Steve and Ruth make a plan.
We' d like to regularly paint outdoors, in the outside air, "En Plein Air", as painters have for 150 years or more. Paint what we see, paint the experience of being there, paint our attraction to the paintings of the Plein Air masters, of which Cezanne sets the most impossibly high standard. Equally wonderful painters like, Pissarro, Monet, the Hudson River Illuminist, the Bay Area figuratives, and Impressionists everywhere have achieved admirable outdoor painting. We thank them for the example, acknowledge the influence of many others including Chinese landscape painters and more personal to us, Steve's former teacher and Ruth's former neighbor, Bill Morehouse, who himself came to Plein Air painting late in his career, setting a tone we'd like to follow - direct painting, good fun, lovely picnic lunches.
We have only now, in 2005, come to Plein Air painting. This will be the story of our effort to achieve this most civilized avocation in our sadly brutish era.
