Author: Joan Vienot

Posted on 03/14/201704/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — 1 Comment

Plein Air Magazine’s Publisher’s Trip to New Zealand

The Plein Air Magazine Publisher’s Trip to New Zealand, February 22 to March 5, 2017, was everything I expected and beyond. A combination of sightseeing, gourmet dining, and painting opportunities, it was first class from beginning to end, 10 days of delight! I confess that the travel was grueling, about 18 hours in the air over several flights each way, plus layovers, check-ins, and security. We also had a good bit of travel while in New Zealand, most of it by bus, but fortunately most of that time was compensated by beautiful scenery en route.

Angela Morgan, our tour coordinator from Parnell Partners Group, was simply outstanding. If you can imagine 35 excited and easily distracted adult artists, accompanied by another 15 spouses and partners, many of them excited and easily distracted photographers, you will have an idea of the job Ange and her team had, bringing new illustration to the phrase “herding cats”.

If you count the first couple of days as travel and travel-recovery days, we had 9 days of actual touring and painting opportunities. I had signed up for the trip as a retirement present to myself some 10 months prior, when it was announced at the 2016 Plein Air Convention. Visiting New Zealand had been on my bucket list, but I never thought I would be able to find a travel companion willing to entertain themselves while I sat and painted, and I didn’t want to go so far away alone, so this trip was a godsend. And then my friend Lynn Wilson, owner of On the Waterfront Gallery in Apalachicola, FL, just 100 miles east of Santa Rosa Beach where I live, decided she would come too, and we opted to room together. I found everyone in the group to be very friendly, with instant camaraderie, which came as no surprise, really, since plein air painters seem to attract each other. In fact, I find artists as a whole, and plein air painters in particular, to be especially engaged and engaging.

Our home base was Millbrook Resort near Arrowtown, near Queenstown, on the South Island of New Zealand, where we enjoyed a delicious buffet breakfast every morning. One night I skipped dinner and painted the scene behind my room, where a tree had fallen and fourteen trees had grown up out of its trunk. The sun went down and I had not yet painted the dark trees, so I merely scraped them out of the background paint, which made for an interesting study.

Day 1

Painting at Waitiri Creek Winery

Lunch at Gibbston Valley Winery

Painting at Millbrook Resort (or napping to recover from travel fatigue)

Dinner at Jervois Steakhouse

Day 2

Painting at Glenorchy Wharf

Lunch at Glenorchy Café

Adventure: one of the world’s top 10 scenic drives to a nature walk and jet boating up the Dart River in Mount Aspiring National Park in the Te Wai Pounamu World Heritage area

Dinner at Gantleys Restaurant

Day 3

TSS Earnslaw steamboat cruise to Walter Peak High Country Farm

Lunch at the Colonel’s Homestead Restaurant

Painting at Walter Peak

Dinner at Botswana Butchery

Day 4

Painting in Arrowtown or artists choice of location. Lynn and I painted a sheep field at the edge of the resort, backed by a huge mountain. Four sheep on the hill were tended by a single dog, and they gradually made their way out of sight. The pink and yellow colors of the grass on the hill interested me, especially in contrast to the dark mountain behind it.

Dinner at Saffron Restaurant

Day 5

Scenic drive to Milford Sound in Fiordland National Park for boat ride to the mouth of the fiord and back, seeing the grand vistas of the glacier-carved fiord, with waterfalls of glacier melt streaking down the nearly-sheer cliffs, box lunch provided.

Buffet dinner at Millbrook Resort.

Day 6

Flight to Wellington on the North Island of New Zealand, for a tour of Weta Workshop where owners Sir Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger and company have created prosthetics, special effects and set design for such movies as Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, BFG, Avatar, and many more.

Dinner at Roxy Theatre

I let a little girl paint a few strokes – I love sharing the fever!

Day 7

Flight to Auckland for ferry ride to Waiheke Island for lunch and painting at Mudbrick Winery

Dinner at Oyster and Chop Restaurant

Day 8

Tour and painting at Hobbiton, the life-size set and location for The Hobbit trilogy, complete with 44 permanently reconstructed Hobbit Holes

Dinner at Euro Reataurant.

Day 9 was a free day, so Lynn and I closed out the trip with a visit to the Auckland Museum where we were treated with a show by Maori singers and dancers, as well as the wonderful history and natural history displays.

We flew out of Auckland for Los Angeles late that night, March 5.

I am at a loss for words to describe the beauty of New Zealand. I so enjoyed the entire experience.

The only mar was a pesky knee disorder diagnosed the week before the trip. I had been annoyed by symptoms for some 3 weeks prior, and when they didn’t go away, I went to the orthopedics institute (Andrews Institute, in Gulf Breeze, FL, the best!) and was diagnosed with a Baker’s cyst caused by knee inflammation (I have thin cartilage.) It turns out I also have a massive case of IT Band syndrome from how I have adapted my bad-knee walk, which I did not know at the time. I was able to walk short flat distances and the inflammation usually did not bother me until the evenings and at night, when it imade sleep difficult. It was so bad one night that I nearly decided to cut the trip short. Some TLC over the next few days, including being pushed in a wheelchair through the domestic airports, reduced the walking enough that I was able to finish the trip. (Post trip comment: the doctor is giving me three weekly injections to reduce knee joint inflammation and he gave me a brace for lengthy standing or walking, and I will start physical therapy to strengthen the muscles that support the knee and knee mechanics and to treat and prevent IT Band Syndrome.)

Now I need to finish a few paintings to send to Lynn’s “On the Waterfront” Gallery for her showing of paintings from the New Zealand trip, open to all of the participating artists, during the month of May. I had used very lightweight supports in New Zealand, linen covered multimedia boards, and had used a cardboard wet painting carrier for one size of paintings, and my usual RayMar painting carrier for the other size. The RayMar held up well, but the cardboard carrier collapsed and allowed some of the not-quite-dry paintings to fall face to face. So I have some repairs to make.

The paintings I have posted above are the rough work I did en plein air while there. Below are a few studies from photos since my return, working out some distance perspective issues with watercolor. Click image for larger view.

Walter Peak High Country Farm wc sketch from photo

Fiordland, Milford Sound wc sketch from photo

Posted on 02/12/201704/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

The Practice of Plein Air Painting

We “practice” yoga, we “practice” meditation. Plein air painting is “practiced”. Like yoga, and like meditation, plein air painting is performed, hopefully, with increasing awareness and perhaps with increasing skill, but I don’t know of any painter who thinks their practice is “perfected”. Even though a plein air painter might occasionally paint the best painting of her or his life, the next painting still begins with the proverbial blank canvas. I paint weekly with the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters. Actually, I coordinate the weekly sessions, sending out the location to the email list of 240 people, and meeting the group of 2 to 15 painters who might show up. We paint for 3 hours, and then have a soft critique, followed by lunch at a local restaurant. The social aspect of the weekly get-togethers reinforces my practice.

In January, it was foggy for one of our sessions, at Turkey Creek in Niceville, FL. By the time we finished, the fog had lifted and colors had appeared, but initially my scene appeared to be monochromatic. I used a different approach for this foggy scene. Normally when painting en plein air, the darks are laid in first. But to create the atmosphere of light through the fog in this painting, I painted the light brownish-gray sky and water and the very light value background shapes, layering the darker, closer shapes on top.

The last week of January we painted at Henderson Beach State Park in Destin, Florida. The Florida Panhandle coast from Panama City to Pensacola is covered with sugar-white, fine quartz sand from thousands of years of erosion carried down to the Gulf of Mexico by the Apalachicola River. The white sand picks up reflected color from everything around it, and sometimes the compliments of those colors are sensed by the viewer. The sand might appear pink next to the green foliage topping a dune, or warmer and yellower near cool shadows.

The next week we painted at Camp Helen State Park, which is on the Walton County / Bay County border. The park contains hardwood live oak and pine hammocks, marsh ecosystems, and sandy beach. I hiked out to a view of the dunes, where I could just make out the skeleton of the old pier. I was challenged by the puffy little clouds covering most of the sky, with a little blue peaking out just here and there.

The first weekend of February, I drove two hours east to the village of Apalachicola to meet up with my friend Lynn Wilson, owner of On the Waterfront Gallery and President of the Artists of Apalachicola Area. Lyn is sponsoring monthly Weekend Warrior painting workshops, and this weekend was the first, taught by Atlanta artist Debra Nadelhoffer. I took the workshop both to learn and also to observe the logistics, since Lynn has invited me to teach the workshop in May. Debra likes to paint the sky with different colors of the same value in order to impart the shimmer or movement of the air that she sees. I painted the above painting, and later was painting on a new canvas, trying to learn how to paint the blinding glimmer of sunlight on water, when passers-by stopped and asked to purchase the above painting. The following paintings were also painted in the Nadelhoffer workshop, as I tried new color combinations, and exaggerations of color.

After returning home, I painted with the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters, and found myself experimenting with color temperatures in order to enhance the feeling of space and mood. I did not finish the painting (below) and did not keep it, satisfied with what I learned in the process.

All of these paintings are available for purchase. Contact me for information, using the form that comes up when you click on the painting.

Posted on 01/17/201704/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — 2 Comments

Out with the Old, In with the New: From 2016 to 2017

2016, A Year of Recognition

An art career doesn’t happen overnight.

When I received my degree in Fine Art, I imagined that I would be a fulltime artist by the time I was 40 years old. Instead, I was completely immersed in a growing pool service business, with hardly enough time to produce the occasional donation of art for charity. It would be another 15 years before things would change.

In 2007, with the economy slowing to a crawl, my business growth stopped and I found myself with a good deal of free time. I began producing art every week and I started volunteering for the local arts organization, the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County, helping to organize and produce art exhibits. Soon after, I became a member of the Board of Directors. I began painting en plein air in 2012, and in 2015 I volunteered to be the coordinator for the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters. Finally, in late 2015, I sold my pool service business, and I began pursuing my art career more diligently.

And now it is the end of 2016. What a year it has been! I continue to serve for the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County, and I continue to coordinate the weekly gatherings of the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters. Here’s my year in review:

In January, the Sunshine Art Center / Beach Art Group produced a solo exhibit of 55 of my paintings, honoring me for winning People’s Choice Best in Show at the Local Color Plein Air Paint-Out in Lynn Haven, Florida, which was held last fall.

Also in January, all 3 of my entries were accepted into the Southeast Regional Juried Art Exhibition at the Mattie Kelley Art Center at Northwest Florida State College in Niceville, Florida, and “Western Lake with Umbrella Trees”, my 12 x 24 plein air oil painting, won 3^rd place.

At the end of January, I was the featured plein air painter and workshop instructor for the Florida Chautauqua Assembly in DeFuniak Springs, Florida.

I was the February Artist of the Month for the Freeport Art League, displaying work at the City Hall in Freeport, Florida.

In mid-February, I got my left thumb repaired, CMC arthroplasty, which gave me a new thumb joint. I practiced with watercolors while I had use of only one hand, which was less messy and a fun return to my years fresh out of college.

In the spring, I received a phone call from Joe Taylor, from the Forgotten Coast Coalition in Apalachicola, Florida, telling me I would be one of six artists selected from across the state to be a “Florida’s Finest en Plein Air” Ambassador for 2016 until May of 2017. That recognition gave me a good deal of credibility among other artists and attendees of the annual Forgotten Coast En Plein Air Invitational in Apalachicola. I also gained immeasurable experience teaching the fifteen one-on-one plein air painting lessons as an Ambassador.

In June, I coordinated an exhibit of works by the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters at Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast.

I continued my weekly painting excursions with the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters through the summer, and was the luncheon speaker at the Arts and Design Society in Ft. Walton Beach in July.

In the fall, I taught two more plein air painting workshops – one in Panama City and one in Santa Rosa Beach.

Also in the fall, I competed in the Bagdad-Milton Plein Air Paint-Out near Pensacola, Florida, where I was honored to receive Best in Show for my 12 x 24 oil painting “Anticipation”.

A month later I was asked to be the judge of the Alabama Plein Air Artists’ Gulf Shores Paint-Out Quickdraw, which allowed me to demonstrate my expertise in evaluating art.

The final honor for the year was being juried into the Foster Gallery, a co-op of the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County, which exhibits 15 select artists every quarter.

I was the November Artist of the Month for the Freeport Art League, displaying work at the City Hall in Freeport, Florida.

Also in November, I had my right thumb repaired, CMC arthroplasty, the same surgery I had on my left thumb in February. I practiced working with pastels instead of oils, for 5 weeks while my right hand was immobilized, using my left (non-dominant) hand. Pastels are great fun, a welcome addition to my repertoire. I was surprised that using my left hand was not the nuisance I anticipated, just another challenge.

The events of this past year have improved my reputation as an artist, and have given me the confidence to set more ambitious goals. In 2017 I will be making a strong effort toward marketing as I continue to strengthen my painting skills.

My dream is to be able to travel and paint, and I have begun to realize that dream. In August I traveled with local painter Rebecca Perrott, to Arizona to take a workshop from my favorite instructor, Morgan Samuel Price, and in October I traveled with two other local painters, Theresia McInnis and Deborah Scott Mason, to North Georgia for a short week of plein air painting in the Blue Ridge area. In February I will travel with Apalachicola painter Lynn Wilson and a number of other painters to New Zealand for a week of plein air painting and adventure, on Plein Air Magazine’s Publisher’s Trip.

Plein air painting comes with many challenges which include the changing light, the weather, insects, and even by one’s own fitness. Sometimes I think I must be crazy to enjoy it so much. But after years of burning the midnight oil managing a business, which thankfully paid the bills, but did not nurture the soul, I am thrilled to be well on my way in this new career, the career I dreamed of!

It is my joy is to share the beauty I see.

Below are recent paintings. The first painting is the first one painted in oils with my new thumb joint, post-surgery, a bitter cold day. Eden Gardens State Park is one of our favorite locations to paint. It was decorated for the holidays, but I was sufficiently challenged to just get a bit of the structure, my primary interest being the intense color of the resurrection fern growing on the live-oak trees.

The next painting below was painted on a warmer day, outside the Foster Gallery at the Market Shops at Sandestin, Florida, where I was accepted as one of the 15 artists to show work this quarter. It is a small painting, only 6×6, but as is usually the case, something I had never painted before.

Oil painting of pansies, painted en plein air — Pansies is available from my store. Click the painting for more information!

The next week we painted the Western Lake Outfall at Grayton Beach, Florida. The coastal dune lakes of our county are a rarity, being found only in a few other places in the entire world. When a coastal dune lake accumulates enough rain run-off, it breaks open and the overfill flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and tides then exchange saltwater with freshwater in the lake, until the beach builds up and closes off the lake outfall again. The outfall was flowing on the day we were there. When I say we, I am talking about the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters, a group of avid artists meeting weekly at various locations, to paint en plein air. On this day, the sky was completely overcast, and the entire scene was muted shades of gray, except for a coral strip of sky between the clouds and the Gulf waters. Halfway through our morning painting session, the blinding sun came out, and suddenly the entire scene was in color. The smarter painters set their first canvas aside and began another painting. The rest of us fussed and fumed our way through, perhaps relying on a photo or two to quickly finish our paintings before our memory gave out.

Last week we painted at the Destin Library. Beautiful gardens and landscaping surround the library. Unfortunately, we had a hard freeze the weekend before, so many of the camellia blossoms has dropped off, but on one bush new blossoms had opened since the freeze, and that bush begged to be painted.

Yesterday I was nominated to post a painting a day in the 7-Day Artist’s Challenge on Facebook. The first day I shared Thistle Bloom, which I will be giving away out of my display at the Foster Gallery where I am one of the juried artists exhibiting through February 25, 2017. Today I shared the painting below. This 12×24 oil painting was done almost all en plein air at Twin Oaks Farm last September. When we first got there, the early morning light was beginning to warm the chicken sheds and the rolling fields, and the sheep were just waking up.

Click on any image for purchase information.

Posted on 12/09/201604/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Attention Subscribers!

If you signed up to receive email notifications of new entries on my website, joanvienot.com, please sign up again, so that you will continue to receive notifications. The system I was using from 2010 until now, the end of 2016, is no longer supported, so we had to change. The subscription field is located top right on this screen above if you are on your computer. If you are on your phone, please scroll down to the bottom. Thank you for your interest!

Here’s a shortcut:

[mc4wp_form id=”7766″]

Here’s a plein air painting I completed recently, from LuLu’s Restaurant in Destin, FL. It was a breezy, sunshiny day, and the bright colors of the chairs immediately caught my eye. The scene was so busy that I felt like a kid, playing with the shapes and using colors I seldom use, very different from the tones of natural landscapes.

Posted on 12/03/201604/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — 2 Comments

Adjusting Again – The Election and then Hand Surgery

Last February I had surgery on my left hand to reconstruct my thumb joint (CMC arthroplasty), and in November, the day after Election Day, I had the same surgery on my right hand. ( I mention Election Day because the surgery the day after the election meant that I could go through the next few days on pain medication, a relief on several levels.) I had opted to have my left hand repaired first, in February, even though the right hand was worse, so that I could know the level of disability I would have and be able to project the recovery time more accurately. The adjustment I made in February was to change from oil painting to watercolor painting, so there would be less clean up. I blogged about it under the title Adjust, Adapt, Accommodate — Painting Through Challenges. But this time, my right hand, my dominant hand, was immobilized, so I had to use my left hand express myself. Handwriting left-handed is difficult to say the least. By the time I finish writing anything, I have totally lost my enthusiasm for whateverit is I am writing about. And controlled brushwork is nearly impossible. So I switched to soft pastels, which are pure pigment, pressed into chalk-like sticks. The support I am using is 12×9 fine grit sandpaper made for this purpose. I’ve tried to keep my compositions fairly simple, being quite challenged both by the medium and by having to use my left hand. I’ve painted 3 times in the 4 weeks since my surgery. The rest of the time has been consumed with recovery, Thanksgiving holiday, and installing my part of the exhibit at The Foster Gallery, which i mentioned in my last post.

The first painting, at our weekly plein air painting session at Watercolor, Florida, was incredibly enjoyable, as I sat beside a large grouping of butterfly bushes that were sparkling with at least a hundred monarch butterflies, visiting during their annual fall migration to Mexico.

Soft pastels painting of monarchs on butterfly bush, painted en plein air at Watercolor, FL — (Created using my left hand, with soft pastels on sanded paper.)

The second painting was a respite from a football game that was being cheered by my Thanksgiving week hosts and their other guests. I wanted to convey my impression of a tree I had seen a few days before. I had a photo to remind me, but I wanted to portray the feeling of awe that I had when I first saw the tree. It had turned completely red, and was dropping its leaves, but all the leaves on the ground were pink, instead of red. I did not investigate to find out why — I guess they were falling face down, so only the pink backs showed.

Soft pastel painting of a red tree with pink leaves underneath, an impression of a scene in Murphy, NC — (Created using my left hand, with soft pastels on sanded paper.)

And the third painting was again with the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters at our weekly painting session, this time at The Gulf Restaurant in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida. I chose the view of Brooks Bridge crossing from Okaloosa Island to FWB, and I stopped painting when the first raindrops started falling. A tornado touched down not too far from us and a waterspout scared people as it crossed the Choctawhatchee Bay. But it was calm where we were.

Soft pastels painting of Brooks Bridge from The Gulf Restaurant on Okaloosa Island, painted en plein air, looking towards Ft. Walton Beach, FL — (Created using my left hand, with soft pastels on sanded paper.)

Next week I will find out if I can take of my brace to be able to hold a paintbrush again.

Posted on 12/02/201604/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Joan Vienot Juried Into The Foster Gallery Winter Rotation

postcard — RSVP required for the reception, to Lee, at (850) 622-5970.

Joan Vienot, Melody Bogle, Carol Ann Cain, Donnelle Clark, Kathy Schumacher, Krista Schumacher, Margaret Biggs, Mary Redmann, Melissa Brown, Polli Youngbeck, Robin Wiesneth, Sarah Stewart, Susan Lucas, Victoria Guennewig, and Roslyn O’Grady are the 15 artists juried into The Foster Gallery’s Winter Rotation. Depending on the sizes of their works, each artist is showing from 5 to 15 pieces. “The Foster Gallery is an artist co-operative led by the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County that features at least a dozen artists on a seasonally rotating basis, along with special exhibits. Named for the late Susan Foster, founder of the Cultural Arts Alliance and one of the area’s first professional artists and gallery owners, The Foster Gallery also symbolizes the support the CAA strives to provide for artists in our community. Conveniently located in the Market Shops at Sandestin, The Foster Gallery is available as a venue for meetings, parties, social gatherings and other small events.” (https://www.culturalartsalliance.com/local-arts/foster-gallery/) The Foster Gallery is located beside Ben & Jerry’s in the Market Shops, at 9375 Emerald Coast Parkway, Miramar Beach, FL 32550.

https://www.facebook.com/caafostergallery/

The Foster Gallery Facebook page screenshot

Posted on 11/02/201604/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Making Art for Themed Shows: One Size Fits All

My local arts organization, the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County, FL, produces an annual exhibit called One Size Fits All. The Call for Art stipulates that art is to be produced on 10×10 cradled wood panels 1.5″ deep. Participants can submit two panels, using either side, creating any kind of art or craft that they want. The panels will be hung at the Foster Gallery at the Market Shops in Sandestin, and will all be offered for sale for the low price of $125. The Gallery will take 40%. The artist may hang another panel in place of the ones that sell. Most of the artists who produce art for this show, put in far more value than $125, just for the fun of coming up with something creative and new. This year I produced two antiqued photo transfers and today I painted a third panel, a beach landscape, en plein air.

I was painting with the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters at our weekly outing this morning. Our location was Beasley Park, on Okaloosa Island in Fort Walton Beach, FL. The sky was dark, but the sun was peaking through, highlighting the grasses on the dunes. Three or four old fence posts wandered up the dune, and a mockingbird perched on top of the nearest post. The scene was exquisite. The sun played with the scene off and on all morning, and painting was a delight from the beginning to the end.

Below are my three panels for 2016 One Size Fits All. I will turn in two, and have the other ready when one of the first two sells.

Photo transfer, antiqued, of a color-saturated sunrise over the Choctawhatchee Bay — 2016

Photo transfer, antiqued, trees silhouetted against orange back-story — 2016

Oil painting of the grasses and dunes at the Gulf of Mexico on a cloudy day, with mockingbird on a fence post — 2016 (Now available for purchase. Click the painting for info.)

Below are pieces I have done for One Size Fits All in years past.

Oil painting of blue heron standing on purple, brown, and orange stripes — 2015

Oil painting of an apple and a half — 2014

Photo of the sunrise over the Choctawhatchee Bay, dramatized with Snapseed App — 2015

Photograph of a lily on Ocheesee Pond, between Marianna and Chattahoochee, FL — 2015

Oil painting of dune grasses at Henderson Beach State Park, Destin, FL — 2015, 6×6, centered on the 10×10 cradle

Posted on 10/28/201604/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Painting Trips and Events – Too Busy to Blog

My art/life vision is starting to manifest. A few years ago, after more than 30 years in a non-art career, I began to get a serious itch to be done with that work so that I could paint more. I continued to paint just once a week, and often blogged weekly, and late last year I sold my business. Now, I am lucky if I can get a blog written once a month, because I am painting so much more.

There often is a social element to painting en plein air, several artists painting together, working silently most of the time, but supportively interacting before and after painting. I find I enjoy that aspect immensely. It can take the sting out of challenging experiences, and it can reinforce the successful ones. The former was the case when 4 of us painted at Coastal Dune Lake Appreciation Day at Grayton Beach State Park in September. The weather was threatening, and the food vendor left soon after the festival started. There event was not very well attended, and our pavilion became the gathering place for the few die-hard sponsors and supporters. But we had each other, and that kept us there painting through the drizzle. At right is the painting I completed, showing the rich reds underneath the near grasses and bushes, and the beach dunes in the background.

I also enjoyed my first plein air painters trip that was independent of any festival or workshop. Three of us went to the mountains of North Georgia and North Carolina to paint for half a week. Our host, Theresia McInnis, had researched and mapped out a number of wonderful, scenic locations for us to paint, and we were absolutely in heaven. Below are the paintings I completed on that trip. I am happy to report that the painting titled Dry Falls sold to a tourist right off my easel.

Oil painting at Dry Falls, NC, painted en plein air — Dry Falls, NC

Oil painting of the bridge at Vogle State Park, with the rocky, reflective creek underneath early autumn colors — “Vogle State Park” is available in my store! Click the painting to add to your collection.

Oil painting of the autumn gold trees lining the Nantahala River, in North Carolina — Nantahala Colors is available, purchase for your collection before someone else does! Click the painting for information.

Posted on 10/02/201604/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Bagdad-Milton Paint-Out 2016: Best in Show, Joan Vienot

2016-1001-anticipation-with-frame-and-ribbon — Click to enlarge

The annual Bagdad-Milton (near Pensacola, FL) plein air “paint-out” was Saturday, October 1, 2016. I was honored to win Best in Show. The judge was Fred Myers, retired professor of Fine Art (University of Northern Colorado, my alma mater). He said that he initially judges art on two primary qualities — Does it invite you in? And does it have unity? The exhibit of plein air paintings produced that day will hang at the Santa Rosa Arts and Culture Foundation’s Dragonfly Gallery at 6815 Caroline Street in Milton, FL 32570 until November 11, 2016.

Gallerist Sally Miller invited the Pensacola area plein air painters to tour interesting scenes in Milton and Bagdad the day before the event.

Both days were exceptional, a clear and sunny 62° in the morning and 80° midday. On Saturday, the day of the paint-out contest, all artists were asked to go to the gallery first, have their blank canvases stamped to certify that the canvases indeed were blank, and then everyone went out to paint. I chose to paint at the Bagdad Boat Landing, one of the locations we had visited on Friday. There were many possible scenes there. pink-and-blue-chairs The one I had liked on mid-morning on our Friday tour, two chairs on a dock walkway, backed by kayaks and a ton of nautical stuff under a house, did not have the same light early Saturday, so I looked again at the flower-lined fenced entryway to a house, the view from the private dock, and finally, a neighboring yard where a big bull mastiff glared and barked at me from the other side of the fenced until he figured out I wasn’t going away. I painted his yard. We were friends by the time I finished painting.

I am working with a new, smaller, James Coulter palette, and I am leaving my leftover oil paints on the palette, stowing it in the freezer at night. The paints are staying workable for longer than they would if I didn’t keep them in the freezer, but even so, I often find them at different consistencies the next time I use the palette. That was certainly true on Saturday, but once I start painting en plein air, it seems like the challenges just become part of the process. More than once it occurred to me to scrape out the old paint and squeeze new paint onto my palette, but somehow that seemed like it would take up too much valuable time. I was painting on a larger canvas than I usually use, 12 x 24, and I knew I had a lot to cover, so I hung in there, using a medium to modify the paint consistency, finishing at the stroke of noon, right on time. It took six minutes to pack up to go, 8 minutes to drive back to the gallery, and 15 minutes to unload and frame and wire my painting, turning it in at the last minute, at 12:30, for the judging.

Below is my painting as completed there in the paint-out.

Oil painting of a boat in a grassy yard with the play of light under oak trees on the waterfront of a bay — Click for purchase information form.

Posted on 09/02/201604/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Heaven in Taos, a Workshop with Morgan Samuel Price

Photo of Joan Viewnot painting, by Morgan Samuel Price at MSP workshop in Taos, NM, August, 2016. At right is the painting Joan was working on: https://joanvienotart.wpengine.com/galleries/landscape/attachment/2016-0817-taos-storm-coming

Joan Vienot painting, photo by Morgan Samuel Price at MSP workshop in Taos, NM, August, 2016. At right is the painting Joan was working on: https://joanvienotart.wpengine.com/galleries/landscape/attachment/2016-0817-taos-storm-coming.In mid-August I traveled from my home in Northwest Florida, to Taos, New Mexico, for a plein air workshop with my favorite instructor and friend, Morgan Samuel Price. I traveled with Beckie Perrott, also my friend and a member of the group I paint with every week, the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters.

The sunlight is positively beautiful in Taos, especially early in the morning. The landscape is greener than I had imagined it would be, probably because it rained usually once a day.

Beckie and I stayed at the extraordinary B&B called Adobe & Pines Inn, which I rate with 5 stars! Our host, Christine, was so sweet and accommodating, and prepared fantastic breakfasts for us every day.

One of the artists in the class was local — Don Wallis, who helped find interesting places for us to paint, and shared his studio one afternoon when it was too rainy to paint outdoors..

Much of what Morgan taught seemed to me to be the first time I heard it, but she said she teaches generally the same concepts in every class. Maybe it has taken me three workshops to hear what she is saying!!

Below are the paintings I produced in Taos, each done with specific goals from what I was learning. Several are quite small, my intention being to make little practice pieces before I dug in with the concept I wanted to focus on. There were so many shapes I had never painted before — by painting a practice piece first, I was hopeful that the subject then in the second painting would not present as much of a challenge, so that I could pay more attention to the goal of the lesson. This strategy was not very successful — most of the time I bogged down and used up all the painting time on the practice pieces, leaving precious little time to do a second painting!

Labyrinth at Adobe & Pines Inn, Taos, NM. Click the painting to purchase!	San Francisco de Asis Mission, Taos, NM. Click the painting to purchase!	San Francisco de Asis Mission, Taos, NM
Wildflowers in the back 40 at Overland Sheepskin Co., Taos. Click the painting to purchase.	There were 4 — one got away unpainted! Click the painting to put them in your home	Sage in bloom, Taos

Taos Art Supply Courtyard

Oil painting of the bridge and reflective water at the Hacienda Martinez, Taos, NM

Bridge at Hacienda Martinez, Taos, painted indoors, photo reference provided by the instructor. The other paintings were done en plein air.