Here's some photos from the 2nd Annual Germanton Gallery Plein Air Painting event. Around thirty painters from North Carolina and many other states converged on the area around our house and painted up a storm for a week. Springtime is one of my favorites around here for painting since the colors on many of the budding trees are almost fall-like. After having spent so much time in the studio working on all the paintings for our Tibet Show, I was dying to get outside and paint every day!

Here's a group of us painting Courtney in the woods just behind my studio. Normally at Plein Air shows I've had several days of packing, then flying, then renting a car, etc. and am a bit exhausted before I start the first painting so it was nice to just walk a few hundred yards from my studio this time! The people in this painting are Amy Evans, a Colorado painter and regional Editor of Plein Air Magazine (upper left in white), Julie Hayes, a fantastic landscape painter from North Carolina (in blue shirt), Prissy Armfield, a sculptor and painter from North Carolina (she's mostly hidden behind Charles (I think she might have ducked behind him when she saw Susan was taking a photo (I'm not certain that she's wanted by the law in several states, but there are rumors!), me on the far right, and my friend Charles in the foreground (also from North Carolina).

Here's another shot of Amy painting Courtney -- what a model to stand there perfectly still for three hours as the temperature reached 85 degrees in the shade! Courtney is one of our favorite models and comes to pose at our studios often. She is currently working at Old Salem, which is the original, Moravian settlement of what is now Winston-Salem. Many of the original buildings have been preserved as a living museum and Courtney and the other interpreters there dress in the historic dress of the time period. Here's a painting below that I did of Courtney in one of the barns at Old Salem.

"Moravian Barn" oil, 16" by 12"  -- Old Salem, NC -- model, Courtney Eagle

Here's Julie Hayes working away in watercolor with our neighbor, David's, field and goats just visible in the background. To show you what an artistic neighborhood it is, David makes frames for many artists around the country Hilltop Frames. Julie had the unfortunate distinction of being one of two artists who fell in a river during the week of painting. She commented that since she was a Methodist, she only fell in halfway, but the other artist must have been a Baptist since he went completely under the water! It just wouldn't be plein air with out such stories!

Here's the finished painting I did of Courtney that first day, though I took some liberties with her hair so I hope I'm not disqualified!

After painting in the morning, Joe and Janie Sylvan arrived for lunch at our house and to pick up all the paintings for our Tibet show which would begin in a few weeks. Sylvan Gallery 171 King Street, Charleston, SC  29401  (843) 722-2172 
How lucky we are to have such nice people to work with as the Sylvans! In the upper left corner of this photo you can just see one of the many artifacts I'm always finding on my hikes through our woods. The week before, I was cutting a path through a thick section of thorns when I saw this skull and pile of bleached bones in perfect condition. Because of all the thorns, it hadn't been covered by leaves or grass and there was no telling how long they'd lay there. Our neighbor said he'd never seen any of the hunters get a deer with such a large rack of horns around here and suggested that it might have been one they wounded and crawled under the thorny cover to die. I prefer to think of it settling down after a long life of outsmarting human's to die of old age.

After lunch, my good friend, Guido Petruzzi, showed up and we went out painting in the woods once more. Guido has had a very interesting life. From Italy originally, he was high up in the fashion industry, working with many of the most famous names as an executive, starting companies in many countries, including Mexico, and finally ending up in New York, where he met his wife, Maria, who also worked in the industry. Once he'd reached all his goals there, he decided to tackle the challenge of becoming a full-time painter, which he is doing with fantastic results. Having just been to Tibet ourselves, we've loved comparing notes with Maria since she went there with a National Geographic team when the country was first opened up to Westerners by the Chinese.  You can see some of Guido's work at this gallery http://www.calhounstreetartgallery.com/

The next day, the weather got really cold and rainy, but the true plein air painters like Beth Erlund and Amy Evans toughed it out... by standing in the back of their comfy van! Yes, but the rest of us more manly plein air painters...

...escaped to my warm studio! Since there wasn't many mountains or trees in my studio, I had that famous Michigan painter, Heiner Hertling, pose in my studio for a group of about four of us wimps. By the way, Heiner was the other artist during the show to have fallen into a river during the week (chasing a runaway roll of paper towels, he told me). Heiner is a true renaissance man, being both painter, sculptor, and inventor! 

Here's young up and comer, Brett Weaver, out doing a painting of one of the numerous tobacco farms that our area is famous for. Brett quit his Engineering job a year or so ago to go full time into painting and has been progressing by leaps and bounds. If you're reading this in a few years, I'm certain you'll know his name.

Here's a photo Guido took of me painting the same scene. I drive by this farm every day but had never painted it, so when we stopped, I walked up to the house to ask permission for all of us to set up on their lawn, but before I could even knock, I heard a voice from inside yell out, "I'm not buying!" When I explained that we weren't selling anything, but just wanted to paint there, the woman laughed very hard and said we were welcome to paint anywhere we'd like. This has happened to me often, and I've never had a single person around here tell me I couldn't paint on their property. She seemed confused that we'd want to paint here, though, with those barns and trees blocking the mountain and told us that if we just went down the road we'd have a much clearer view! 

Charles later on that same day painting another scene with Guido and me.

On the weekend we painted in a Quick Draw at the gallery and here's a painting I did of Harvey, a man I met selling some of the exotic vegetables he and his wife, Sue, grow locally. I just love the character in his face! The sun was moving fast, so this is a quick one.

Big Shapes first!

Still blocking in large shapes.

Here's the final painting and a detail below.

Here's some other of the gang painting Harvey.

Here's an 11" by 14" painting I did on the last day of the show. This mountain is Hanging Rock State park and I painted this about a mile or two from our house. I loved how orange the mountain looked as the trees are just budding and haven't yet turned all green. The eighty year old farmer who owns this property came by on a golf cart with his dogs to see our paintings and told us we were welcome to paint anywhere on his property.

So I came back and did another painting on his farm the next morning, also 11" by 14". One of the things I most love about North Carolina is the red dirt, since it is so different from the deep black dirt I grew up with in the Midwest. Susan and I were both surprised by the color when we first traveled down here and, for painting, it just breaks up all that green so perfectly!

I e-mailed this painting to a collector who was originally from North Carolina and had been wanting to get one of my landscapes from here for a while. Imagine my surprise when he told me that his wife just hated the red clay dirt from North Carolina since she battled getting it out of clothes for so long and that it just brought up too many bad memories to have a painting with the red dirt in it! It's so interesting how everyone has their own memories and dispositions that effect what we see. I have another friend who can't stand to see the tractors they use in China since it caused such horrible memories of her childhood during the Cultural Revolution when her family was sent to be forced labor in the countryside for "reeducation". Others have been brought to tears on viewing paintings that reminded them in some way of a loved one. As artists we often assume that our paintings will evoke the same emotion we had when we painted them, so it's always interesting to me to hear the many unexpected reactions people get from my paintings.

This is one reason why I don't do commissions anymore. Often times the collector has such a clear idea in their mind of what they want the painting to say about something that they would probably be the only one capable of truly capturing it. That's what's so great about painting, the ability to convey moments like that to other people through an image that just can't be properly described in words. It's a misconception that only artists have something visual to say, it's just that they are the only ones with the tools to say it. I can't sing, but love when I hear a song that expresses just what I'd have sung if I could -- so many times artists become our surrogates, helping us express what is inside to others. The trick is just waiting until you see the right painting that captures what you feel.

Just for fun, here's one of the many quirky buildings you'll come across driving around the back roads of Stokes County! That's Susan up in the left corner.