Plein Air Weekend

This past weekend I spent an exhausting three days at the annual Lakeside Plein Air Festival in Lakeside, Ohio. Friday was unbelievably warm and humid, Saturday was a bit better except that it rained intermittently all day. Sunday was a great day to paint but we had to wrap u early to put our paintings up for sale in the park. I sold three pieces at the festival, one before the festival and will paint two more commissioned pieces.

There seemed to be a few more artists participating this year and the crowds were bigger. One piece I sold was a painting of a cottage named the Rainbow Cottage. I was standing under a tree and I was quite thirsty when a lady who was cleaning the cottage offered me a bottled water. She turned out to be the owner of the cottage so when she asked me to give her a good deal on it I didn't hesitate. The piece will mean a lot more to her than it will to anyone else.

The Rainbow House

9x12 oil on linen

Early Exposure to Art Develops Creativity

Kish Cottage

11x14

oil on canvas

It bothers me to think about the cuts in arts and music that our public schools are being forced to make in order to meet their budgets. I think of all the little artists who won't get the opportunity to learn about creativity and freedom of expression. I can't help but think it will affect the next generation in a negative way. Study after study has proven that early exposure to the fine arts boosts a child's creativity and imagination.

According to John Ninnemann, principal of the Keys School, "young children are naturally expressive.
They have a strong sense of composition and come to school with the innate urge and ability to create and perform. It’s little wonder then that fine arts education delights our students. But an education in the arts does far more than that. Most researchers now consider arts “The Fourth R,” an intellectual discipline as essential as reading, writing and arithmetic, integrally linked to basic learning and key to children’s social and emotional development.

An obvious source of joy and wonder for children, the arts are vital in their own right. Music, drama, visual arts, dance – each offers children another way to communicate and comprehend the world around them. Arts inspire imagination and creativity, promote individuality and self-expression, and teach tolerance
and open-mindedness. Research backs up what teachers know intuitively and witness every day in their classrooms – involvement in the arts clearly boosts students’ self-confidence and self-esteem."

While my daughter and I spent a rainy weekend at Lakeside, Ohio in early July, I sat on the porch and painted some local scenery. A few people were curious and stopped over to take a peek at what I was painting. One couple asked me to paint their son's cottage so they could give the piece to him for Christmas. I have discovered that most people who buy paintings for personal reasons learned the value of art at an early age. These are different than investors, who buy art because they think it will be worth more down the road.

Sue Kish told me about her father, who was a plein air painter in the fifties and sixties. He took all of his children outside and tried to teach them to paint the landscape from life. Sue said she never really became good at it but she did develop an appreciation for art. She wanted me to paint the house en plain air after the her son's family left for the weekend. When I told her this would depend on the weather she understood. There was a small window of sun that weekend so I ended up riding my bike over to the cottage, making a small sketch of the house and taking a few photographs. Then it rained again. The painting was completed at home and mailed to the client.

House Paintings - Commissions I Love to Paint

I'm not sure why, but I love to paint houses for people. I've never wanted to be an architect or create structural drawings, but there is something irresistible about painting a home with character- one that has been taken care of and loved for generations. I have painted a lot of house commissions, usually as gifts around Christmas time or for a birthday. I can say with certainty that a house painting will always look better than a photo of the house. This is not always true of a portrait of a dog or a person, or even a cat. Up close and intimate photos of people and animals can capture personality and depth. It's a lot harder to photograph an inanimate house and get the same level of detail.

Whenever possible I like to start the house painting en plein air. This extra step allows me to judge the color more accurately and to take in things that will not be obvious in the photograph. (Trust me on this- there are tons of things that you see in person that you would never think of from viewing a static photo.) If the client lives a good distance away or the order is placed in the cooler months, I always ask them to provide as many detailed photos of the area surrounding the home as they possibly can.

Looking at photos of the Precht house might lead you to conclude that there is nothing very special or interesting about their home. But when you are there and seeing it for yourself the colors are brilliant; you notice the details like the red mailbox and the waving flag and the brilliant color of the perennials. Spending a few hours on location allows you to create correct perspective and gauge color more accurately. The time of day is critical too. Some light on the house is desirable but you don't want to be painting with the sun behind the house.

The two hours I spend creating a plein air sketch are well invested. While I painted their cat appeared at the window where it sat and gazed at me for a good thirty minutes. This was providential; I'd received photographs of two cats that they wanted somewhere in the painting. Birds were flying up to the bird feeder continually. Would I have noticed this from a photo? Would I have even seen the feeder? Probably not.

Here are a few photos of this project taken while I painted. Notice the lack of detail.

Painting from life gives an artist ideas and allows her to immerse herself in the atmosphere of the scene. This creates a more accurate portrait of the setting and often a better composition.

18" x 24"

oil on linen