Chicory & Queen Anne's Lace ~ Potomac Artworks

3.27.2010

Chicory & Queen Anne's Lace

Some media lend themselves to do overs. I will admit to taking bad advice in the past, which led to do overs of work I was relatively comfortable painting. Even as confident and stubborn as I can be, one just never know how persuasive an outside influence can be.

Here is a do over done over again. I guess I need to be happy that I was led astray, because I then led myself to fix it, a painting with freshness and luminosity that gracefully hides the work it took to get there.

Chicory & Queen Anne's Lace
oil on board
9x12

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The Charm of en Plein Air

Much of my work is done en plein air, French for "in the open air." People often associate it with the Impressionists, but the move to paint outside preceded them by a number of decades. The trend to appreciate landscapes as a genre at all was new for the time.

Several characteristics contribute to the distinctive beauty of en plein air painting. They are generally smaller in size in order to be able to capture a scene in a single sitting. Because of the time limit and environmental factors such as the sun and shadows moving, they often lack extensive details and might appear slightly fuzzy or unfinished. Lastly, they tend to have a freshness and spontaneity which makes them impossible to compare to traditional and methodological studio work. That said, my own studio work tends toward the same feel as en plein air, which then identifies my overall style: softness with an edge.

My aim when painting en plein air is for alla prima paintings, which roughly translates for me as "what happens outside, stays outside." It adds another level of difficulty to the work.

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3.27.2010