When I started painting years ago as a girl, I only painted en plein air because that’s what I was exposed to. I thought that was how landscape painting must be done. Later I found myself shying away from workshops because painting from photographs intimidated me. There wasn’t enough information in the flattened two-dimensional photo. Where were the colors that sang in the shadows under the trees and played around the rocks?

However, in the few workshops I did venture to attend, it seemed to be required that you bring the photos that you wanted to work from, and at that time, I didn’t like that because my work then seemed too flat as a result. Later as I began my career, I put down my brushes and stepped away from painting for a very long time.

However, I didn’t step away from nature. I continued my outdoor adventures through camping or hiking , or just driving out in the countryside somewhere to sit by a river and soak it all in. Being outdoors was a way to decompress from the pressures of my career. I don’t know why I didn’t take a sketchbook. Too busy to keep up with it all, I guess, looking back.

However, when I was out in nature I found myself painting pictures in my mind. What colors would I select to depict that sky or that play of light upon the lake? What would I leave out of the scene before me to tell the best story of this place and of my response to it? I tried to soak in the sense of the place and experience by painting it in my mind. The beautiful consequence was that by being out in nature I was experiencing my “painting” in 3D. All my senses were engaged. Once as I sat by a stone wall in Ireland, I spent nearly an hour feeling the breeze play in my hair, smelling the salt air coming from the sea, and listening to a cow quietly munching on grass in the field beside me while my fingers traced the stones beside me as I “painted” the scene before me. Unbeknownst to me, as I painted my mental pictures of each time and place, I was storing up so much information that much later when I came back to painting, I could “translate” the photos I had taken along the way. I could read them so much better with the visual language I had stored in my head. I could see the colors that seemed hidden in the shadows depicted in the photos because I had paid attention to my experiences out in nature.

I don’t know if that makes sense to you. But now I am back to doing both, painting out in nature gathering more information and back in the studio using my own photographs.

The water level was up because of the storm and made an island out of a tree!

Notice that there is a very important piece of “kit” amongst my gear…. A small rocket stove to make my tea on a chilly day.