2014 Winter Plein Air

The Grand Marais Art Colony's annual Winter Plein Air event was a great success again this year.  Artists spent a week at YMCA Camp Menogyn on Bearskin Lake just south of the BWCA Wilderness.  It was -10F when I arrived in the parking lot to haul gear across the lake to the lodge at Menogyn.  The sun was just going down, and a stiff wind was blowing snow across the lake into vortices and intricate drifts.  It was dark when I finally arrived, and the scene as I crossed was the inspiration for one of my paintings, called "Night Crossing."

The wind whipped across the lake again the next morning, creating beautiful scenes but difficult painting conditions.  I painted "The Swimming Hole" from the north shore of Bearskin Lake at Menogyn's sauna building, looking across the wind-swept lake and the spot near shore where ice is removed for campers to plunge into the lake after Thursday night's sauna.  Always a highlight of the week.

Wednesday morning the sun came out, and frigid temps aloft produced a sundog - reflecting ice crystals creating a rainbow around the sun.  I painted that scene while sitting on my overturned sled in the middle of Bearskin Lake looking toward tiny Mouse Island, with Cat and Dog islands in the distance.

The challenges of painting outdoors in deep winter and wilderness are such a strange joy - maybe because of the focus required of the effort.  The paintings aren't always successful, but the process always reveals some important truth that might take years to discover or elude me entirely in the studio.  Those "aha" moments are, for me, what plein air painting is about.

 Night Crossing - 11x14 oil - SOLD

 Sundog Over Mouse Island - 9x12 oil

 The Swimming Hole - 9x12 oil