Embracing the Landscape: The Spirit of Painting Outdoors
Painting en plein air, or painting outdoors directly from nature, is more than a technical exercise's an immersive journey. It places the artist at the heart of the environment, surrounded by the changing light, shifting weather, and the intricate rhythms of the natural world. Unlike the controlled environment of a studio, the outdoors offers no stillness, no pause button. It demands attentiveness, adaptability, and a deep sensitivity to the world as it moves and breathes around you.
The tradition of painting on location stretches back centuries, celebrated by artists who sought to break free from the confines of indoor settings and engage more intimately with their surroundings. The visceral immediacy of being outdoors changes not just what artists see, but how they feel. The tang of salt in the air, the rustle of leaves, the scent of rain on earththese become as important as the visual stimuli. Each brushstroke is informed by this multi-sensory experience, creating work that resonates with a sense of place.
Yet the freedom and vitality of the open air come with challenges. The ever-shifting light can dramatically alter a scene within minutes. Winds may disrupt materials, and sudden showers can wash away freshly laid pigment. It takes more than skill with a brush to meet these demands. It requires a mindset rooted in flexibility, quick thinking, and a willingness to relinquish control in favor of responsiveness. Artists who thrive in this practice have developed techniques and philosophies that honor this dance between discipline and spontaneity.
At the Newlyn School of Art, seasoned painters share time-tested insights into this art form. They highlight the importance of preparation in the sense of rigid planning, but in being mentally and physically equipped to embrace whatever the landscape offers. Their approaches vary, but all emphasize mindfulness, observation, and the courage to simplify. What follows is a look into how three contemporary plein air artistsPaul Lewin, Imogen Bone, and Sam Boughtonnavigate the complexities of painting outdoors while capturing the raw essence of the land.
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Paul Lewin and the Art of Focused Seeing
For Paul Lewin, the act of painting begins well before any color is applied. His philosophy is rooted in traveling light and thinking deeply. He distills his gear down to the essentials: a sketchbook and a couple of soft B-grade pencils. This minimalist approach isn't about restriction; it’s about clarity. He believes that by stripping away the noiseboth visual and materialthe artist is better able to connect with the core of the landscape.
Paul’s method starts with an extended moment of pause. Before making a mark, he immerses himself in quiet observation, allowing the landscape to speak in its own time. It is in this contemplative space that he finds what he calls the “trigger, ”the specific aspect of the view that evokes a personal reaction. Rather than attempting to capture the entire scene, he identifies a segment or quality that resonates and builds his work around that.
His initial sketches are not about perfection or detail. They serve as meditative explorations, a tactile form of thinking through mark-making. He experiments with where to place the edges of the composition, fully aware that trying to include everything dilutes the visual power of the piece. The careful selection of compositional boundaries is critical. It allows for the creation of balance and rhythm within the frame.
One of his most effective tools is the act of squinting. By partially closing his eyes, he reduces the landscape to basic tonal relationships, distinguishing areas of light and shadow more clearly. This simplification reveals underlying structures and patterns often missed in a full-color view. His drawing strokes are intentionally varied to express different aspects of the scene. Angular, jagged lines might articulate the structure of a rocky outcrop, while softer, fluid motions convey the undulating movement of water.
Paul’s work is characterized by a sense of place distilled through intention and observation. He treats the initial drawing as a roadmap, not just for spatial layout, but for mood and energy. The marks are not mere outlines; they are expressive symbols, each one contributing to a visual language that captures the landscape’s inner life.
Imogen Bone: Expressive Economy and Agile Composition
Imogen Bone approaches plein air painting with a refreshing sense of freedom and movement. For her, portability and agility are key. She favors loose sheets of cartridge paper over bound sketchbooks, attaching them to a lightweight board that allows her to shift positions easily. Her materials are curated for efficiency and versatilitysmall containers of pre-mixed acrylics, a selection of flat brushes for broad or detailed strokes, and richly pigmented Neocolour crayons for added intensity.
Imogen is driven by the belief that outdoor painting should be instinctive and responsive rather than overburdened with decisions or complications. Her process often begins with multiple thumbnail sketches of a single view, each one a unique exploration of form and focus. These mini-studies help her distill the composition into its strongest elements, making conscious choices about what to emphasize and what to leave out. She sees omission not as a loss, but as a path to clarity.
Her marks are bold and declarative. Rather than building up an image with cautious layering, she embraces confident gestures that capture the emotional tone of the landscape. This assertiveness brings unity to her compositions, giving them a visual coherence even when made in the face of changing light and weather.
Imogen’s materials support her energetic approach. The acrylics allow for quick layering without long drying times, while the crayons add texture and contrast. She adapts easily to her surroundings, finding rhythms between observation and execution. Her philosophy is grounded in simplicity, not minimalism. She strips away what is unnecessary to focus on the pulse of the scene, whether it’s the glint of sun on water or the outline of a distant hill softened by mist.
The result is work that feels immediate and alive. Her paintings do not aim for photographic accuracy. Instead, they reflect the emotional texture of the placeits temperature, its soundscape, its underlying mood. This emotional fidelity is what makes her work resonate, turning fleeting experiences into lasting impressions.
Sam Boughton: Seasonal Stories and Sensory Immersion
Sam Boughton brings a unique sensibility to plein air painting, one that weaves the physical landscape with the sensations it evokes. Her work is deeply seasonal, capturing not just what a place looks like, but what it feels like at a particular moment in time. For Sam, the landscape is a living storybook, with each page turned by the wind, sun, and passage of time.
She carefully selects her locations, drawn to scenes with layered depth and narrative potential. A tangled foreground of wild grasses, a meandering path, or a dramatic skyall these elements serve as anchors for her compositions. Before making a single mark, she soaks in the scene, allowing its textures, sounds, and even scents to shape her response. This preliminary immersion is central to her creative process.
Her materials are as varied as the environments she paints. Sam carries multiple sketchbooks of different sizes and orientations, along with sheets of loose paper to allow for spontaneous changes in format. Her preferred media include Daler FW acrylic inks for their vibrant flow, richly pigmented Unison Colour pastels, and brushes suited for both delicate and expressive marks. Colored paper is also an important part of her toolkit, adding a new dimension to how paint and pastel behave on the surface.
One of her signature techniques is working on several pieces at once. This allows her to maintain a consistent color palette across multiple works and to pivot quickly if conditions change. It also encourages a sense of continuity in her visual storytelling. The inks provide a fluid, luminous base, while the pastels introduce bold, tactile highlights that pop against the ground.
Sam’s art is built on contrastsbetween permanence and impermanence, silence and sound, clarity and ambiguity. She welcomes the unpredictable nature of outdoor painting, using it as an opportunity to be more intuitive. Each piece becomes a layered conversation between the landscape and her internal world. The result is work that captures not just a location, but a mooda fleeting intersection of place, time, and feeling.
Immersive Practices in Plein Air Art: Beyond the Picture Plane
Plein air painting, at its core, is more than just taking one’s easel outdoors to replicate a scene. It is an act of communion with the land, a layered dialogue between artist and environment. In this expanded exploration of contemporary plein air practices, we delve into how texture, found materials, and interpretive strategies serve not just as tools of representation but as conduits for deeper artistic and emotional engagement. Artists like Anita Reynolds and Debbie Mackinnon are redefining how place can be translated onto paper and canvasnot through mere visual mimicry, but through tactile, intimate, and immersive encounters with the natural world.
Anita Reynolds embodies this ethos by narrowing her focus to the granular textures of the landscape. Rather than sweeping mountain vistas or horizon-stretching seascapes, she turns her attention to the overlooked: a shard of bone worn smooth by the tides, the pattern of moss on granite, the delicate echo of a feather caught on a branch. These micro-elements become central characters in her visual narratives. To Reynolds, these details are not secondarythey are essential. They speak of time, erosion, growth, and decay. She sees them as memory carriers of the land.
Her process involves a fusion of tools and techniques designed to record and interpret this quiet splendor. From sketchbooks annotated with vivid color notes to a macro-enabled camera capturing textures the eye might miss, her approach is both scientific and poetic. She collects natural materialsbits of bark, pieces of lichen, pebbles scarred by weatherand integrates them into her creative workflow. This act of gathering, of physically engaging with the land, becomes part of the work itself. It is as though the environment lends her both its stories and its script.
Using Japanese washi, tissue paper, and translucent tracing papers, Reynolds constructs collage elements that whisper of the terrain. These papers, delicate yet resilient, echo the fragility and persistence of natural ecosystems. Her work with Gelli plates, acrylics, and various inks results in textured monotypes that feel almost fossilized, as though excavated rather than painted. Each layer contributes to a geological sense of depth, offering more than an image offers a sensation, a presence.
Her collages emerge not as representations of a specific locale, but as deeply personal resonances of place. They evoke the silence of a forest at dawn, the abrasive kiss of sea wind, the tactile crunch of dry leaves underfoot. In this sense, her work transcends landscape paintingit becomes a map of emotional geography, a tactile memory inscribed through paper, ink, and touch.
The Art of Seeing: Drawing, Editing, and Material Play
For Debbie Mackinnon, the act of drawing is not just an artistic exercise’s a way of seeing. Her plein air practice is fast-paced and full of vitality, marked by gestural lines and deliberately unfinished forms. She works with speed and intention, guided by the belief that to truly see something, one must draw it. It is through the movement of her hand on paper that she connects most viscerally with the landscape around her.
Her drawings are not hyper-realistic renderings, but intimate impressions. Her marks capture the rhythm of wind, the tension of roots in soil, the fleeting shadow of a bird in flight. These are drawings that hum with energy, refusing stillness. Mackinnon embraces what others might discardsketches abandoned in frustration, scribbles made in hasteand breathes new life into them. By layering them into her mixed-media pieces, she transforms discarded beginnings into powerful statements.
College plays a critical role in her process. Old sketchbook pages become the canvas for new ideas. She overlays them with gouache, Derwent Inktense pigments, and marks made from handmade tools. These toolscrafted from twigs, stones, pieces of barkare themselves extensions of the land, and their use introduces an element of unpredictability into her compositions. Every mark made with a twig holds a trace of its origin, an essence of its native place.
Mackinnon’s restricted color palette is a creative constraint that opens rather than limits her expression. Working within a limited range of hues, she fosters harmony in her compositions, allowing form and texture to take center stage. The result is work that sings in quiet, cohesive tonesvisual symphonies composed of whispering lines and echoing colors. Her pieces do not clamor for attention; they pull you in gently, urging closer inspection and a slower pace of viewing.
Editing is central to her philosophy. What is left out is as significant as what is put in. This discipline forces her to distill her observations to their essence, capturing not everything, but the right things. By working quickly, she avoids the trap of overthinking. Spontaneity, for her, is a virtue that keeps her work alive and brimming with authenticity.
Texture as Language: The Soul of the Landscape in Contemporary Practice
Both Reynolds and Mackinnon exemplify a shift in contemporary plein air painting away from mere depiction and toward interpretation, from external observation to internal resonance. In their hands, texture is not just a surface quality. It becomes a language through which the landscape speaks, a sensory bridge between the viewer and the environment. Through texture, their work invites touch, not just gaze; it asks for empathy, not just admiration.
Texture in this context is not limited to the tangible. It includes the texture of experiencethe grain of memory, the weave of time, the layering of emotion. When Reynolds presses layers of paper into inked Gelli plates, she is not merely printing an image; she is imprinting a moment. When Mackinnon scrapes gouache with bark or drags pigment with a pebble, she’s translating the feel of place directly into her mark-making. These textures evoke more than visual recognition; they provoke visceral response.
The use of found materials further deepens the connection between artist and environment. Each twig or feather embedded in their process carries its own story, its origin. These materials are not incidentalthey are intentional. They bridge the gap between the landscape and the studio, making each artwork a hybrid space where nature and art co-create.
Moreover, both artists invite us to slow down. In an age of constant motion and digital saturation, their practices offer an antidote: a return to attentive seeing, deliberate making, and embodied presence. Their work is a reminder that the land holds wisdomnot only in its vastness but in its smallest components. And to truly paint a place, one must listen to it, touch it, and allow it to leave its mark in return.
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In a broader artistic and ecological conversation, their work also signals a growing consciousness around sustainability and the ethics of observation. By working with what is found rather than imposed, by highlighting rather than exploiting, their art aligns itself with the rhythms of nature rather than the demands of production. This approach resonates deeply in today’s cultural landscape, where the relationship between humans and nature is undergoing critical reevaluation.
Ultimately, what Reynolds and Mackinnon achieve in their plein air work is a redefinition of what it means to “capture” a landscape. Their works are not captures at all, but collaborations. They do not seek to dominate the scene before them, but to be shaped by it. And in doing so, they open a door for viewers not just to see, but to feel the soul of the land through color, paper, line, and texture.
The Emotional Power of Color in Landscape Art
Color is far more than a visual element in landscape painting; it is a language of emotion, memory, and atmosphere. In the hands of artists like Mike Staniford and Maggie O’Brien, color transcends realism to become a powerful medium for expressing the unseen qualities of place. These artists don’t just paint what they see; they paint what they remember, what they feel, and what lingers in the air long after a moment has passed.
For both Stanford and O’Brien, color operates as an emotional register, enabling them to convey the intangible sensations of landscape. Their works move beyond literal representation to explore the psychological resonance of place. In doing so, they create paintings that are not just visual but experiential. Each stroke, each hue, and each compositional choice carries the weight of personal reflection and memory.
Their practices illustrate how memory can inform and transform artistic vision. Rather than acting as passive observers, they engage deeply with the environment, absorbing its energy, shifting weather, and subtle movements. These sensations often can’t be captured in the moment, but they resurface later in the studio as emotional prompts, guiding the use of color and composition. The resulting landscapes become layered interpretations that distill essence rather than detail, offering a poetic perspective that invites viewers to connect with the spirit of place.
Mike Staniford: Charcoal Foundations and Colorful Memory
Mike Staniford’s approach to landscape art is rooted in an intense observation of the natural world, especially trees, which he regards as having distinct personalities. Each species, he believes, holds its own story, shaped by centuries of environmental interaction. This sensitivity to the character of nature informs his entire creative process, beginning with studies that strip away the distraction of color.
On location, Staniford begins with monochrome charcoal drawings. This initial phase is essential, allowing him to concentrate on structure, proportion, and gesture. Working in black and white facilitates a deep focus on form and light, free from the complexities of color. In an innovative twist, he uses a rubber to subtract charcoal from the surface, effectively painting with erasure. This reverse chiaroscuro effect injects a sense of motion and life into his sketches, giving them a dynamic presence even at this early stage.
These drawings serve as the foundation for more expressive work back in the studio, where memory and emotion take the lead. Staniford doesn’t aim to recreate the landscape exactly as it appeared; rather, he seeks to reconstruct it through the lens of feeling. Memory becomes his palette, guiding choices in color, tone, and mood. He begins with boldly colored groundsvivid underlayers that remain partially visible in the final piece. These glimpses of foundational color act like geological strata, suggesting depth, history, and the layered nature of both land and thought.
Through this process, Stanforddransforms landscapes into emotional fields. The final works retain the essence of specific locations, yet they shimmer with something more intangible sense of having been lived in, remembered, and felt deeply. They resonate with viewers not because they depict a recognizable place, but because they capture the emotional atmosphere of being there.
Maggie O’Brien: A Dialogue Between Color, Memory, and Atmosphere
Maggie O’Brien’s engagement with the landscape is equally emotive but takes a different form. Her paintings are a lyrical balance of figuration and abstraction, shaped by the transient moods of weather, light, and the shifting seasons. For her, landscape painting is less about depiction and more about interpretation. She collects fragments of experiencesketches, pastel swatches, loose watercolorsthat act as touchstones for the more meditative work she undertakes in the studio.
O’Brien rarely completes a painting outdoors. Instead, she builds a sensory archive during her fieldwork: fleeting impressions, half-formed ideas, and chromatic experiments. These pieces are not meant to stand alone but to fuel the more intuitive painting process that unfolds later. Her surfaces are prepped in advance with acrylic washes in various tones, laying down a chromatic mood that influences every color applied afterward. This preliminary color base subtly infuses the painting, giving it coherence and unity even as the work evolves organically.
When working on site, O’Brien often uses Alkyd Oils, a medium that blends the fast-drying convenience of acrylics with the luminous richness of traditional oils. This allows her to maintain spontaneity without sacrificing depth. Her palette is intentionally limited: she works with a hot and cool version of each primary color, a few carefully chosen earth tones, and white. This disciplined selection fosters intuitive color mixing and maintains harmony throughout the composition.
In the studio, her process becomes more introspective. O’Brien allows her paintings to unfold slowly, responding to each layer as it emerges. There is a strong sense of dialogue between the artist and the work. Adjustments are made not to correct but to discover. If an area feels unresolved or a color too insistent, she doesn’t erase but redirects, embracing accidents and unexpected juxtapositions as part of the journey. Her landscapes breathe, shift, reorient, and settle into their final form through a patient process of engagement.
This openness to evolution results in paintings that feel alive, as if the weather were still moving across the canvas. Her works don’t document specific sites; instead, they evoke the feeling of being in the landscape moisture, its light,and its sense of presence. The ambiguity of her imagery invites viewers to bring their memories and emotions to the experience, creating a personal connection that lingers long after viewing.
Color as Memory, Landscape as Emotion
Both Mike Staniford and Maggie O’Brien demonstrate that color in landscape art is not just a matter of aesthetics but a vital tool for emotional expression and memory. Their paintings are less concerned with geographic accuracy and more invested in emotional truth. In this way, they challenge traditional notions of landscape painting, moving toward a mode that is experiential rather than representational.
For Stanford, color emerges from the memory of light and the emotional charge of a place. His layered process, from charcoal sketch to vibrant canvas, reflects an ongoing dialogue between what is seen and what is remembered. In O’Brien’s case, color is a conduit for mood and sensation. Her works evoke the ephemeral nature of landscapeits wind, its rain, its silenceand offer a deeply personal interpretation of space and time.
Their distinct methods converge in the idea that landscape is not just a visual subject but an emotional territory. They map this territory not with topographic precision but with sensitivity and intuition. The resulting artworks are emotional cartographies of feeling, memory, and moment. These are landscapes not simply to be looked at but to be felt, absorbed, and remembered.
In an age when we are constantly bombarded with photographic representations of the world, the works of Staniford and O’Brien remind us of the unique ability of painting to capture what lies beneath the surface. Their use of color is not about imitation but about invocation call to remember not how a place looked, but how it lived in the soul.
Their art becomes a mirror for our own experiences with the natural world, encouraging us to look beyond the obvious and to explore the emotional landscapes we carry within. Through color, they give form to memory. Through memory, they give meaning to place. And through their work, they invite us into a more profound engagement with the world around usone brushstroke, one hue, one feeling at a time.
Expression in the Landscape: The Emotional Pulse of Place
As we reach the final chapter in our journey through the realm of landscape painting on location, the spotlight turns to artist Anthony Garratta painter whose dynamic methods and deeply personal connection to the landscape bring the themes of expression, surface, and discovery vividly to life. Garratt's work does not aim to replicate what he sees with photographic precision. Instead, it breathes with the rhythm, tension, and emotion of the terrain. His painting process is less about control and more about communion with the environment, creating a dialogue between artist and landscape that is both spontaneous and deeply researched.
Anthony Garratt begins his creative process long before a brush touches canvas. For him, painting is not merely a visual task; it’s an immersive experience rooted in understanding. Each location carries its own story, etched in rock formations, echoed in local traditions, or hidden in the changing patterns of the weather. Garratt spends time researching the geological structure of a site, its cultural layers, and its historical resonance. This foundational knowledge seeps into his artistic choices, guiding the selection of both subject matter and materials. It is this preparatory phase that allows his later gestures on the canvas to feel instinctive yet informed, intuitive yet grounded.
The notion of "expression" in Garratt’s work goes beyond stylistic flair and is the very heartbeat of his artistic practice. When he arrives at a location, he responds with immediacy, often creating fast, continuous line drawings that become the skeleton for his paintings. These sketches are not about detail or representation. Instead, they act as a kind of shorthand for the sensory experience of being there. Wind, light, scent, and sound all leave their trace in the motion of his hand. His lines meander, dance, and dart across the surface, capturing not the form of the land but its spirit.
In this way, the emotional dimension of painting on location becomes central. Garratt challenges the idea that art must look beautiful to be valuable. He encourages other artists to relinquish the need for aesthetic perfection in their on-site studies. These works, after all, are not finished products but vessels for memory, emotion, and texture. They are an archive of fleeting moments, tender, some turbulent, may eventually be refined into more polished studio pieces, or they may remain untouched, existing as records of a raw encounter with the land.
The Surface as a Living Entity
For Garratt, the painting surface is never a blank, passive plane waiting to be filled. Instead, it is an active participant in the creative process, lending its history, character, and unpredictability to the final work. His choice of surface often includes repurposed materialsweathered plywood, forgotten canvases, or even abandoned artworks that he transforms into something entirely new. These surfaces come with their patina of use and time, offering a rich texture that becomes part of the narrative.
This tactile quality is not incidental is essential. The textures embedded in these surfaces echo the textures of the landscape itself: rough bark, craggy cliffs, grainy sand, and the eroded marks of weather over stone. Garratt exploits these qualities to heighten the immediacy and intensity of his compositions. The result is a visual language that feels both spontaneous and deeply considered, where chance marks and purposeful gestures coexist.
In terms of materials, Garratt defies traditional boundaries. His toolkit is eclectic and adaptive, reflecting his experimental spirit. While oils and acrylics are staples, he often introduces unconventional media into his workflow. Spray paint, bitumen, and tar brushes make appearances, as do common household items like shower squeegees, which he uses to sweep pigment across the surface in bold, gestural motions. These unorthodox tools are not gimmicksthey allow him to interact with his surfaces in unexpected ways, inviting fluidity, accident, and vitality into his compositions.
This exploration of surface speaks to a larger truth about landscape painting: that the act of creating a work is itself a reflection of the land’s complexity. Surfaces are scratched, layered, washed, and scored just as landscapes are shaped by natural forces over time. Garratt’s approach underscores the importance of working withnot againstthe natural qualities of materials. In doing so, he elevates the act of painting from mere depiction to a form of material storytelling.
Letting paintings rest is another facet of his process that reveals a deep respect for the medium. Garratt often allows works to pause in their evolution, giving both himself and the artwork space to breathe. In this period of stillness, new insights emerge. What once felt unresolved or chaotic can be seen anew, and further developments can unfold with greater clarity. This philosophy honors the idea that artistic growth often happens in silence, in waiting, in the willingness to be patient with the unpredictable nature of creativity.
Discovery Through Immersion: Painting as a Transformative Journey
At the heart of Garratt’s practiceand indeed, of landscape painting as a wholeis the idea of discovery. Each site visited, each sketch made, and each mark laid down is part of an ongoing exploration, not just of place but of self. The act of painting outdoors strips away the controlled conditions of the studio and demands full engagement with the environment. It is a practice that requires adaptability, openness, and a certain vulnerability.
This journey is not one of mastery, but of continual learning. Garratt’s work reveals how powerful it is to remain open to the unknown, to allow materials and surroundings to shape the outcome. This mindset invites serendipity and responsiveness, qualities that cannot be manufactured but must be allowed to unfold. In a world often obsessed with precision and control, this way of working offers a radical alternative: trust the process, embrace imperfection, and let the landscape guide your hand.
Throughout this four-part series on landscape painting on location, recurring themes have emerged that transcend any single artist or technique. The virtue of restraint teaches us that sometimes, saying less visually can speak more powerfully. The value of responsiveness reminds us that the artist is not a passive observer but an active participant in the environment. And the power of sensory immersion invites us to engage all our facultiesnot just sight but touch, sound, and intuitionwhen we approach the canvas.
Landscape painting, as explored through Garratt and other artists, becomes more than an act of image-making. It transforms into a profound mode of inquiry and connection. When artists step into the landscape with open eyes and receptive hearts, they do more than paintthey translate lived experience into visual poetry. Each brushstroke becomes a line of verse, each layer of pigment a stanza in an unfolding narrative of place and perception.
The natural world has ever-changing rhythms, unpredictable, its moods shifting with wind and light. To paint it is to accept that no moment can be perfectly preserved, only interpreted. And therein lies the beauty. In embracing the ephemeral, the imperfect, and the intuitive, artists like Anthony Garratt show us that discovery does not end with the final painting. It begins there, inviting viewers to see not just a scene, but a feeling, a moment, a journey.
In a time when digital tools increasingly mediate our relationship with the world, the act of painting outdoorswith hands dirty, senses awakened, and heart engagedstands as a quiet form of resistance. It is an invitation to slow down, to observe, and to feel deeply. Whether the artist works in silence or storm, on cliffs or coastlines, the landscape offers itself as a mirror, a muse, and a mystery waiting to be explored.
