Award-winning artist Lorenzo Chavez is offering his first advanced workshop focusing on understanding and painting winter landscapes March 23-25 in Parker, Colorado (near Denver)

This class is for intermediate/advanced students, preferably with experience in plein air painting.

The 3-day workshop will feature daily demos as well as discussions on simplification, edges, value, color and drawing. Instruction will also include designing from photos and field sketches, photography composition, understanding winter landscape fundamentals and study of historic winter landscape painters.

 Lorenzo graduated with honors from the Colorado Institute of Art in 1983 and subsequently studied with Mark Daily at the Art Students League of Denver. He also studied with Richard Schmid, Ned Jacob, Clyde Aspevig, Skip Whitcomb, Michael Lynch and the late James Reynolds. Currently, he participates in many prestigious national invitational group exhibits, and his work is featured in numerous popular art magazines and books.

He will be offering additional  workshops this season in Tucson AZ, Wimberley TX, Santa Fe NM, Carbondale/Aspen CO, Springfield OR,  and Greenville NY.

Pamela Talese has been painting full time, mostly outdoors, since 2000. Living in New York City, she has found her muse in old icons of the manufacturing and shipping industries, so emblematic of the twentieth century U.S, which  have begun to decline and even disappear.

This billboard for Eagle Electric Manufacturing Company, which was founded in 1920, no longer exists.

“What strikes me about difference between the billboard advertisements of Eagle era and those of today, is not only the loss of the ‘hand painted sign’ but the change in the products themselves and their target market. In neighborhoods where light industry once thrived, these well-crafted and exuberant signs reflected local pride in the manufacture of solid, useful products. Such products were often purchased by the same community that made them: the working middle class. The situation is very different today.”

She would take her painting supplies in a bike trailer to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for her “Working Waterfront” series. This 14x20 painting is entitled The Freddy K. Her most recent series, Rust Never Sleeps: Corrosion and Renewal in Maritime/Industrial New York, also focuses on the Navy Yard.

“What makes the plein-air approach of painting more dynamic to me is not only the changes of weather and light, but also encounters with various tenants at the Yard and conversations that help to inform my understanding.”

To the left is a 13×9 painting entitled Driggs Avenue Gate, from her 718 Series, Changing Neighborhoods in Brooklyn & Queens.

We enjoyed a conversation recently with Matt Smith, PAPA Signature Member and one of the artists who will be demonstrating at the Plein Air Convention near Las Vegas in April.

After growing up in Arizona, France and Switzerland, he graduated from Arizona State University with a BFA in painting.  Having spent time studying the traditional styles of such landscapes masters as Maynard Dixon, William Herbert Dunton and Edgar Payne, he focuses primarily on the subtle and spectacular landscapes of the American West, from California to the Canadian Rockies.

His website offers three instructional DVDs, including the PBS show Painting the American Landscape. Here is an interview about the synergy between plein air and studio painting, posted on artist/author Mitchell Albala’s blog.

“My main focus when teaching any workshop is on the fundamentals. When I run into a problem while painting, I can usually trace it back to a lack of attention with one of the basics—drawing, values, design, and color—so it’s only natural that I concentrate on this when teaching. I also emphasize the importance of working from life and developing a personal vision and technique.”

The paintings shown here are all 8″x10″ or smaller.

Born and raised in New York City, Meredith Nemirov received a BFA from Parsons School of Design. In 1988, she moved to a small town in Colorado. This change in environment brought a change of theme as she faced the mountains instead of the rush of humanity on the streets. She started painting the landscape and also focused on the aspen tree that she considers the figure in the landscape.

“… being outside painting, in the moment, is so much more than making a painting of the scene observed. It is a record, an act of being a witness of all that is before you, capturing what occurs during that passage of time. The weather and light changing, the wind, and also the agitation from the mosquitoes buzzing about, the urgency to make a painting of the total experience.”

She is offering a series of classes this year, including painting in Guatamala (February 28-March 9) and New Mexico (October 14-20) as well as several classes in western Colorado (Telluride, Crested Butte, Grand Junction and Ouray County).

“My vision for the work is to convey the idea that nature is not observed simply from one particular location. Nor is it fixed in time but has an invisible and intangible aspect…”

Nemirov has received awards from the Colorado Council on the Arts (CCA), the Telluride Council for Arts and Humanities Small Grants, and Artist Fellowships for Residencies at the Anderson Ranch in Snowmass in 2005 and the Vermont Studio Center in 2010. Her work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum, The Queens Museum and Yeshiva University Museum.

The upcoming Plein Air Convention to be held near Las Vegas, Nevada, in April will be the first of its kind. Presented by PleinAir Magazine, the 4-day event will feature more than thirty world-class artists & instructors. Attendance is limited to 750 people, and the host hotel has already sold out for one of the days. (There are two other hotels nearby.)

There will be demonstrations, lectures, a “Marketing Boot Camp” session, critiques, receptions and painting oportunities in the Red Rock National Conservation Area (see below). One admission charge gives you access to the entire program. Bus transportaion from the hotel will be provided, and you can either watch the painters or do it yourself (or both!). Vistas include 22 miles of red rocks, mountains, desert, horses, shacks, etc. 

Participants include Russian Master Nikolai Dubovik, who will do a demonstration on Russian Realism, Jean Stern of the Irvine Museum on the history and future of Plein Air painting, and Richard Ormond, Sargent’s grand-nephew, on “Inside the Mind of John Singer Sargent.”

Everyone is welcome whether you’re professional, semi-professional, amateur or just curious. There will be big screen video so you can see well no matter where you sit. If you book by the end of this month (February) you can pay in two installments of  $397.50, and approximately 200 arts organizations are offering discounts to their members (see the list on the FAQ page). Gamblin will provide Gamsol to use on site (you’ll just need a leak-proof container).