My best friend Leslie Kolovich‘s home and studio look out over the beautiful wetlands of Camp Creek Lake, one of the rare coastal dune lakes of Walton County in Northwest Florida. True coastal dune lakes, which periodically exchange water with the sea, exist in only a few places in the world. Ginger Jackson Sinton has written a book about our lakes, Rare Coastal Dune Lakes: Biodiversity and a Sense of Home. A contributor to SoWal.com, she writes, “Walton County defines coastal dune lakes as shallow bodies of water located within two miles of the coast that occasionally intermingle with the Gulf. The lakes are composed of both fresh and saltwater from tributaries, groundwater seepage (from the uplands and the Gulf), rainfall, and coastal storm surges. Their levels rise and fall due to frequency, strength, and duration of storm activity, tidal flows and wind conditions. When water levels reach a critical point the lowest level of the beach opens up, creating a temporary outlet, or outfall, into the Gulf.” (Click for whole article.)
This past Wednesday afternoon found me at Leslie’s studio. The late afternoon sun was painting the top of the marsh grasses with golden light. Leslie has often said that I should paint from her upstairs porch, so we went up for a look, and I immediately went back out to my pickup to get my painting backpack. Early morning and late afternoon light require fast work because the light and shadows are changing so fast. Leslie shot a few short videos showing the progress of my work. I had toned an 8×10 canvas panel a light muted tannish-green, and I chose that panel for this painting so I wouldn’t be worried about white glaring through if my brush skipped over any of the canvas — an unnecessary concern as I painted alla prima impasto.
Below are five of the videos Leslie shot, sometimes with talking, sometimes not. It’s difficult for me to talk while I’m painting, and Leslie and I had a few laughs about that as I sometimes struggled for words!
I’ve heard of certain art described as being painted “in the style of plein air”, but that description describes nothing, because plein air is not a style. Some plein air artists paint in a more abstracted style, and some paint very representationally. Plein air painting, by definition, is painting in open air, on-site. It describes an activity as well as the painting produced during that activity. Plein air artists focus on capturing some aspect of the actual fleeting light. Usually the subject and the artist are at the mercy of the elements and the environment, but there are no rules — if the weather or bugs are nasty, the artist might paint from inside his car. But very little, if any work, is done in the studio. When invitations are given for plein air works to be formally shown, usually the requirement is that most of the painting have been done outdoors, on site, from life, anywhere from 80% of the painting painting en plein air, to the purist’s position of 100% painted on site.
As for my plein work, occasionally I will correct a shape or add a detail in the studio, but usually my plein air paintings are fully completed outdoors, on site. Like many plein air artists, I have many plein air paintings stacked in my studio that for one reason or another, I consider unfinished, or with which I feel less than satisfied as far as the painting representing my impression of the scene and setting. Some have compositional problems, because in addition to the value patterns showing the play of light, there are so many design elements to consider – line, shape, size, position, color, texture, and density, as well as the compositional principles of balance, rhythm, and harmony.
So this week when I was chased back indoors by some biting yellow flies, I worked in the studio, making a few corrections to a plein air painting I had produced in a Laurel Daniel workshop this spring. I removed a pesky, distracting “V”, made the greens more yellow and less green, and I added a little more light in the background, and a red boat shape. The composition is more effective now, and more clearly represents my impression of the morning view, except for the boat of course, which simply adds interest.
As initially painted en plein air, the view from Gascoigne Bluff, St. Simons Island, GeorgiaCompleted painting of the view from Gascoigne Bluff, St. Simons Island, Georgia
I woke early the first morning of my visit, and painted this little 8×6 oil of the potted geranium and rosebush on my host’s front steps in first light. I gave it to them as a thank-you gift.
Having such wonderful hosts made my visit to New Orleans earlier this week so very easy. My intention was to see how plein air works were displayed in fine galleries. Bill and Saramae Dalferes welcomed me into their home and Saramae chauffeured me up and down Magazine and Julia Streets to galleries we knew to carry plein air works, as well as a few more along the way.
(Because I write my blog as a record of my progress, it becomes a notebook of sorts, if anyone is wondering why I link so much. Some of my links are to give a thank you to people or places which have given an experience to me; I link others so that I can go back and look up people or places I don’t want to forget.)
Saramae Dalferes is the career coach who helped me make the transition to becoming a full-time artist 2 days a week, a year ago last spring. (Her email address is in the last paragraph, below.) Saramae helped me identify the roadblocks that were keeping me stagnant, and then, once identified, helped me to remove them by changing the way I think and speak, by removing words that limited me. One of the biggest changes was effected by using a relatively simple tool, a calendar. When I put my future painting dates on a calendar, they are 99% certain to happen. If I don’t, then they are about 10% certain, even today, and back then, 0%.
Saramae had finished a lot of research before I even arrived last Monday. A few galleries were open Monday afternoon, but Tuesday was the day to remember! We started at the Cole Pratt Gallery where the assistant director of the gallery, Cristin Cortez, graciously and expertly talked to us about every artist in the gallery. We had specifically gone to see the works of Phil Sandusky, a prolific plein air artist and author of New Orleans en Plein Air and New Orleans Impressionist Cityscapes as well as many other books.
The plein air works by Sandusky were presented in wooden shadow box floater frames, which display the panel or canvas all the way to the edge, where the “reveal” of a standard frame hides about 1/4 to 3/8″ around the edge of the painting.
We stopped at the Garden District Gallery where we met the director Jim Adams, a fascinating guy whose wife, gallery owner Patti Adams, was showing amazing works with a number of other artists in the front gallery exhibit, “Drawn – Exploring the Line”. Jim and Patti also play for the symphony there in New Orleans. We had gone in to see plein air paintings by Elayne Kuehler, but apparently that show was over. She has a drawing in the “Drawn” exhibit. As an aside, it puzzles me why drawings command prices that are so much lower than other media, even though they may demonstrate far superior technical skill and expression. Carol Peeble’s work is a perfect example, an amazing large piece selling for only $1200, her 50% probably including the expense of the framing. (I do not begrudge the gallery’s share, the gallery having all of the overhead expenses as well as advertising — the relatively low price of the media probably has more to do with an archaic perception of drawings being less permanent, bu with today’s archival materials and presentation, that no longer is true.)
Saramae also took me to the Soren Christensen Gallery where the director brought us plein air works by Libby Johnson out of the back room where they were waiting to be hung for an upcoming show.. The Jean Bragg Gallery of Southern Art was displaying a number of plein air artists, but when I asked how artists were selected, the director said that they were partial to local artists showing work painted in Louisianna.
We happened upon the Callan Contemporary Gallery, which had eye-popping optical illusions by James Flynn, and in a back room we discovered a piece by Sibylle Peretti, Holding Birds, from her show there last April, which completely blew me away. 72″ wide, it included a fantastic drawing floating underneath thick engraved, smoked plexiglas, with imagery created over the drawing, and feathers underneath and other feathers engraved and silver-leafed within the plexiglas. No plein air works at the Callan, but what a visual feast!
The rest seems like a whirlwind — Betsy Stewart at Octavia Art Gallery; Lemieux Gallery, where Margaret Tolbert’s impression of a spring felt like home to me; at Guy Lyman which is showing many plein air paintings, in the back room sitting on the floor, a beautiful ink and conte drawing of a Dancer holding her ballet shoes, by Wilfred R.E. Fairclough, $1200; glassworks artist Dale Chihuly at the Arthur Roger Gallery, works priced from $40,000 to $225,000, and last but not least, the stillifes of Amy Weiskopf, small works priced generally $6000, framed in beautiful shadow box floater frames that looked like they were made of bronze, with no visible seams at the miter joints.
My plan last year was to begin plein air painting and regain my long dormant skills as a painter, intending to become a full-time artist at least two days a week. This year I have been taking as many workshops as I could afford, sort of a post-graduate refresher course in painting techniques and style, and next year I intend to focus on marketing. The purpose of the trip to New Orleans this week was to get ideas my subconscious can mull over for next year, while I trek onward with this year’s goals.
If you want to contact my career coach, Saramae Dalferes, for her help with your own aspirations, her email address, given with her permission, is sedalferesatyahoodotcom, which I have translated out of standard email address format to discourage spam.
I recently completed two commissioned assignments in which specific subjects were requested. In the first case, a specific style also was requested. Fortunately for me, the stylistic samples I was given, ranged from the light and airy scenes of the French Impressionists to a piece of “outsider art” which had that sort of purely expressive sense of being painted by an artist who has not had formal training. I was confident I could paint within that wide of a range!
The location of the first commissioned piece was in the gardens at Grayt Grounds of Monet Monet, at a wedding reception, and my job was to paint the bride and groom’s first dance. When I arrived to get the background started, the Forrest Williams band was setting up, and the people from Grayton Beach Catering were bustling about. My background was blocked in when the first guests arrived, and I was enjoying the band singing “She’s as Sweet as Tupelo Honey”. By the time the guests started arriving, my 10×8 painting was well underway, and a few of the guests would wander over and watch as I worked. I let one of the children put some color on the bottom part. When the bride and groom were announced and made their entrance onto the dance floor, I put down my brush and picked up my sketchpad and my camera. After the dance, I laid in the figures on my nearly finished background and then finished the details in the studio using my sketch and my photos for reference. Afterwards, I decided to paint another painting in the studio, making effort to paint in a more “Impressionist” style, with layers of short, patterned brushstrokes loaded with color, which was great fun. (See also my later blog “Commissions under Pressure – Plein Air at Events”.)
Plein air sketch
Plein air painting, details in studio
Studio painting
The second commission was for Channing Gardner, a real estate agent, for a gift for his client. My task was to paint the Seagrove Beach property as it was when it was purchased, before anything was built on it. It took me two mornings to complete it, because of the changing light and the heat. I opted for a wider format, painting it 12×24, which allowed me to include more of the coastal development to contrast with the empty lot.
June is my busiest time of year in my day job, managing my pool service business, so I was not able to join the local plein air painters yet this summer until things lightened up this week. We met near the pond at Mystic Port, a small collection of shops and restaurants north of Grayton Beach, Florida. I was intrigued by the fountain, but never having painted one, I gladly accepted the suggestion of a more experienced artist, to put the splash on the surface of the water and then take a palette knife and drag upwards. I am happy with the results — I can hearing the water falling. Other works by our group on that day can be found on our Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.520412828081717.1073741866.285985251524477&type=1.
Don Demers, one of my workshop instructors last week, tongue in cheek, said “Plein air painting creates bad drivers.” He explained the hazard, that as a practicing plein air painter, one could be driving along and become mesmerized, staring at the shape or color of something, perhaps even something so interesting as the shadow of an underpass. We all laughed of course, but I recognize the truth of his statement. After practicing plein air painting for 8 days, I can’t look anywhere now without noticing wonderful value contrasts, delicious color intensities, and patterns of light leading my eye through compositions waiting to be painted.
The first workshop I attended was by invitation. Twelve painters were selected to be in the “pilot” course for the Apalachicola School of Art Plein Air Academy. Master plein air artist Don Demers is designing the curriculum, and Joe Taylor of the Apalachicola School of Art is planning the logistics. Together they will come up with a course to be offered as professional development for the advanced plein air painter. Don spent a good bit of time talking with each of us, as well as offering constructive tips with our paintings. Of most practical value to me was his suggestion to set intention before starting a painting, and then to stick to that intention. He suggested we draw “thumbnail sketches” of our intended paintings first, studying the value relationships and evaluating whether the composition would work as a whole, before we spent 3 hours painting it. Some of my sketches progressed into paintings, some were mere studies of shapes or ideas discarded as perhaps too complicated or logistically difficult (the one above left required me to stand in an ant pile; the one above right was too complicated for my limited knowledge of fishing boats).
I learned something about photography after doing one such value study, and that is that my iPhone camera does not see the light the way I do. In fact my camera hardly picked up the power of the light at all. Here’s a comparison:
I completed two paintings and a couple of studies in the Plein Air Academy workshop. Integrating what I am learning is always difficult — there has to be a period of intense, grinding focus, because painting is for the most part so visceral, and newly learned information so very intellectual. I found myself completely exhausted by the end of the first several days. I must have had every muscle in my body tensed as I tried to incorporate what I was learning. I literally came home, ate supper, and went straight to bed, for the first 3 days.
Here are a few of my paintings from the Apalachicola School of Art Plein Air Academy workshop.
Typical page of notes
Over the next few days I attended the Forgotten Coast En Plein Air event workshop with Greg LaRock and Ken Dewaard. I wish I could remember everything they said. It was fun to watch the different approaches of two accomplished artists. Both were very strong on compositional tips. LaRock often mentioned ways to lead the viewer’s eye through the painting, and Dewaard pointed out subtle color changes to look for, like the change in the tint of shadows depending on how much of the sky color they might be acquiring, or how much of the color of the ground. Hopefully I absorbed a lot of it, even though I can’t recite it. Below are the paintings I produced during their workshop. In the first one, my challenge was to make the pile of rubble, mostly chunks of concrete, look interesting, like a rocky shoreline. The paintings of the boats and of the shirts for sale both challenged me to simplify.
I actually had energy to paint a few small studies outside of class, the last several days, below. Apologies for shooting the photos slightly crooked!
Available for purchase. Click the painting for a link to order it!
NOTE: light added to 2nd painting above, at https://joanvienotart.wpengine.com/?p=7003
And now back to my day-job! But the shadows of those underpasses are starting to look mighty interesting!!
Restored Slave Houses, St. Simons Island, incomplete (Some heavy energy remaining here)
Nupastel drawing of my marsh view at sunrise
Sea Island Marsh 1
Sea Island Marsh 2, incomplete
Coastal Georgia was a beautiful place to be, last week. I drove from my home in Northwest Florida to St. Simons Island for a plein air painting working with Laurel Daniel, a fabulous artist whose work I have been watching for years, following her blog even before I ever decided to try plein air painting. Laurel is a master at ‘definitive suggestion’ in her work, leaving out just enough of the smaller details which invites the viewer to participate. I am a fan of this kind of work, because the longer the viewer will look at the piece, the more they will appreciate it, and not just see it and walk away.
Joan Vienot at work (Photo by Laurel Daniel)
Photos of the marsh outside my hotel
Laurel worked hard for us, teaching us to show distance by muting intensity and tapering values to mid-range, but her primary focus was teaching us to block-in the basic shapes and values before getting down to the business of painting. Each day she demo’d a different way of blocking-in, before painting luscious scenes “From Marsh to Seaside.” Her three block-in methods include dry brush sketch in a dark neutral; mid-toning with a neutral and then wiping out lighter values and adding darks; and the most difficult, blocking in with true colors at correct value. Laurel put the dark elements in the painting first, leaving the lighter values for later. Her reasoning was to get down the shadow patterns first, so that we would be able to hold onto them throughout the painting, because the light and shadows change throughout the two hours you are painting. In this location, the tide changed as well. A marsh full of water might be nearly bone dry by the time you were finishing a painting, so what started out to be a pattern of light on water, could be dark mudflats by the time you finished. Laurel blogged about her workshop at http://www.laureldaniel.blogspot.com/2014/05/marshside-palms-demo-georgia-workshop.html. We were treated to an opening of Laurel’s works at Anderson Fine Art Gallery on St. Simons Island on Friday evening, midway through the workshop. There were a lot of red dots on the labels by the end of the evening, indicating “SOLD”. I would have loved to have brought one home with me, but it already had a red dot on it, sold before I arrived. I was happy to see works by other amazing artists in the other rooms of the gallery, including Morgan Samuel Price from whom I took a workshop in April. On the last day of the workshop, my muted phone started buzzing while I was shooting some progress photos of the instructor’s demo — it was Joe Taylor calling, the organizer of the Forgotten Coast en Plein Air. I will be attending a workshop by Ken Dewaard and Greg LaRock after that event, so I thought it might be some details about that. But no. Joe started by asking me if I had received his email, and I drew a blank. I went from confusion to shock, when he said he had emailed me to ask if I would like to be one of the students in a pilot workshop that is being designed as Advanced Plein Air for the Apalachicola School of Art. I managed to compose myself enough to say Yes! So I will be taking 2 workshops, back-to-back, next week. When I set the intention of taking as many plein air workshops as I could afford this year, I didn’t know that I would be getting more workshops than I can afford! (This one will be free!) I am delayed in getting this blog posted. We had a flooding rainstorm that shut down the entire Florida Panhandle, closing roads and bringing everything to a standstill. About 2 feet of rain fell in a 24-hour period. I was fortunate that my home and business did not suffer any damages, other than a sign blown down. Many others are not so fortunate. The same storm spawned killer tornados in other states. Nevertheless, it kept me from getting back into the studio to practice my new awareness gained from Lasurel Daniel’s workshop. Here’s a quick video of the bridge over the slow moving swamp I cross every day, a half-mile from my home. http://youtu.be/3cGH-p9XM00
After a month of high pollen alerts, torrential rains have cleaned the air and a very chilly air mass ushered in an ideal day for plein air painting, with stark shadows and bright colors. I met up with the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters at Nick’s Restaurant in Basin Bayou, which is on the north side of the Choctawhatchee Bay, halfway between Freeport and Niceville, in Northwest Florida. Shortly after we arrived, the neighbor released his penful of exotic chickens, and they provided distraction and amusement while we painted, the young roosters strutting around, trying their first crowing in cracking, adolescent voices.
I remembered what I had learned in Morgan Samuel Price’s workshop 2 weeks ago. I worked with the intention of creating the illusion of space, with horizontal surfaces catching much more light and vertical surfaces much less, using values to lead the eye through the painting.
For my first painting, I was interested by the four trees along the shoreline, so I opted not to include the boat, “Pompano”, which stood on dry-land props between two of the trees. My interest was that one of the trees was as orange as it was green. After I finished it, I painted a second, smaller painting, this one of the boat. Both paintings accomplished what I set out to do.
Eariler this year, I saw a news photographer at one of our painting sites, but I thought he was taking pictures of other artists. To my surprise, the photo published is a photo of me, working on my painting at Oaks Marina, in Niceville, Florida! The print version of Emerald Coast Magazine uses the photo for the whole page, with the story inset. The story in digital format can be found at http://www.emeraldcoastmagazine.com/April-May-2014/In-Plein-Sight/Story by Diane Dorney, and photo by Scott Holstein.
Last week I attended a plein air painting workshop in Apalachicola, Florida, taught by Morgan Samuel Price. The location of this fishing village is just two hours from my home, an easy drive but far enough away that I chose to stay in a rental property rather than commute. I learned so much I hardly know where to begin. It will probably take me years to assimilate it. The difficult thing about an intense learning situation, is that much of it is communicated abstractly in words and absorbed into the left brain, while painting is performed on the right side of the brain. Fortunately, Morgan demonstrated during and after each lecture, to help us make right-brain sense of the concepts she was teaching. And she didn’t seem to mind repeating answers while each of us gained just enough understanding to ask the same question the previous student had just asked. “Morgan, what colors are you using now?” “Ultramarine blue, cadmium red light, and hansa yellow,” Morgan would answer. And the next student would ask, “Morgan, what colors did you mix to get this color?” And Morgan would patiently answer, “Ultramarine blue, cadmium red light, and hansa yellow.” To be fair, though, the different colors we were asking about were entirely different colors — it’s just that Morgan is a wizard at color mixing, and can make any color on the palette out of ultramarine blue, cadmium red light, and hansa yellow.
The first day, Morgan taught us about various materials and how to hold the brush for different angles of brushstrokes, and she taught us about color value, intensity, and temperature. She taught us more about those topicss every single day. She also taught us about color in context, about composition, about creating the illusion of receding space, how light falls on horizontal surfaces vs vertical surfaces, how the eye moves through a painting, and even how to doodle on a scratchpad that sits by the telephone. She taught us about clarity of value and precision of shape. She taught with ease and good humor. And she patiently answered again, “Ultramarine blue, cadmium red light, and hansa yellow.”
We had some good sunshine the weekend before the class, but our only sunny day during the class was the first day, Monday. After watching Morgan paint a simple alleyway with so many luscious values and such obvious perspective, making it look oh-so-easy, she turned us loose to paint in the afternoon. I choose the bright yellow siding of the Inn where everyone else was staying, and tried to capture the perspective of the sidewalk receding toward the church in the background. Even in my frustration (left brain / right brain confusion), I already had begun to learn. It is in the struggle that I find I truly learn, whether the painting shows that learning or not. There is some confusion between the palm tree and the porch roof which makes the porch roof look like it is angled wrong — it’s not. But as we joked in class, sometimes we need arrows and words printed on our painting to explain different elements. My painting of the Inn could use several arrows.
The next day we drove to St. George Island, and I painted a grove of scrub oaks which had a play of light on the tree trunks that interested me. I struggled with that light, but Morgan said to be definite with it — so I put down my tentative little brush and made some bold swaths of light, giving it much more of the feel that I wanted.
On Wednesday, two of the other students and I got lost from the rest of the class. We painted near the base of the bridge to SGI, at a marina. I painted on 16×20 canvas panel instead of my usual 8×10. I enjoyed using bigger brushes, but found myself being very stingy in mixing my colors, never mixing enough paint. It’s difficult to paint with no paint on your brush.
Thursday found us at Scipio Creek, at another marina at the north edge of Apalachicola. The pelicans and seagulls put on a continuous show for us while we caught the hazy pinks and lavenders in the middle ground and the muted grays in the distance, in contrast with the richer colors and more contrasting values in the foreground.
And then, sadly, it was Friday. I painted beneath the overhanging deck of ‘Up the Creek’ Restaurant, with a vicious thunderstorm popping lightning all around me. Nearby strikes three times chased me back further underneath to the center of the marine storage area under the building, which I imagined was safer. All of the colors of my scene were washed out, at times it being so dark there was no color at all. The last thing I painted were the reedy grasses and trees in the background, when suddenly I realized it was time to critique, so I packed up and hurried back. I will dim the intensity of color on that foliage to make it recede more — it’s a little too bright, like the sun is shining on it, which it wasn’t.
A plug for my excellent host, the owner of the property where I stayed, Robert Lindsley: Visit the Robert Lindsley Studio and Gallery at 15 Avenue E near the waterfront in Apalachicola. And to the VRBO agent, my new friend Mike Klema — just search “VRBO Apalachicola” for Vacation Rentals By Owner, and Mike’s units will come up. He was very accommodating, and I loved my place behind the island, right on US 98! I had the thrill of seeing both the sunrises and the sunsets, as well as the parade of fishing boats every morning, and the abundant species of birds. I’ve posted below a few photographs of my week, which all in all I enjoyed very much.
Photograph, moon setting over Buffalo Mountain in Silverthorne, CO, in the alpenglow of the sunrise
If you’ve been following my blog, you know that this year I have the intention of attending as many workshops as I can afford, to learn as much as I can from artists whose work I admire. At the very least, if i am traveling anywhere, I am justifying it by taking my paints.
So last month when I traveled to Colorado for my Dad’s 94th birthday and then to the mountains to play in the snow with my two sisters and their families, I took my Guerrilla Painter’s Box, with every intention of painting every day. I had forgotten that where there is snow, then it probably will be snowing! So the light was too dim for inspired painting, and the weather suitable only for playing in the snow, until the last day I was there, when the sun finally came out. I stepped out onto the front balcony and caught the view of the mountains across the way. I left that little 5 x 7 painting there with my sister as a small thank you for the adventures.
I took a lot of photos, thinking I would paint more snow scenes later, but life has been hectic since I returned, so I only managed one, at left.
Yesterday I again painted with th Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters group in my home area in Florida. We met at Baytowne in Sandestin, FL, and I painted the brightly colored shops reflecting into the pond. It was chilly, and the light was low, with rain predicted, but the lake was flat and the reflections just a bit choppy. To brighten my colors, I choose a canvas I had under painted orange, and I allowed some of the orange to show through my colors, and I scratched off some of the paint in places where I wanted lines, so the lines shine a bright orange.
We met near the fountain for our critique. Another artist had the misfortune of dropping his painting and the edge of it sliced a diagonal scrape across the face of my painting, so I had some repairing to do afterwards. I am happy to report that the painting is no worse for the wear. sometimes these sorts of things happen when you are painting outdoors — it’s all just part of the experience, where things are never entirely under control.
