Original Plein Air Watercolor Painting, “Plein Air, Three Trees, 1 of 3, 9.6-11.8.23”, watercolor, 18 x 24”, 2023

I’d like to share three plein air paintings (made outside, from life) I painted concurrently, meaning I painted all of them at once, in stages, working back and forth between the papers, over several sessions. This is painting 1 of 3.

All three works are of the same scene in Lincoln Park, trees in a clearing on a bluebird morning.  I began these works 9/6/23, working from about 8:30am to no later than 11am, depending on the light, and had my final session with them on Wednesday 11/8. Sometimes I’d drive all the way out to Lincoln Park (about 45’ at the most) to find that cloud cover made the glow I was searching for invisible, the colors off from the way I’d seen them before.  Another aspect I had to navigate was the grass going from summer scorched in September, yellow and orange, to lush and green by November, casting different local colors and glow to the tree trunks.  Every plein air painting is a record of change, of light, of time.

Thank you to all the wonderful passers-by who stopped to say kind things while I painted.