Plein air Painting

Vermont is full of changing colors. Each maple, hidden in the lush greens of summer, begins changing and becomes a vocal point.
Choose one tree or a forest of trees as a focal point or paint a story which brings the eye through the painting with no highlighted focal point. Be sure to keep the eye rotating in the painting or the viewer becomes distracted by a different painting. This is treating a landscape as a spatial experience-we "take in the whole view" all at once.

Here is a painting from last winter. I am barely seeing snow this winter in Vermont. Of course this is the challenge for outdoor painters to capture the moment. Longing for a thick blanket of snow, I can easily lay that image over a landscape because painters can take liberties!
But the crux of any painter's desires, is to meet those desires and meet the landscape head on. Is a painter satisfied with a painting because it met the desire or met the landscape's visual image?
Be aware that this is every painter's dilemma.
We have five senses, don't limit you work to the visual only.

Back to Blogging, "Green Mountain Ledges"
I painted this Fall. What is the difference from the Green Mountains to Western mountains? Elevation is important and that alone changes the color of mountains besides the northern latitude creates low light year round. Color is affected by space. Color is space and each space is a different color. We are learning so much about color from science and painters can show these nuanced color changes to depict space, elevation and latitude. Happy New Year!

"Cloud Peak" is a painting inspired from my two trips to the Big Horn Mountains in northern Wyoming. This is a 6"x 6" canvas and one of four for the Brinton Museum Show in September.
What I love is the rock and snow covered peaks so I stick with what excites me. Ever do a painting and it bored you? Its not the painting but your interest in the subject matter. Keep painting what you love!

Pierce Point, Pt Reyes, CA

Come paint at Pr Reyes, June 6 & 7th classes on Impressionist's Palette and Perspective. The glow in this painting is the element Impressionism adds to a painting. Come learn the palette!

Petaluma Weeping Willow, oil 11"x14"

Spring Weeping willow tree in Petaluma-color will symbolize the time of year!

"Sentinel Rock" oil 12" x 16" was selected for Yosemite museum"s permanent collection, I am thrilled.  Perhaps because it was painted on location, it captured the imagination of the staff? It is the view from Yosemite Lodge's front entrance, perhaps that is why? What do you think?
If we were to ask a scientist: a color specialist in what attracts the human eye, what would they say? They would say it is the warm yellow orange color!
What is your answer now? Do you believe science? Painters can paint outside of the box, but can viewers see outside the box?