The Lost Art

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Losing a painting somewhere is never fun, but losing a good painting can drive one to temporary distraction. While teaching our plein air workshop in Rocky Mountain National Park, I was demonstrating the direct-painting method of painting outdoors. This method requires the painter to begin work without any preliminary monochromatic sketch, or much of any sketch at all. The subject was a mountain stream and the demonstration went well. I felt that this small study was complete enough to use as reference for a much larger piece. One of my students was interested in purchasing it. After the painting session was over, we packed up and I placed the painting against a tree with the rest of my gear. We broke for lunch, then loaded up our gear and headed for our afternoon painting location on the other side of the park. It wasn’t until 4:30 that afternoon that I noticed that the morning study was missing from my wet box. We rushed back to the morning location and searched everywhere, but no …