Tag Archives: Roadtrip

Aspen Plein Air Invitational 2012

July 20, 2012 by jbeen | 1 Comment

Aspen’s Plein Air Invitational was the week following the 4th of July. I spent the week camping up on Lincoln Creek in my camper trailer and Bill Cramer and I were taking baths in the Devil’s Punchbowl. Cold, Clear, and Refreshing!! Click the image to the left to see me busting a GAINER right in to the punchbowl!! I give it a 10!! The show in Aspen should be better. Not sure why, but the sales are just not FANTASTIC.  I would think that Aspenites would jump at the opportunity to get a painting painted of their beautiful area that very week and just shake my head at the fact that we were not overrun with enthusiastic people scrambling and fighting over the work?! The Galleries in Aspen are all a complete joke showing schlockey, pressed out, downright bad work with a “contemporary” new age bend. My take on the lack of huge numbers at this show is simply people just didn’t know about it. I would like to see the Sheridan Arts Foundation take Aspen to another level by putting a LOT more energy in to advertising and possibly just getting to know the area a bit more. Still I did manage to sell about 10 paintings and it was well worth the fun and excitement of going and painting the area. Extra curricular activities not recommended!!

Anyway below is the body of work from the trip!! Enjoy and please browse to the Landscape Painting Gallery Page using the navigation bar above for availability of the work.

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Telluride Plein Air Invitational 2012

July 18, 2012 by jbeen | 7 Comments

Was in Telluride the week prior to the Fourth of July and had a blast!! This year the weather was great but camping in Town Park with a fire ban left a little to be desired. Telluride is one of my all-time favorite places to paint and one of the most beautiful places on Earth. There’s about 5 waterfalls that find their way to the bottom of the box canyon and I was on top of depicting them in oils!! The painting in the picture is a 24×30 multi-day plein air that I worked on during the same time of day for two days to complete. The picture was taken by a random hiker (Michelle McLellan thank you).  I got the idea from friend and Best of Show artist this year, Bill Cramer, to put the ply wood on the roof rack for a view above the chaparral. If you’re thinking it might be a rice patty worker from China on the car and not me, you’d be wrong. I got the KAVU “Coolie” from Salida Mountain Sports and it’s a highly effective sunshade with a breathable mesh against your skull so it stays cooler than most hats!!

The Sheridan Arts Foundation that puts on the Telluride Invitational does a very good job and it’s an event I highly recommend to plein air painters that like to paint town scenes, vertical country, alpine lakes, waterfalls, and have a blast doing it.

This paragraph is for the accompanying artists…As per usual, I got a fair amount of heckling from them for the prices that I have my work at. I take this as a high compliment (in other words, I am painting at too high a quality for my reasonable prices) and I do not intend to raise them until demand dictates it. I was the TOP SELLER in Telluride this year, and I only came home with a couple of small paintings, so this tells me that I was in almost perfect alignment with Supply and Demand as it were. I think some artists that did not sell as well, would be better off NOT giving advice on how I price my work, and instead take notes on the careful orchestration of my success…Matching the sizes and prices to the Social Economic Demographic of the foot traffic.

Below is the body of work from Telluride. For availability, please browse to the AVAILABLE LANDSCAPE paintings pages using the navigation bar above.

 

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Sedona Plein Air Invitational 2011

December 2, 2011 by jbeen | 0 Comments

This years Sedona Plein Air Invitational was good but not great. I think the Sedona Art Center does a great job with most of their organization, but a couple of tweaks to the show could make it great. The paintability of the area is of course amazing. Oak Creek, the Red Rocks, Dry washes, and Jerome, it all will blow your mind. The sales and attendance are both down for the opening night gala which is not good for a show. I think that this is a result of some shortsighted vision in the powers that be.

The following tweak will revive the festival in my opinion.  The Art Center currently charges 100.00 to attend the “Wine and Art Lovers Gala.” By my calculations this makes the Center 10000.00 dollars free and clear with a hundred guests which is about what they had or so. I think there  were about 10 sales of the evening or so with an average tag of say 1000.00. The split is 60/40 to the artist. That means the Art Center only cleared 14,000.00 for the night. With all of the wine and food donated they probably actually made about that much, minus any advertising or so forth. Now here comes the tweak. Let the 100.00 for the ticket go towards a painting on the wall. This way a couple has 200.00 invested in something. My theory is that almost nobody will leave without a painting. At over 100 paintings from 27 artists I think the Center could have made more like 50-80,000 that opening night. That’s my two cents and I’m Sticking to it.

Feel free to comment.

That being said, I still love the Art Center and hope to continue coming to Sedona and Teaching and Painting.

Below is the body of work for the Event.

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