Inside Outside Redux

"But you know all pictures painted inside, in the studio, will never be as good as those done outside. When out-of-door scenes are represented, the contrast between the figures and the ground is astounding and the landscape is magnificent. I see some superb things and I shall have to make up my mind only to do things out-of-doors."
                                                  - Paul Cezanne in a letter to Emile Zola, 19 October 1866

My studio is nice, but not this nice.

I love to paint in the studio, where the light doesn’t change and the wind can’t blow over your easel, dogs won’t lift a leg on your stuff, rattlesnakes and bulls won’t taunt you*, and people don’t come by and comment on what you’re working on or worse, blather on about whatever strange concept they’re working on; yes, I’ve witnessed all of these. 

Renny's, 18 x 24" oil on canvas.

So perhaps I complained about the challenge of the changing shadows as they fell longer through the afternoon, and my friend and painting compadre Kit whipped out this quotation as we were wrapping up a marathon day at the fabulous Hollister Ranch on the California coast.


Plenty of room: Lori & Kit at Renny's.

I have to agree with Cezanne: often you can tell if a painting was executed en plein air or from photographs in the studio. Painters who have logged thousands of hours outside can master the challenge, but others, well, not so much. You can tell, sometimes by the colorless shadows, exaggerated light, or strange details, that a painter hasn’t planted an easel in the dirt very often. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, except, as Cezanne says, those indoor pictures will never be as good.

Even the best of cameras can’t capture the subtleties of light and millions of hues that radiate into the human eye and are interpreted by the wondrous visual cortex, the largest system in the human brain. But that’s not the only reason that landscapes painted in the studio fall flat.

I don’t typically paint landscapes indoors; I paint from life, real flowers, fruits, or whatever piques my interest in the garden and studio on a given day.  In spite of the changing light and other challenges, I still prefer to stand in the beautiful landscape to capture not just a picture, but the air, the breeze, the softness of dirt or the sounds of water or wind.

El Capitan, 16 x 20" oil on canvas

Yesterday in Carpinteria an osprey perched in a eucalyptus tree directly above us and seals barked at the bottom of the bluffs behind us. Somehow all of these sensations are woven into the essence of a painting done outdoors, but they won’t be found in the sterile air of the studio.

Temporary studio at El Cap.

 *stay tuned for the snake story in a future post

Inside or Outside?

Calla lilies in Delft vase 2013

Thursday was a painter’s day, to be sure. It started in the studio, finishing these calla lilies that are in full bloom here following the Christmas rains. Calla lilies have always seemed exotic to me; I’m not sure I ever saw one growing before I came to California, but I feel like they are associated with funerals. They grow like weeds in our garden, in thick, tall clumps, and then disappear completely in the dry season.

And then it was Ray Day, a painting tribute to Ray Strong, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 101. I was fortunate to meet him and to paint with him - he was an exceptional, exuberant person, a fantastic painter, and a larger-than-life character He lived an amazing life. There are some wonderful video clips of him here http://raystrong.posterous.com/. 


Anacapa Island from Camino Cielo 2013

The greatest thing in the world, he said, is to be a landscape painter. On a day like this, it’s hard to disagree. From the top of East Camino Cielo, more than 3,000 feet above Santa Barbara, we could see all the way to Catalina Island more than 100 miles away. It was a stunning day, and a fitting tribute to remember an artist who felt so strongly about sharing his gift with others. 

Photo by Ellen Easton

Ray was a founding member of the Oak Group, local plein air landscape painters whom I admire tremendously. In addition to being extraordinarily talented artists, they have dedicated themselves to the preservation of our environment here and have done phenomenal work painting to raise awareness and to raise funds to protect endangered areas of the central coast and valleys of California.

The legacy of landscape painting in California is daunting, and Ray was certainly a pillar of it for many decades.  Even though I love painting in the protected privacy of my studio, there is nothing better than being a landscape painter.



The little pond in the potager.

A New Year: Please Take a Look

People have been making resolutions, prayers, or promises for the new year since ancient times, when Babylonians vowed to repay debts and Romans swore to Janus (of January), whose two faces looked both backward and forward in time. Their dreams and desires were no doubt both similar to and different from ours; historians have noted that over the past century, American resolutions have evolved from resolving to do good works into supplications to be thinner and better attired.

Expressions of gratitude have become trendy of late. For me, gratitude is best when it’s internalized, not promoted as a lifestyle or publicized as a token of self-fulfillment. We live in a world filled with beauty, and yet we spend many of our days not noticing. As a painter, my job is to look. As a teacher, my job is to teach others to look, and to see, with uncluttered eyes. It is the easiest and quickest way to find that gratitude.

 

Most mornings I walk out in my garden, which is, in its own way, a work of wild art. If I look, I can always find beauty there. Overlooking weeds, slugs and snails, and my gopher-ravished vegetable bed, there is always the beauty of nature, and of nature altered by humans in our own attempt to create beauty. We have a little pond, with a little statue, just outside the dining room window, and it is often the first thing I really see in the morning. When the morning light shines through, it is something I find beautiful, along with whatever is growing in the potager - herbs, vegetables, and a few flowers.

I am hoping 2013 will be a year filled with beauty for all of us, and that we will take the time to look and make the effort to see. Bonne année et bonne santé – happy new year to you, and good health.