 |
| Edgar Payne, "Fifth Lake" 39 3/8 x 49 3/8 in. Oil/canvas. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design |
As a plein air painter, it's so easy to get into a rut. You go with what is comfortable and easy. After countless outings in a familiar locale, you use the same strokes to define the landscape, the same mixtures to color the world, the same shorthand to represent your subject. Some might call this a style—but I call it a rut.
Sure, some days, I just like to have an easy time of it. I don't want to invent a better way of painting mountains. So, I use my usual angular strokes here, angular strokes there, and my usual colors of yellow ochre, terra rosa and ultramarine blue. It's like chewing gum—a way to keep the jaw muscles in shape.
I've seen many well-respected plein air painters work this way. Some painters of the American Southwest, for example, paint only mountains, and they paint them very well. There's a certain, constant Edgar Payne-like quality that, frankly, I find wearisome. But they do sell.
Besides comfort, knowing that such paintings will sell is another reason to stay with your wheels locked in a rut. However, I am reaching a point in my life where selling is more a badge of honor than a financial necessity.
For me, creativity isn't painting the comfortable “same old, same old.” Creativity takes work and, yes, it can make you uncomfortable. There are so many other interesting—and untried—ways to paint the world.
Maybe today I'll take a quick spin off-road through the sagebrush to see what I find.
