and easily ignored. Original works of art contribute far more than prints, in much the same way that real wood carries a stronger energy than veneer or faux finishes.
You and I are sensitive to energy. We can meet a person and know in our gut, instantly, whether we have “good chemistry”. The same is true of inanimate objects, the stuff we surround ourselves with. It’s the reason we want to escape from our plastic-and-concrete workplaces to visit the scenic wonderland of nature. Our home is our haven, and we should surround ourselves with energies that enhance our sense of well-being and our vitality. We honor ourselves by purchasing original art.
Click on image for purchase information.
Plein air painting is risky — sometimes the light changes so fast you feel like you are chasing it. But I struck gold with the scene I chose when I joined the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters on Wednesday for our weekly outing this week. We painted at Lincoln Park in Valparaiso, Florida. It had been raining for several days over the previous week and weekend — my garbage can had 18″ of rain in it (warranting yet another note to my garbage man to always turn it over after emptying!). The grassy earth was like a wet sponge, sinking underfoot, each step flooding my painting Crocs. I set up my easel beside the purple splash of a wild iris blooming near the brook at the edge of the park. I was exhilarated by the play of light and shadow in the warmth of the spring day.
After several months of adjusting to challenges on several fronts, things are settling down and I am returning to painting in oils. In early February, I had the first of two surgeries on my hands, to create a new joint for the base of my thumb. I chose to have this done on my left, non-dominant, hand first, so that I could plan for the disability I will have when I am recovering from the same surgery on my right thumb later this year. The surgery I had is called a CMC arthroplasty, and I am fortunate to have nearby one of the best clinics in the country, the Andrews Institute of Orthopedics right here in Northwest Florida (thank you Dr. Steven Kronlage!). I was not comfortable using my oil paints when I started painting again, what with the mess I usually make and my left hand not being of much help, so I switched to watercolor paints for a little while. Below are a few of my watercolors painted en plein air during weekly outings with the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters.
I tried out watercolor canvas in my studio for the first time, and I liked it very much. After spraying several light coats of Golden archival spray (matte), the painting can be framed without glass, so the watercolor painting is open to the viewer, instead of being separated from the viewer by glass. I painted the painting below in the studio, to submit to a Cultural Arts Alliance show of watercolor paintings which Melissa Brown and I are coordinating for the A+Art Committee, whose mission is to showcase CAA member artists’ work in our Art in Public Spaces program. The show will open with a reception at 5:00 on April 1, 2016 at the Bayou Arts Center, 105 Hogtown Bayou Lane, Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32459. It will show through June 1, 2016.
Click painting for purchase information.
I went to the local figure drawing session CAA holds every two weeks, thanks to Nancy Nichols Williams’ persevering efforts, which was managed by Liza Snyder this week. I should draw more often, to stay in practice, and I am looking forward to a reduction in my work hours at my job so that I can do just that. Below is one of my warm-up sketches from this week.
And finally, this week, I broke out my oils again, after 7 weeks away from them, for the weekly painting session with the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters, on my friend Erika Stoyer’s backyard patio. My left hand now is strong enough to be able to wipe my brushes when I am cleaning them during the painting. The day was overcast almost the whole time, with the sun peeking through just as I was finishing up.
January 11 – March 11, 2016: Solo exhibition, Panama City Beach, FL. Beach Art Group is presenting an exhibition of oil paintings by Joan Vienot, winner of People’s Choice Best in Show at the 2015 Local Color Plein Air Festival paint-out. The exhibit will be displayed at Palms Conference Center in Panama City Beach from January 11 to March 11, 2016. Meet the artist at the reception, February 7, from 2:00 to 5:00 pm. Call Helen Ballance at (850) 541-3867 for other viewing times. http://www.beachartgroup.com/exhibitions–events.html
January 29-30, 2016: Florida Chautauqua Assembly Plein Air Painting Workshop, Joan Vienot, Instructor. This workshop will provide new insight to accomplished painters, and courage for the beginner, with focus on simplification of subject matter, using value and intensity to create believable composition, and enhancement of color through temperature relationship. Joan will instruct in oil painting but all media are welcome. An optional half-day pre-workshop, January 28, 2016, will help the painter decide how to choose a subject to paint en plein air, observing the changing light and shadow, practicing “thumbnail” sketching, and planning interesting compositions. http://www.florida-chautauqua-center.org/assembly_2016/art_program_2016; Supply list at https://www.dropbox.com/s/vqk9u2fuzxe8n38/Workshop%20Description.pdf?dl=0. Joan also will be displaying a few select paintings in the Chautauqua Art Show. 1/31/16 addendum: 10 plein air painters enjoyed 2 beautiful sunny days of instruction! Click here for a photo of her demonstrating.
February 1-29, 2016: Joan will be the Freeport Art League Artist of the Month, displaying paintings at Freeport City Hall during the month of February, at 112 FL Hwy 20, Freeport, FL 32433. https://www.facebook.com/FreeportArtLeague/
I hope you can spend some time at one or more of these events! There’s nothing like actually seeing the art in person. I try to take good photos of my work for this website, but a camera cannot ever completely capture the intensities and true color relationships the way that the human eye can. I look forward to seeing you! ~ Joan Vienot
