Chosen Faculty for Plein Air LIVE!

Sharing a bit of shameless self promotion.

https://www.pleinairlive.com/2021?affiliate_id=2997289

I've been asked to be on staff for the Beginner's Day, April 14th at the 2021 Plein Air Live event.

Join me and others as I share tips, tricks, and advised experience on painting outdoors. Pastels have their own qualities that make plein air a very rewarding experience...but there are some pitfalls and challenges too. My focus will be on plein air with pastels along with other Professional artists teaching Oil, Watercolor, and Acrylic for the Plein Air Live "Beginners Day".

Boot up your computer, laptop, or smartphone, grab a note pad, and your sense of humor to learn and laugh along with me and other professional artists as I demonstrate my method with pastels en plein air. This "Beginners Day" is available through registering for the Plein Air Live event.

Learn more at Plein Air Live April 14-17th HERE!

An Artist's Voice Is Not Heard

 An Artist's Voice Is Not Heard

Grandpa's Barn, Creswell, OR.  Demolished c..2010

 

I'm hoping all is well with you and are getting through your summer unaffected by all the bad news out there. It's been so difficult to find positive in our world, and as an artist, I feel a deep responsibility to bring some beauty into your life.  You see, it's more of a calling and I must do what I am destined to do.  So hand over the reins for a minute and hear me out, OK? 

So over the past ten months, give or take, I have been feeling something brewing in my artwork that was not apparent to me until last week.  As the paintbrush was burning up the easel, my work began to steer towards barns and rural life.  Simple subjects. Things that I could relate to on a deeper level.  And through discussion and feedback from my collectors and artist peers, there seems to be a common thread that is felt in my most recent work:  

Nostalgia  
Fond melancholy
Calm
Hope
Resolve

and all those feelings have been sensed in paint?

WOAH!  It is more apparent to me just how my deep feelings translate over to the canvas. So it isn't COVID or riots?  Well, I know those feelings of injustice and tragedy are pouring out in oil just the same. But now more than ever I realize the apparent visual communication I have been whipping up is coming out in ways I had never imagined.  It's a SENSE of calm I get when I paint.  My main catalyst?  The sale of my family's 100-year-old farm and a deep regret that I could not take the farm onto my own to cherish, nurture, and allow to blossom.  The change of hands had to happen at some time I suppose,  and so I express my feelings through creating with pigments. 

So please take a minute to visit both my "Landscapes" and "Plein Air" pages on my website.  Please let me know what you feel when you look at my barns. Is it nostalgia? Or perhaps you might sense a resolve in my work? For me, I believe that the artists' voice is not heard, but felt... and I feel hope.