On Time and Plein Air Painting

The concept of time has been on my mind a lot recently, possibly because we’ve experienced a lot of loss this summer. Time is such a precious resource and yet it so easy to waste it on mindless activities. I’ve started paying more attention to how I spend my days, even my moments, and thinking about whether the things I’m doing are life-giving and expansive or restrictive and dulling. Art, making it or looking at it, always fall into the life-giving category for me.

This past weekend I went to the Peninsula School of Art to see the plein air paintings, one of my favorite summer activities. I love the immediacy of these paintings and how the gallery smells of oil paint when the fresh off the easel paintings are on the walls. Plein air paintings are so direct in how they capture a moment in time, the light and movement of the wind, the people and things in a landscape at a given moment.