fbpx

Tag: Sedona Plein Air Festival

Posted on

Monday Morning Art School: collaboration

Our team: Jacqueline Chandra, me, Lydia Gatzow and Kathleen Gray Farthing.

Collaboration is not usually an exercise for plein air painters, but occasionally an arts organizer will come up with a madcap scheme where teams of four will create a painting together in a short period of time. This is something that Sedona Plein Air does; the paintings are sold at $250 and the money used to raise funds for the art center. The staff likes to throw us curve balls, like ‘paint with your mouth’ or ‘paint with a packing peanut’. That said, the difference between last year’s and this year’s paintings was amazing. It all came down to the ten minutes we were allowed for planning.

Yes, there was a value sketch. I don’t leave home without it.

Design the project

We were divided into groups and given ten minutes to design and plan our 18X24 painting. That included choosing the subject, designing the composition, and setting the order in which we would paint (which defined each participant’s tasks). Jacqueline Chanda transferred our sketch to the canvas, I did the color-blocking, Kathleen Gray Farthing built up form, and Lydia Gatzow did the finishing flourishes. We each had 15 minutes for our section.

Maintain open communication

A madcap project like this doesn’t require Zoom calls, emails, or texts, thank goodness. Communication proved very simple; although we expected each other to fetch and critique as we went, there was little need for the latter. We all did our sections with a minimum of fuss.

My final wall at Sedona Plein Air. I set out to paint ten paintings, and ten got done.

Set realistic deadlines

That wasn’t a problem here, because the organizers had already agreed that each team of four trained monkeys would produce a finished 18X24 painting in an hour. The only way for this to work was for us to focus on our established goal in the fifteen minutes we were allotted. Call that ‘achieving milestones,’ if you must. In the real world, a deadline is a great way to avoid overworking.

Respect each other’s work

In other versions of this game, I’ve been frustrated when subsequent artists spent their fifteen minutes redoing earlier ideas instead of refining them. Some revision is necessary, because in the heat of the moment, one doesn’t always do it right. But wholesale reworking of another’s ideas is terribly disrespectful, not to mention a waste of time.

I had a great week, and painting within the peace park was among its highlights.

Document the process

Whoops, I didn’t do that. Wish I had.

Celebrate achievements

For us this just involved a lot of whooping and hollering, but more measured recognition is necessary in every real collaboration. We recognized each other as hardworking peers, so there was no buried conflict to be exposed. There’s nothing like one artist with a towering ego to sour a collaboration.

Resolve conflicts amicably

We didn’t have any conflicts, but if we had, we’d have just talked them out on the spot. It’s possible for people to become terribly ego-invested in a cooperative project, with one or more people secretly believing they’re the driving force and their partners are just useful idiots. Nip that thinking in the bud.

Promote the heck out of your collaboration.

That’s what I’m doing right here, folks! (The painting is already sold, but there’s always next year.)

My 2024 workshops:

Posted on

Monday Morning Art School: searching for meaning in Sedona

Winter Lambing, 36×48, oil on linen, $6231 framed includes shipping in continental US.

I’m in Sedona, AZ, painting in the 19th annual Sedona Plein Air Festival. I’ve written many times about how the question of meaning bedevils me. This place, with its crystals, vortexes, ley lines, and spiritualism ought to be chock full of meaning, but it’s not. That stuff is too glib and superficial for me.

For artists tucked into a corner of the Sedona landscape, it can be relentless. Casey Cheuvront was painting on a rocky promontory when a woman stopped in front of her to give her clients a spiel about the magnetic energy of the rocks. Another guide talked about how we were in a direct line between Cathedral Rock and Airport Mesa, which apparently confers special powers. Meanwhile, I was discussing reincarnation and non-attachment with a lovely gentleman from Princeton, NJ.

Midnight at the Wood Lot, oil on canvasboard, 12X16 $1,449.00 framed includes shipping in continental US.

Starting with an overarching concept like Sedona’s famous spirituality can easily veer into the sophomoric. That doesn’t mean that art can’t use symbols, metaphor, and allegory to convey deep layers of meaning. It’s just best to avoid the trite.

To me, one of the most important reasons to paint en plein air is to celebrate God’s creation. That has an emotional resonance with me; I am constantly struck anew by the variety and beauty of this world. Can I translate that in my paintings in a way that evokes an emotional response? Only if I paint something that also resonates with my viewers’ experiences and perspectives. Just as I am left cold by new age spirituality, others may be unable to engage with my deep feelings about the created world.

Lonely cabin, 8X10, oil on canvasboard, $652 framed includes shipping in continental US.

Ultimately, all we have is our own personal perspective. Our experiences, beliefs, and values add depth and authenticity to our creative expressions. That doesn’t mean I need to be overt about my ideas. They color my perception, and those who think the way I do will, hopefully, find my work relatable.

Of course, none of this works without paying attention to the formal elements of design. All meaning rests on technical skill. You may feel something deeply but be unable to communicate that to your viewer because you don’t have a cohesive visual language.

The Late Bus, 8X6, oil on canvasboard, $435 framed includes shipping in continental US.

Yesterday, Hadley Rampton and I demoed together at the Sedona Arts Center. It was an interesting way to do it, because our styles are very different, and the audience asked pertinent questions. When I finished, I asked the people watching what I should name my painting.

“How does it make you feel?” a man asked me.

“Oh, larky, I think, because I had a lot of fun painting it.”

“That’s not what it conveys to me at all,” he said. “To me, it’s pensive.”

Sometimes, what you think you’re painting is not at all what comes through. Other times, there is ambiguity or multiple tracks of meaning within the same painting. Viewers derive their own associations, and they may in fact be what you were thinking subconsciously all along. Although I’m having fun at this event, I have some serious matters clouding my immediate horizon.

The opposite of subtlety is intentional storytelling, where you’re crafting a narrative that’s explicit and easily comprehensible. Since a painting is essentially a snapshot that captures a moment in time, you must work to tell the before and after. Narrative painting can convey complex ideas, sometimes better than words can.

My 2024 workshops: