Plein Art Painting for Art on the Trails
In which I share some pictures of my plein air painting session from Friday night and see if cold wax can be brought outside. Spoiler, it can.
On Friday, I spent a lovely evening plein air painting at Copper Moose Farms in Park City for the opening of Art on the Trails, which is a beautiful annual event here showcasing local artists. Combining visual arts, music, dancing, sculpture, the spoken word and more, Art on the Trails is a really special event that takes place along a trail. Audience members walk through nature to artist stations where they enjoy an immersive performance or interactive exhibit.
In 2022, I was one of the artists featured along the trail and I facilitated an interactive art creation station called “Make Your Mark”. The project engaged participants in deliberate mark-making to contemplate our impact on our surroundings. Using handmade ink crafted from forest fire charcoal collected at the site of the 2021 Parley's Canyon Fire, we explored gestural paintings and mark-making drawings as a way to delve into the question of what we leave behind through our actions and words. Over 140 people participated, and each person left with their own artwork on recycled cotton paper, painted with elderberry sticks and gull feathers using the forest fire charcoal ink. At the end, the question was asked, “How do you want to leave your mark on the world?”
This year’s Art on the Trails featured a whole new set of artists and creatives for the Saturday experience. I was not part of the Saturday experience, but I did participate in the opening night celebration at the farm stand to serve as entertainment/activation. Myself along with fellow local painters Emily Miquelon, Olga Hegner, and Elissa Sabbö spent the evening painting while being serenaded with bluegrass and opera music. The weather was a bit windy, but we held it together and had a nice night.
Normally, I plein air paint with just watercolor, but since I’ve been painting with cold wax, I wanted to see if it were possible to do cold wax outdoors. Encaustic is difficult to do outside. Mostly you need electricity and a lot of supplies, but it also requires a table, and all my tools, and hours. I can’t do a plein air painting with encaustic. But what about cold wax? (By the way, if you want to know how my 100 cold wax paintings are going, you can subscribe for only $5 a month….)
I started off with a very colorful base painting of the scene made with watercolor. I covered that with a thin layer of cold wax, and walked away for a few minutes to get a drink. Then I returned and started adding the cold wax. My cold wax palette fit ok on top of my regular palette. If I do this more, I’ll definitely have to modify my setup. But it worked decently.
Then I got distracted by opera, as one does. Damn girl.
I completely lost track of time, chatting with old friends and people curious about what the heck I was doing. Luckily, I was able to finish just before the event was over. To be honest, I haven’t plein air painted in a while!! And it is still hard. Plein air painting is 100% a full-contact sport or a theatrical production - live performance, dealing with the elements, chatting it up with an audience, all while trying to make a painting! We may look cool and calm, but we are paddling fiercely underwater.
At the end of the event, all four of the live paintings were auctioned off to those who bought raffle tickets, and I’m excited to say that dear friend Diego Zegarra won mine! I swear it was not rigged even though he asked me to rig it for him.
I will definitely do more cold wax in plein air. It was fun and different and weird and cool. It was also hard. But maybe that was because it was so windy. I also really need to figure out how to focus better on the overall composition and not let myself get distracted by all the pretty details I see while I’m looking at the landscape. One really needs a very direct vision for plein air painting to stay on the right track.
Thanks again to Arts Council for Park City & Summit County for the lovely event and including me.
Next week, more cold wax!