Grand Canyon Plein Air On The Rim 2011

This year at the Grand Canyon Celebration of Art, Plein Air on the Rim was one of rain and challenging plein air painting. Ironically, the day we arrived, a wet cold front moved in and stuck to the Canyon like glue until the allotted one week of painting was over, then it moved on. I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon in such beautiful light though. With the rain came fog lifting out of the depth shrouding some features while defining others. All of the sudden the sun would find its way through the clouds and illuminate parts of the canyon with diaphanous rays of light. Then just as you got in to the bulk of the painting, lightning and rain would humble you and chase you back to the vehicle. Somehow or another, I managed to get a huge amount of work done though. I painted 21 paintings, and 20 made the cut and went in to the show for sale. The one that didn’t was a forced cloud painting that I learned from, but wasn’t composed well enough to be part of the body of work, so you’ll never see it!!

My method of staying dry and productive was to start a LOT of paintings one day and come back the next to work on or finish them. The picture you see above was one of the chilly mornings at Moran Point. This is a 20×24 and no small task! The Light would come and go so I had to stick with one or the other, I chose light. When it would come out I would furiously paint everything illuminated and study the color in the shadows, and take some “mental snap shots.” This was the first day of this painting and I was just about to wrap it up for the morning and come back the next day to finish. Marie Charvet was wandering the various points on this day and took this focused shot of me. We were talking about her travels to the United States from France, and she explained how it had been a great trip hence far when her rental car got Struck by Lightning and wouldn’t work any more the night before. She had to sleep inside waiting for the company to bring her another!

For all you plein air painters out there, I highly recommend getting in to this show. It is one of the best ones that I do in the year. The staff at the Grand Canyon Association is second to none and they are soooo organized. Opening night SOLD 15 of those 20 paintings and the quickdraw earlier that day had one of the best auctioneers and was attended by some Heavy Hittin’ Grand Canyon Art Collectors. The painting I did got bid up in a war to a whopping $2000.00. It helped that I got the People’s Choice award for that painting, of course!! The judges of the show picked the painting, Clinging Clouds, below to win the 2nd place overall prize too!! All in all it was the most successful show that I’ve done to date, and I thank everyone at the GCA, the sponsors of the show, the judges, and the Grand Canyon enthusiasts and collectors.

The complete body of work is below. For availability, go to the navigation bar above, roll over paintings, then Landscapes. Thanks for checking out the post!!

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