I'm giving a talk tomorrow evening at 7pm for ACE:The Arts Community of Easton. It's at the Williams Center for the Arts at Lafayette College, High and Hamilton Streets, Easton. My talk is called 'I Am Not a Plein Air Painter: the Joys of Plein Air Painting.' It goes a bit deeper than a talk about technique and if you're an artist or student who's ever struggled with your creative process or your place in the art community, I invite you to come and listen. Here's an excerpt: I loved the lessons that came from every awkwardly composed, value deficient, color impaired disaster that I spent all day making. It was also a really good feeling to do the work. To actually keep my word to myself that I was going to get good at this and show up to do it rather than listen to the incessant voice of my inner critic trying to convince me that if I wasnât born with it, it wasnât going to happen. Or better yet, that trying to get good at this now was a waste of time and I should just go to the studio and paint cloud paintings that people know me for and that sell. To run contrary to that hyper critical inner voice is a test of strength and endurance. Itâs like a Goliath sized monster thatâs built out of all the critical voices and judgments youâve heard your whole life as well as the ones youâre afraid of hearing in the future. You canât take it down by hurling one big rock at it one time though. Itâs lots of little rocks, day after day, month after month that finish it off. I made that part of the mission of going out to paint then and instead of an activity that undid me, I turned plein air painting into a way to ground myself, to gain as much technical knowledge and practice as I could, to build on that practice faithfully, and lay bare any fear or judgment that held me back for years. (at Easton, Pennsylvania)
