Plein-Air Your Life
#pleinairyourlife is a hashtag I started using a few of years ago to describe a way of being in the world that is committed to presentness, to observing and responding to what surrounds us.
Plein-Air painting, or “open-air” painting, is a French term used to describe the act of painting outdoors, on the field, in contrast to working in the studio. This form of landscape painting was made popular by the impressionist painters who sought a way of responding directly to the world around them. This movement coincided with the First Industrial Revolution, which made transportable tubes of paint readily available, freeing the artist from the arduous work of grinding pigments with a mortar and pestel within the confines of the studio. Impressionism also coincided with, and greatly contributed to, developments in modern color theory and our perception of optical light.
Picture Monet and his series of Haystacks, painted in the early 1890’s. Each painting a sentient document, a record of the changing quality of light depending on the season and the time of day.
Wheatstacks (End of Summer), 1890-91, The Art Institute of Chicago
Picture Cezanne, painting Mont Sainte-Victoire over and over, attempting to record his sensations directly in front of the motif.
Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1904, Philadelphia Museum of Art
I began seriously developing my own plein-air practice in 2013, upon deciding to lead a small group of painters in La Rioja— a beautiful, northern region of Spain known for its wines. Plein-air painting quickly became an integral part of my practice. It is a means for me to witness the light, the shapes, the forms, and the color of a given place. It is a way for me to experience the world deeply through the sentient lens of my own perception.
Over the span of several years, I made multiple visits to Portugal, falling in love with the cork oak trees and rolling yellow hills of the eastern Alentejo region. It was there that I experienced one of the major spiritual shifts of my life. Painting in the countryside, I entered my own life more fully. I stepped inside a presentness more complete. Through plein-air painting I’ve found a doorway, a portal, an active means of lifting the veil just-so. It is a creative, liminal space where meaning is reconstructed, occupying a region between the profane and sacred modes of being.
What I call this “alentejano” way of seeing is a lens through which my own life here at home, in south Seattle, is transformed. I need not go far. Paradise is here, in the theater of interactions in my own backyard. As I write this, the tender, deep red shoots of the peonies are pushing through the soil. Come May, the constellation of blossoms will open and offer sensual delights greater than any I have known.
I consider my plein-air paintings as my most primary documents. They are a record of actualizing my own sensations in collaboration with nature. Each note of color a response to the other notes that together create a compositional map of my perception.
Plein-Air Your Life is a lifestyle, a practice. It is an active means for sensing and participating in this extraordinary experiment of life on earth.