En plein air?

The term en plein air comes from the French meaning “in open air” and is used to describe paintings created outdoors. During the mid 1800s, artists such as Gustave Courbet, Jean Francois Millet, and Edward Manet shocked the art world with their paintings of everyday peasant life, images thought to be crude, ungodly, and brutally materialistic. The sketches for these singular paintings were done from life, out in the fields among the artist’s working class subjects.

Later, artists such as Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Vincent Van Gogh were interested not only in creating images that spoke of reality but in painting techniques which imitated the play of light on their subjects. This new art required intensive study of light as the source for seeing color, so they took their easels outdoors to observe their muses at different times of the day and in different atmospheric conditions. American artists such as Childe Hassam, Frank Benson, and William Merritt Chase championed the work that these masters had developed, and a new school of plein air painters was born stateside.

Today, I am proud to be part of an ever growing number of painters in the U.S., working in a variety of techniques and painting media, who realize the benefit of working en plein air. The first hand experience I have gained witnessing the play of light and color in nature is paramount to the success of my work as a whole. In addition, emotional responses to the day and location become part of any resulting images. My mind, body, and soul work together to produce paintings that, I feel, are honest and unadorned.