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3.19.24 - Tuesday Dear Art Lover, As mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, this is going to be a back-to-back busy week. With Monday behind us, hopefully I have some new work and news to share. I look forward to getting back in the studio to draw or paint the figure on Wednesday and Thursday at Gage. Featured in this email are some of the available figure works currently on my site. I’d like to share some of the writing from a recent artist opportunity I applied to, one that a involves painting en plein air, outside, from life. The prompt was: Please list 3 landscape painters who are currently your favorite and explain why.
Here are my answers: “John Singer Sargent - Sargent has been a longtime inspiration of mine ever since I first saw his plein air watercolor work at the Seattle Art Museum in 2001. Since then his work continues to play on my imagination and allow me to challenge myself to try to represent my world in plein air watercolor. His figure and portrait work and landscape work in oil is also immaculate, a reassuring vision of someone gifted who chose to work exceptionally hard to refine their craft. "Claude Monet - Monet’s understanding of plein air light in oil was some of the first work I encountered to allow me to glimpse into a world of optical realities, beyond just “making paintings”. Monet’s scale of some of his later work, especially the water lilies, has inspired me in part to push the scale of my own work, looking for the challenge of painting 40 x 60” and larger in a single plein air session, with an eye to go larger in the near future. “Joaquin Sorolla - Sorolla’s work I have only so far seen in books and reproductions. His work is part of the reason I sought out an upcoming artist residency in Barcelona, to be on the shore of Spain to see some of the same light he was working with. His handling of waves, glare on the water, and the optical effects of plein air light particularly in his beach scenes have directly inspired me to study waves at a large scale, plein air, in watercolor. The change between his earlier studio-based career and his later massive plein air work is inspiring, it shows me what is possible by a dogged pursuit of the challenge of painting the light outside.” Happy Tuesday, David
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