Blog

Delcambre, Louisiana

3/16/24

Oh my! I was awarded “Best Water” for my painting “Morning Berth” at last night’s gala art opening for Shadows on the Teche Plein Air Festival in New Iberia, Louisiana. (I never consider that I “win” anything - art is simply not about me vs you - the show was phenomenal ! And if the judge chose one of 20 other paintings, I would have had no problem at all.) I’m humbled and honored. Thank you to judge John Poon, for his choices and his talks. I learned a lot.

One day All of us artists were asked to go to a town called Delcambre to paint their waterfront. The communities here in the very south of Louisiana seem to be still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita - at least they all talk with pride about their rebuilding efforts…still. Cajuns are a proud and resilient lot - strong ties to their family, faith, land and waterways. Word. Respect. They work the water and land - they also play on the water and land. The waterfront has some derelict boats moored at rotting piers - as well as rebuilt docks with new boats - as well as John boats, recreational boats and Work boats all along the canal which is only about 50 yards wide that leads to the Gulf of Mexico. I woke up early and went there in the morning to paint the boats along the shanties and docks. In the evening, the organizers of the event served food, refreshments, and invited a zydeco band to play for us at the local park pavilion…Accordions, banjos, Cajun singers. I saw another painting to be done in my mind’s eye - so I came back the next day to paint the scene from another angle. Locals came up and asked me questions, introduce themselves, befriend me and offer me water, refreshments . God is good!

Here are the two paintings I painted from the docks. “Morning Berth” is the winner.

Shadows on the Teche Plein Air Competition

Enjoy

"Morning Berth" 12x16 oil/canvas

"Docks of Delcambre  16x20  oil/canvas

This is - I believe - is my final posting about Winter Park Paint Out in the suburbs of Orlando, Florida.

All last week I was visiting, painting the

“jungle-esque” beauty of parks and gardens and cypress groves and lily pad ponds of this city within a park...that I longed for the expanse, vistas and viewscapes of Florida’s beautiful panoramas. Oh for the open air…the range…

So - I took a drive from Orlando up I-4. An exit or two up, I saw this wide open field of trees and grass and flora. I pulled over right off the exit ramp in Eatonville, Florida…set up my easel, supplies and started to paint the open air of Florida.

Turns out…Eatonville is the first incorporated all-black city in the nation - trying to hold off gentrification - which will displace the folks of this working class town. I hope not. The field is an open space where a Vo-tech “black” trade school was located.

It’s amazing what we learn in this great land of ours if we just drive up the road, open our eyes and listen.

(I added the cows. Florida has lots of cows. This painting needed cows. Cows should live here…just sayin…)

Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens   Painted in April, 2023

“Under Florida Skies”. 14 x 18 oil/canvas

I’ve been driving by this farm on the highway all my life and have always wondered what was back there…down that lane, off the highway. (I’m from here). So, I turned down the lane, knocked on the door…asked permission to wander the farm with my easel and supply knapsack. Permission granted. There were aged chicken coops, weirdly shaped barns, tool sheds, old covered car ports, grain silos, housing units, free range chickens, lambs and goats, feral cats, friendly barnyard dogs. Inside these sheds, barns and ports were antique cars, trucks, tractors, old tillers, Sowers and feed wagons - all rusting away in there aged dwellings.

I usually do not paint “things” per se - I paint impressionist vistas and expansive views… usually - but this farm was a veritable gold mine of “things”. So - this being Easton Plein Air festival - I chose to paint things.

Painted during Plein Air Easton in July, 2023

“Farmer’s Free Range and Flat Tires”. 18x24 oil/canvas.                 

This Week I’m taking part in the Floyd Virginia Biennial Plein Air Festival. Floyd is nestled in the Blue Ridge mountain range of south western Virginia right off the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Blue Ridge Parkway is America’s longest linear Park – the highway is the park, and the park is the highway! This park presents beautiful vistas where you can see for miles - or you can just look into the forest. You can watch the haze and mist burn off in the valleys as the sun rises. My host this week has a guest cabin in the mountains, in the woods.  My lodgings and studio this past week was that cabin. I was told to watch out for the Bears. The town is called “Meadows of Dan”. Nobody seems to know who “Dan” is. (I asked). The homesteads, the farms, even single dwellings, all have cows. Cows everywhere! Some people have hundreds, some people have just one. Perhaps they use the cow as a lawnmower.

Most of my painting efforts this week took part right off (on) the parkway.

3rd Floyd Plein Air Biennial Gala Celebration & Art Sale. (painted at festival. September 2022)

Enjoy!

“Meadows of Dan”. 18 x 24. Oil/canvas

t Plein Air Easton Competition and Arts Festival, we were allowed to turn in two paintings for competition. All other paintings are in the “headquarters” - the Armory on Harrison Street in Easton. (There are some real American Masterpieces in that show from some real rock stars of the Plein air tradition…not a second-string show at all). I wanted to do something a little different this year -this is the Olympics of Plein Air, after all. I added some new colors to my palette, and I approached the painting with a tad softer touch. The morning heat here on the shore makes for a diffused light…a “Smokey” kind of haze. So - instead of my “brushy”, impressionist, expressive mark making - I leaned into a softer process…to get that point across.

I channeled some of the Renaissance masters, and American tonalist artists. The art word is “Sfumato”.

“Sfumato” is an Italian word meaning “smoke”…it is also a painting technique and process.

“Sfumato” is a painting technique for softening the transition between colors and values. It is the painted process of blending and blurring hard edges. It is one of the canonical painting modes of the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci was the most prominent practitioner of sfumato. He introduced it and implemented it in many of his works, including the Virgin of the Rocks and in his famous painting of the Mona Lisa. He described sfumato as "without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke". In other words, there are blurry edges between painted disparate objects - e.g., a cheekbone and the background, a cloud and the surrounding sky, a tree-line and the “air” around it…etc, etc.

here is my entry…and attempt.

Morning of Grace”. 24 x 30. Oil/canvas

In physics, the "observer effect" is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation...Physicists have found that even passive observation of quantum phenomena can actually change the measured result. In other words, just by looking at "something", that "something" has changed.

On an “Indian Summer” morning several weeks ago, I went back to one of my favorite corners on the planet...to look, to meditate, to capture, to chill...and of course to paint “en plein air”. The temperature was in the 60’s, the lighting of the scene was somewhat diffused from the morning mist being burned off by the rising sun. Colors of the land and water had fully shifted to a peak autumn colour- at least for the Eastern shore of Maryland. It was calm. It was quiet. I set up my easel, canvas, brushes and paint--cognizant of being “quiet”—and proceeded to paint.

Sometime later, my phone rang-like an alarm disturbing this very real serenity...upending the zen of peace and quiet that I was sharing with nature herself. The muse herself -- who -- moments prior—was humming silently with me—was awakened, was disturbed.

A lone Great Blue Heron left her wading lair skipping across the water...taking flight. I witnessed this. I was there.

I think I proved this idea of the "observer effect" on this morning...at least from an aesthetic point of view. This Heron's flight at this moment of time may never had lofted over Rewastico Pond...had I not been there...observing. I am sure my science friends will peer review my idea here-and they are welcome.

I also think that on this particular morning that I answered that old cliché conundrum..."if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it...does it make a sound?" Of course it does...but it "sounds" different if you are there to hear and observe...to celebrate your senses.

Observe and enjoy

"Heron's Flight" 24 x 36 oil/canvas

May, 2023

Recapping my visit and participation in the Winter Park Paint Out sponsored by the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens last week in Winter Park, Florida … a beautiful hamlet nestled in one big park in the central Florida Lake District...so to speak. One day, I visited Meade Botanical Gardens - a sort of wilderness respite in the heart of the town. I was warned to beware of Alligators…told to watch my step due to poisonous snakes…I mean - was I on a safari, or a Plein air painting excursion? So I found a corner of a pretty, little wooded pond where I perched my easel and stool…poked a stick around the weeds - nope, no vipers…tucked my feet under the stool - gators aren’t getting me … and painted this pond.

It’s a jungle out there…just sayin’...

(Paintings from me and other great artists can be viewed at Polasek.org )

“Alice’s Pond” oil/canvas 12 x 16

April, 2023

This week has been the start of the Plein air painting “season” for me. I was invited to Plein Air South as a faculty member for the week - About 10 artists from around the country joined forces to teach, mentor and paint…using oils, pastels and watercolors. Many, many “fledgling” artists from the Gulf states, Georgia, Carolinas traveled to stay and learn from us - and, us from them. This took place on Florida’s “forgotten coast”… in and around Appalachicola, St. George Island and Eastpoint - on the Gulf of Mexico and Appalachicola Bay.

There is this family on the island here that appears homeless...riding around with bicycles, knapsacks…long bearded scruffy man, disheveled woman, precocious child ... they are not homeless - they live on a de-rigged shrimp boat on the bay. Quite interesting to talk with the family…some of my prejudices were diffused meeting and engaging with this family and their choices. I asked their permission to paint their "home".

"Homestead on the Bay" 11 x 14 oil/canvas

In the Summer of 2023, I participated in the 2023 Mountain Maryland Plein Air Competition & Exhibition - a painting extravaganza in the mountains of Western Maryland - centered around Cumberland.

One morning I am just cruising around looking for scenes and viewscapes to paint…miles away from headquarters. I check my GPS to make sure that I am still in Maryland - that I haven’t veered into West Virginia…or even Pennsylvania. (Rules, Y’know). I spot a McDonalds. Civilization. I mean – if you ever see a McDs…well, you just can not be lost….right?  I pulled into the drive thru - order an ice tea and a buscuit. As I’m picking up my order - I see over my shoulder the valley, a vista … wow! No need to cruise around anymore looking for the muse …she is in the parking lot of a fast food joint. I pull out and over to the back corner of the lot - park - set up my easel, paints, little stool. And this happened… in the middle of nowhere Maryland… in the parking lot …of McDonald’s.

…you just never know - where those “roses” are -that you are told not to forget to stop and smell.

Enjoy

“Hay Maker”  oil/canvas  14 x 18

Life of a Plein Air painter… so- I participated in the Chincoteague, Virginia Plein Air festival.

Chincoteague Island Virginia is a barrier island off the coast of Virginia’s Eastern Shore - part of the geographic “spit” known as the “Delmarva” Peninsula. It is also nestled in with Assateague Island - where the cute little ponies roam freely among the dunes, marshes and forested areas. It is about an hour from my home. I woke up early one morning to travel to the island … to look for the morning muse…and paint a morning scene of the island. So - I’m driving up and down roads, side streets - waiting for the muse to jump out …catch my fancy…and present a viewscape compelling enough for me to set up and paint. Low and behold - right on Main Street - I drive by a cottage with sunflowers, picket fence, flag and pole… and there was also a beautiful old fashioned deep pink colored bicycle propped up against the fence. I think - this bicycle has no “reason” to be there. I back my truck up to relook at this. Again, I think - the muse sure is baffling…of all the beautiful dunes, marshy vistas with fist shaped clouds dancing above, surf and boats in the bay …darned if she doesn’t lead me to a corner - cute little cottage - next to a rental property on Main Street. I pull into the driveway next door to ask permission to park and set up my easel.

Knock, Knock. I nice lady with a youngster saddled to her hip answers.

Me: Good morning M’am. My name is John and I was wondering…

Lady: we are just renting here for vacation…but, sure- you can park here and paint - if you don’t mind youngsters running around.

Me: thank you. Say…is that your bike?

Lady: no, it’s not. We don’t know whose bike that is. It’s been leaning right there for weeks. The neighbor moves it to cuts grass, then moves it back. Perhaps it belongs to the owner - he rents this house from Philadelphia.

Me: interesting…say - what’s your name M’am?

Lady: Georgia…we are from DC. You?

Me: from Maryland … an hour up the road.

Georgia: help yourself. Let me know if you need anything … water, whatever.

Me: thank you

I proceed to set up. Thinking to myself - Georgia from DC, helpng me from Maryland, paint a picture of a bike from Pennsylvania in Virginia. Serendipity.

Life is good. Chincoteague Cultural Alliance

Enjoy

“Where Is My Bike?” Oil/canvas 11 x 14.