Painting in Garden of the Gods Park

Painting on a nice day in Garden of the Gods

What I love most about plein air painting is spending time outside observing nature. Painting gives me a lens to view nature through, allowing me to focus on a particular element that draws my attention or a way to spend time with something that I want to understand better. Basically it’s just focused time spent outdoors.

Plein air painting is challenging in many ways — the conditions change rapidly, light and shadow move constantly, you have to battle the wind, bugs, and the sun. So it is definitely more difficult than painting in the studio, where you can control the conditions. It can also be overwhelming because you are out in a beautiful landscape trying to appreciate it fully, but if you try and paint the whole scene, you’ll never get through it all. So you have to hone in, curate, and limit yourself to try and paint something in a reasonable amount of time.