White Sands Sunset 2017 | watercolor pastel on paper | 8" x 5.5"

November 13, 2017

En plein air is a French term that translates to "open air" and in art refers to the act and end product of sitting in the outdoors and painting or drawing what you see. It was my first entry back into making art after a pretty extended break. My good friend Scott Winterrowd is a prolific watercolorist who was my initial inspiration for beginning to pack sketching supplies when I traveled. The satisfaction he was clearly getting from the activity was contagious, and it was appealing to my inner documentarian/historian as another way to capture my experiences (read more about Scott in this blog post). What I didn't bargain for was exactly how immersive of an experience it would come to be in and of itself, allowing me to connect with a place at a deeper level. The simple act of sitting quietly and focusing first on the overall shape of a landscape and then honing in on the details—the flickering leaves in a tree, a jumble of pebbles, a shadowy area beside a boulder, light dancing atop waves—while physically making marks results in being fully present in a way that is so different from taking a photo or even just relaxing and doing nothing (both of which are great pursuits in their own special ways). My recall of the places I have put to paper in the moment is so much richer than other memories, with not just sight activated but sense memories of smells or sounds or the feel of the air on my skin. It's a meditative act, but also a self-indulgent one for a person who likes to engage in mental time travel often.

In 2009, I dipped my toe in the water and began with pencil sketches and a couple of small gouache and watercolor paintings that frustrated the Hell out of me. Out of the practice of drawing, used to being able to crank out professional quality designs, and battling the toxicity of perfectionism, it definitely didn't start as meditative. But I recognized it as a great way to get back in the habit and to keep my drawing skills in check and kept at it, also remembering somewhere along the way to let go and then finding that I got so much more pleasure from quicker, looser, more expressive and stylized drawings and paintings. These days the style of my plein air work bounces around quite a bit. It's a great place to just play once you give yourself permission to do so. Sometimes I pay homage to other artists, like the American Modernists at the time this post was written (Arthur Dove is a particular favorite). Many times it's a solo activity but other times I sit with my kids or a friend. Sometimes they draw alongside me, cementing their place in a vivid memory. And the result is a keepsake where I can revisit not only the physical sense of a place, but the energy inside my head at the time and who and what things were influencing me as well.

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Check out my interview on the podcast Who Are These People? to hear more about my plein air work and why I started making art again. There's also this short teaser where I talk about Scott Winterrowd a bit more and how our culture doesn't value art.

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