Tuesday, March 6, 2018



En Plein Air

It’s not a picture I’m after, not a representation of Nature, nor a landscape; though the word landscape is as good a name as any to describe what I’m seeking. Trying to realistically or impressionistically reproduce the scene before me has never been my reason to paint en plein air. It’s about being in the beauty of the moment in the landscape, and what it feels like; maybe it’s more to do with capturing the appropriate expression of my feeling about it, although that’s not it entirely.

I think painting outdoors is mostly about the laying-off of paint onto a canvas that sets one’s heart and mind aflutter with the possibilities of both beauty and truth; that which exists synonymously at the center of all experience in the natural world. It’s the search for me to discover that passage of paint - the one stroke at the right time, in the precise place with the specific tool, the explicit mix of materials, colors and textures in the correct order that invariably drops my jaw to the ground when I find it.


Don West