He didn’t notice I had a ‘fro.

We climbed mountains and explored forests.

Koeppel Barn, Old World Wisconsin, 8×10

Okay, I’ve been busy making some modifications — read “improvements” — to my house lately, resulting in not that much plein air painting, but I did drive down to Old World Wisconsin in Eagle to reconnoiter about a month ago.  I’d been there numerous times when my daughter was young, but it was a pleasure to return after years…..I formed the plan to come down and paint AND I FOLLOWED THROUGH!

First let me say, the color in the above photograph is skewed  towards the magenta.  When I paint soil, it isn’t pure Terracotta, especially when I’m painting Wisconsin soil.  The painting is better than the photograph of it, but this is just a Blog.  One of these days I will become interested enough in photography to accurately reproduce the colors in a painting.  (Actually, it could come down to replacing equipment.  I used to take pictures with a Rebel XTi, but am now using a little point-and-shoot I bought for my trip to Santorini and Crete.  I’m finding it tends towards overexposure.)

Anyway, I rigged this Plein Air Wagon out of an old golf club caddy, rubber bungee cords and old 5 gallon paint buckets.  I had to carry my easel, wet panel carrier and pallette over my shoulder and under my arm, but I could walk quite a distance with this rig.

Plein Air Wagon

In the end, I used only the lower bucket, fastened with a bungee cord.  I couldn’t stabilize the upper bucket.  I’m still working on the problem.  You can see it next to me on location below with one bucket only.  Notice that the handle of the caddy isn’t

Plein Air Painting Koeppel Farm

pointing straight up.  The first day, I had the handle straight up, making the bucket almost horizontal when I pulled it.  Almost all the mineral spirits in my solvent container leaked out.  I changed the angle of the handle.

I stayed overnight with my sister-in-law, Barb, and returned the next day.

Actually, the painting above as well as the picture of me painting are both from the second day.  The first day was very hot and I neglected to bring a compass to clue me in as to which way the sun would go.  I set up in front of the Danish Pedersen Farm, thinking the shadows would lengthen towards my location,….but they didn’t.  I stood and painted in the hot sun with perspiration trickling down my face….And I hate that…!

Pedersen Danish Farm, 1890s, 8×10

So, I’m giving myself credit for persevering.  It’s a new future for me, involving discomfort.  I’m forcing myself to embrace it!

Lilac Time

From May 13 to May 15, I took a Plein Air Workshop from Mary Pettis in Taylor’s Falls, MN.  I’d noticed Mary’s paintings for several years in Art Collector magazine and googled her to see more.  When I found out she lived in Taylor’s Falls, a river town on one of the routes between here and my hometown, Aitkin, I looked to see whether she ever taught workshops and she did!  I signed up for her mailing list right away.

I’ve tried Plein Air painting a couple of times in the past,  with discouraging results, but know it to be an absolutely necessary step in my development as a painter, … if there’s going to be a development, that is.

Cindy McDonnell

In the week before the Workshop, I was cramming Richard Schmid’s Alla Prima, buying wet panel cases and getting acquainted with some different pigments, like Transparent Red Oxide, which is actually a brown.  Mary, on right above is encouraging and gives excellent instruction, so I highly recommend taking a workshop.  She’s completely charming and virtually every other student in the class began their introduction with, “I love Mary!”  I will probably take another, after some practice.

Mary, on right below is encouraging and gives excellent instruction, so I highly recommend taking a workshop.  She’s completely charming and virtually every other student in the class began their introduction with, “I love Mary!”  I will probably take another, after some practice.  The topmost painting in this blog entry is the painting I started on our first afternoon out.  We usually went out around 1:00 and quit around 4:00 to regroup in her studio.  It took me a lot longer than the others to select a site.  I tramped around feeling utterly clueless and disorganized supply-and-equipment-wise.  Eventually I settled, wearing a full length, Lands’ End Down Chalet Coat of Mary’s in order not to freeze.  The temperature was in the forties.

The painting didn’t look like it does now — I finished it last week from the lilacs in my own yard and painted the cedar and honeysuckle from memory. It didn’t look as bad as I’d thought it might on the day though, so I was encouraged.  One of the big differences, besides the changing light and complexity of nature, in plein air painting is using big brushes, plenty of paint and

Laurie Kania, Doug Berg, Mary Pettis

trying to create a picture “alla prima,” in other words, in one session.  I was helped in completing this picture in that it was relatively dry underneath now, so I didn’t have to apply paint so thickly in order not to disturb the underpainting.  The second picture down is from Day Two.  I was helped at the end by Mary, so I don’t take full credit for it.  The artist in the clearing is Cindy McDonnell.  We traded paintings at the end of our Workshop and I made out like a bandit.  She gave me a framed flower painting on silk.

Mary’s studio is full of paintings of her past work, which she keeps on display because she learned a certain lesson on this one or that one.  Walking in gave me the same rush as looking at Russian landscapes — Mary models herself after the Russians — and excited not only my desire to develop her skill, but, I’m sorry to say, a very materialistic desire to own all the paintings myself.

Doug Berg, Mary Pettis, Matt Kania, Joyce Staley

Bass Strike at Cox Hollow, Oil on Canvas, 12×16, $500 USD

This painting is set in Governor Dodge State Park in Dodgeville, WI, the scene of much Bass and Bluegill fishing.  I was going for that vintage 1920s and 30s feel, harkening back to the magazine covers I’ve loved from Outdoor Life and Field and Stream.  It is available to purchase at the Left Bank Art Gallery in McGregor, IA.

Next month I’m going to attend a Plein Air Painting Workshop taught by Mary Pettis, whose work I’ve admired for the last several years.  I’ve been watching her Website for my next opportunity to take a workshop.  For some time now I’ve wanted to do landscapes, and my subjects have more frequently been in outdoor settings.

Landscapes set in the Midwest are more difficult, I think, than Western landscapes.  There you have the boon of distant vistas and the resulting changes in tone and coloration due to the retreating atmosphere.  (That may not be very clear, but I know what I mean.)

My favorite landscape painters, however, are not the many fabulous Western painters, but rather Russian landscape painters. Their subjects are much more like the ones I have available to me in Wisconsin.  Of course, their country is older, with older architecture and romantic dirt roads, but I take inspiration from them.  They often do intimate settings, rather than the grand spectacle of mountains and water available in the Western Unifted States.  The pastoral charm of these scenes is what I will be aiming for.

I recently bought a Plein Air painting called Silver Day by a Russian painter named Evgeny Zhurov (Moscow) and am thrilled with it.