The Painting from Stonewall

Friend Joan Tierney snapped a photo of me while I was working en plein air at Stonewall Farm.

This is the only photo I have of the painting that I completed totally on location that day.  You saw the photo of the scene in a previous post, and here is the finished work. Or almost finished. I think I was just putting in a few of the branches on the far right side when she took the picture.

Working on location has many challenges, not the least of which is simply being able to condense everything your eye can see into a format that will make a nice painting.  This scene was simple, and lent itself well to a painting, but I still had to pick and choose what details to include, enhance, eliminate, or re-position to make a good composition. The weather is always a factor. It was raining when I started, and I put up my umbrella to cover the canvas and palette, but I wasn't covered, so was getting wet. Fortunately, the rain stopped, and it was just a lovely misty early morning.

Painting En Plein Air at Stonewall Farm

This week was the "paint out" leading up to the annual Stonewall Farm art auction.  They invite 5 or 6 artists to come and paint at the farm, and then these plein air pieces are added to the works already juried into the auction.  I was delighted to be one of the invitees this year, as the farm is a wonderful place and spring foliage is everywhere.

We had to battle some rainy weather, and for the most part, it was cloudy and overcast, but there were still many great locations to paint, and the commaradarie of a bunch of artists hanging out painting together is a great thing.  Pictured here are two of the painters, Joan (pronounded "JoANNE) Tierney  and Dick Fischer, on the last day of the paintout.  Both are fabulous artists and delightful folks to boot.   The other photo shows the scene I painted on the last day.  The fog was lifting and I loved the simplicity of it.

I forgot to take a photo of my painting and it sold in the auction, so don't have a record of it. It looks like this, only better. :-)  The auction was a huge success. You'd never know there is a recession going on.  I sold all three works entered in the auction, and both artists pictured here also sold all their works, including a very large, rather expensive, wonderful painting of the dairy cows by Dick.   All in all, a great week. I have plenty more reference photos to paint from later, so you might see some more scenes from the farm at some point.