The Outdoor Painting Experience

There will always be a barrier between what I see and what I am able to portray. This barrier keeps bringing me back to the canvas, carrying on a never-ending desire to express, in paint, what moves me inside. 

(Scott L. Christensen)

Fish Houses at Turbat's Creek, 2015

  

 In a Maine summer, painting outside always feels right: mosquitos, black flies, heat, humidity and all.    It's the light, the heavy atmosphere along the water, and the knowledge that it is such a quick season that you'd better get out there and enjoy it before it's gone!

 Most of my experiences with passers by are good. Questions I can't really answer are asked, directions are given by me to uncomprehending motorists, dogs are petted, and once in a great while a sale happens right off the easel. I have taken to keeping business cards in my pocket, in a feeble stab at marketing. I have rarely had any problems with parking or setting up my easel.

  Except, that one time last spring. I set up, carefully off the road and, I thought, out of the way while in sight of a great view down a cliff and out across the bay. I was next to a water tower and a tiny park. Someone in a truck, a neighbor as it turned out, stopped and leaned out of this window and was just furious that I was there in his neighborhood. Apparently artists set up in that turnaround often and he hated it. I didn't need that bad energy and was packing to leave when another neighbor came by with her dog and invited me to paint in the property next door, with a better view anyway! That restored my good feeling and I did work on a painting there. I am pleased to say most people are like the neighbor with the dog: interested in the painting, and gracious for the most part. I have met some great people while I was painting outside.

Bottle Lake, 2015

  These two paintings are part of the many I have done over the summer. Find more of my plein air paintings here.