Discovering En Plein Air
September 2021
It was hard work managing a food factory through the first lockdown in 2020, keeping the staff safe and maintaining supply. I’d been managing in the Food Industry for over 30 years but I’d never seen anything like this before. The Covid Pandemic helped me re-evaluate my life and gave me a sense of mortality and so, towards the end of the summer last year, I made a big decision, to follow my life long dream and sign up for art school. I handed in my notice and began my degree in September 2020.
Until then my art practice was pretty much about painting from reference photos on my phone. As I progressed in my studies and started to appreciate the history of art I was drawn to the work of the Impressionists, the Fauves and Hockney. I became a bit of a Hockney fanatic! Then in late summer 2021 I had a moment of realisation, it suddenly all made sense to me, that my art practice had to be based on the outdoors.
I am an obsessive cyclist and I love the landscape, the changing seasons and the effect of the weather so why not bring this to my art. The only problem I had was a phobia of passers by looking at my work, an insecurity I guess, not wanting to be judged publicly.
And so it was with a degree of apprehension that I set off to Clumber Park near Sherwood Forest with a canvas in the boot! I set up to paint the famous Avenue of Limes and I got stuck in. 8 hours later I had completed a fairly large canvas and it was ok. Dog walkers had approved and it felt great. So I went back and did it again, and again. I was up and running and through the autumn I set about a series of smaller painings, en plein air around Tickhill where I live.
I was completing a small canvas (30cm x 30cm) in just over 4 hours and my confidence was growing, I was finding engaging with passers by easier even to the point where I sold a couple of pictures off the easel. I think I have fallen in love with the process of painting outdoors and it is going to be fascinating to see how it impacts on my style! Time will tell as I get through the project I have set myself for the coming semester at Uni.
