The first step to enjoying Plein-air art is view it in a competitive way. Art and the process of art are unique to each individual. Competition is not what you are all about, in your pursuit of Pleinair!
If it’s not a competitive festival, what’s in it for me?
Everything is in it for you. The joy of being deeply rooted in a place, with your own special humanness, is a realization that comes with the meditative practice of pleinair.
Yes, it is a meditation practice!
What you will gradually realize, as you spend more time drawing and painting outdoors, is that you are connecting to nature in a way that goes back to the beginning of time. You are connecting to your ancestors, all the humans who have ever lived; and by observing carefully, you become grounded in a specific moment and place in time.
Masters of seeing in our time
Frederick Franck was an artist who understood that drawing was a meditation.:
“It is in order to really see, to see ever deeper, ever more intensely, hence to be fully aware and alive, that I draw what the Chinese call ‘The Ten Thousand Things’ around me. Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world. I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.”
Fredrick Franck
You, too can experience the joy of Pleinair!
