PleinAir Magazine Oct/Nov 2015

Thomas Hill was an English-born American who painted in California, particularly in the Yosemite Valley; in the White Mountains of New Hampshire; and in the Grand Canyon of Arizona. This painting of the Hetch-Hetchy Valley in Yosemite shows the landscape before it was flooded to create a reservoir — in 1923, the O’Shaughnessy Dam was built to harvest water from the Tuolumne River. It is speculated that Hill painted his own image in the lower left-hand corner of the canvas. During a 1903 visit to Yosemite, President Theodore Roosevelt met Hill at his studio, and the artist gave him a painting of Bridalveil Fall that the president admired. It returned with Roosevelt to the White House. Hill’s studio, on the grounds of the Wawona Hotel, is now a Yosemite National Park…

Ideas start with dreams, and it has been my dream to turn the words “plein air” into an everyday term, because as awareness grows, we all benefit. You and your galleries will sell more paintings, we’ll bring more buyers to events, and collectors will see the overall value of plein air painting increase — and perhaps dispel the notion that because a painting is done rapidly, it can’t be as good as a studio piece (even though it takes an artist years of practice to perfect his or her skills). Like you, I’ve explained to many people that plein air is a French term that literally means “outside,” and its first use related to painting was in a newspaper article, to describe the Impressionists in France, who often painted outdoors and…

I recently wrote a widely read blog post about the competitive aspects of plein air events, but I’m not sure I gave enough attention to the really wonderful benefits of the respect, admiration, and support of the people who make those events possible. I want this Editor’s Note to be a thank you letter to the people who lend their time, money, and assistance to the growing plein air movement. Let me first acknowledge the dozens of families who share their homes, guest houses, spare bedrooms, and condominiums with artists. By doing that, they show their faith in strangers they know only as painters who were juried into an event. How wonderful it is that they instinctively trust artists to be good people! At one event, the owner of a condominium…

Born into a wealthy Chicago family, Alson Skinner Clark studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students League of New York (with William Merritt Chase), and the Academie Carmen in Paris (with James A.M. Whistler). After working with French and American artists in Paris and Giverny from 1902-1914, he became one of the leading American Impressionist painters. Like many 19th- and early-20th-century American painters, Clark devoted himself to a major project that brought him international recognition: In 1913, he created 18 large plein air paintings of the newly completed Panama Canal. The collection was so impressive that Clark was invited to display the paintings in a separate gallery during the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, and he received the exposition’s bronze medal. Clark later joined his friend…

Question: Do you use special tube colors that are hard to mix from a standard palette? If so, what are those convenience colors? MARGIE GUYOT: I’ve used Scott Christensen’s palette of Vasari-brand grays ever since I attended one of his workshops. I was skeptical at first, and it took a day or two of using them to make me realize that they were pretty nifty. They save me a lot of mixing time. His greens seem to be better suited for Western landscape, and I keep thinking my friends and I could use some Midwestern/Great Lakes green mixes! EDWIN C. BERTOLET: Three “special colors” I use are cadmium orange, cadmium green, and venetian red. The orange and red are the only way to get certain “California” colors, especially — grasses and bluffs. The cad…