IF YOU PAINT LANDSCAPES PLEIN AIR IS A MUST

Since I started painting this particular mural, I've made it a practice to plein air paint on a very regular basis. What is plein air painting? "EN PLEIN AIR" is a french term, meaning to paint outside from life in the open air. The nineteenth century group of artists who first developed French Impressionism coined this phrase. Plein Air was my training. It was literally a big part of my upbringing. My father, Don Ricks, started a plein air summer art school back in 1970 he called PAINTING VACATIONS. It was headquartered in Rexburg, Idaho where I grew up. I was about ten years old back then. It was my job during the workshop, to make sure all the artists (mostly senior citizens) had their outdoor painting equipment properly set up so they could focus on painting. After everyone was taken care of, I would then go off and paint too. The art instructors, were staffed by my father Don Ricks, a former Soviet citizen and renown artist named Sergei Bongart and Milford Zornes, a renown watercolorist. Each instructor would make their rounds to an average group of fifteen to thirty art students. Dad ran his nationally advertised art workshop for fifteen years. I was involved in at least eleven or twelve of those memorable workshops. Each day, we would set up our plein air painting equipment at a new location; someone's farm, Teton Valley, along the Snake River near Swan Valley, Yellowstone Park or West of town near a slough, would be some of the places we would paint.

When I turned twenty-two, I married my first wife and began to rase a family. That was in 1980. I took over the operation and production of my father's sign business and had an art gallery in Jackson Hole I supplied paintings to. It wasn't long after  that, that life happened --- I got out of the habit of plein air painting.

Why is plein air painting so important to keep up? If you want to capture natural atmospheric color, plein air is a must. If you haven't gone out in the open air to paint on location, your studio easel paintings begin looking stale after a while. Serious art collectors have an eye for a good plein air artist. Nail the color right on the money and you nail a painting sale. Relying on the camera to do the job your eye and your inner senses were designed to do is a serious mistake. The camera just cannot see and do what your eye and your intuition is designed to do and do well. The colors in this mural are getting the look and feel which can only be experienced from a lot of plein air painting. I'm determined to nail each color in this mural right on the money. To do so, I go out and plein air paint two to three times a week. Since this morning, I have been competing in a plein air competition with other artists in Spring City, Utah. The historic rural town is small, yet there are dozens of full time fine artist's who live and work here. If I chance to win the contest, there is a $1,ooo dollar prize. I will be back painting on the mural on Monday, September 11th (the anniversary of 9/11, when evil terrorists crashed 2 planes into the World Trade Center Towers and one into the Pentagon).

Other news. GOOD NEWS! I just received word last night that I was juried into a great opportunity for artists. I will be in Scottsdale, Arizona next year January through March, at the Celebration of Fine Arts event, painting and selling my paintings to art collectors from all over the world. Those who are given this opportunity, have done very well financially and permanently established their career in this three month period. I'm excited!

LABORING ON LABOR DAY

One of the few Novatek employees who showed up for his work today asked me why I wasn't out enjoying the Labor Day holiday today. I told him that I've always worked nearly every Labor Day. I also mentioned that I love to display the American flag, but I decided not to display the flag on Labor Day since it celebrates Labor Unions. I was quite surprised when the employee mention he never knew that.

He said, "I always thought it was about honoring the virtue of hard work and it never was?"

"Nope." I said, "In fact; In the Midwest, a local labor union in a small town told the Mayor that Tea Party members and non-union conservatives were not allowed to participate in the local parade since it was about Labor Unions."

"Oh really?" He showed a look of surprise.

"I'm afraid so!" I said.

"I didn't know that?..." he walked away bewildered.

I have nothing against hard working highly skilled union members who really do work hard at their job. It is the union executives and their corrupt extortionist tactics I don't like. No one should be forced to join a union or pay union dues if they don't belong to one. I don't agree with Card Check either. Voting for or against union organizing needs to remain private. No one should feel intimidated into joining something they don't want to join. The small guy should also be allowed to compete without fear, for skilled projects along side other companies who are pro-union. If they win the project, it should be against the law for unions to intimidate him.

If I wouldn't have shown up for work today, it would have been because I'm starting to feel phlegm moving back into my chest again. Tomorrow morning, I plan to go back to my doctor's office and try and get an early appointment. In spite of how I felt, I got some color on Cascade. Before I started, I pre-mixed 4 basic shades representing the mountain colors. As I work more form, other colors and values will branch off of these four basic ones. It is important to see and paint the shapes in big masses of color first, before you work in the details. That is what I did when I painted Squaw Peak below Cascade. Right now, the values between the two mountains are pretty closely related. I will adjust the values as the entire painting progresses to the finish. Never completely finish an area before working the all areas around it evenly. Otherwise, you will most likely have to go back and re-work that area you thought was finished because it no longer relates to the rest of the mural. More detail will likely come later.