Archive for the ‘En Plein Air’ Category

Collage in the U.P.

Monday, September 30th, 2024

Spent a chunk of September “painting in papers” while in the Les Cheneaux Islands. This recent method of pasting collage ingredients over a crude charcoal sketch really started to grow on me.

 

Here is an interim stage of completion for “Up the Channel.” The water foreground needs to be finished and softened. The shoreline can benefit from a few more details. Please stand by for the final version!

Evolving creative intent with similar subjects

Friday, August 30th, 2024

“The writing and playing of music is a matter of intent…. You can’t just throw a paint brush against the wall and call whatever happens art.”
— Duke Ellington
 

There are so many old farmhouses and barns in our Knobland region of Kentucky, and they always hold my rapt attention as I interpret them in found papers. It is necessary, however, for me to quiet my busy mind and discover a soul connection to a particular natural place and the evident stewardship of those who have cared for it. Then, and only then, can I apply an intent to coax my intuition in an expected direction and to handle paper and paste with creativity.

I am pleased with what I achieved on the top half of this small canvas. The foreground is now due for an efficient studio finish.

Check out my series of posts that have described a seven-year plein air adventure, “painting in papers.”

 

At Walnut Springs (unfinished)
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
on stretched canvas, 10 x 8 inches
Plein Air Artists of Central Kentucky

Friday, August 2nd, 2024

My solo show of collage landscapes stays on the road — this time at the Paul Sawyier Public Library in Frankfort. The exhibition lasts through September 23, and I am present for a gallery talk on August 20 at 6pm.

LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY ~ John Andrew Dixon

Twelfth chapter — finding the crest . . .

Tuesday, July 16th, 2024

“The spirit laughs at man’s concern with the form of Art, with new expression because the old is outworn! It is man’s own poverty of vision yielding him nothing, so that to save himself he must trick out in new garb the old, old commonplaces, or exalt to be material for art the hitherto discarded trivialities of the mind.”
— Rockwell Kent
 

I guess it was only a matter of time before I represented in papers the Kentucky icon of our vanishing small farm economy. It took me longer than usual to pick a spot to sit and paste papers during my visit to Daycrest Farm. With the help of Jason, one of the hospitable owners, I found a scene at the back of the acreage. I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I had to shake off the impulse to make another try at summer blossoms in the commercial flower gardens near the highway. I listened to myself thinking, “Haven’t you done this kind of view before? What do you expect to discover?”
 
 

The PAACK “Art Out” turned out to be beneficial for me because I approached what appeared to be an “already done that” rural setting with everything I’ve learned about “painting in papers.” After an insane timetable during the recent plein air challenge in Lexington, it was nice to tear and glue at my typical snail’s pace. Amusingly, the tobacco barn seems to levitate in my first interim image. Although content with the day’s work, there were too many spots that needed attention, so I couldn’t declare the collage finished when back in the studio. Minute subtleties like barn ventilators, fence posts, and complex foliage details are difficult ingredients to manage outdoors with even the mildest of breezes (which are most welcome when highs are in the mid 90s).

My love for books prohibits me from destroying useful ones for art. I only cannibalize ruined ones. I typically ignore the literal language and include it for pattern and texture, but in this piece I became a bit attached to what the fragments of sentences actually said. It’s interesting to probe the effect of linguistic connotations, whether or not the meaning can be discerned. My inclusion of “manipulated” verbal content has become so complicated that it’s hard to explain, even in a workshop context. At any rate, I like to remind viewers that it is, after all, a collage.

I am rather pleased with this landscape, and I hope it lands with a person who wants to live with it!
 
 

Tobacco Crest
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
12 x 9 inches + wood frame, crafted by the artist
available to collectors

Painting the town again. (With paper!)

Sunday, June 30th, 2024

“Yes, I hustle, I hustle to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.”
— Anthony Hopkins
 

The plein air tradition is alive and well in Central Kentucky. My thanks to Arts Connect for an outstanding “Paint the Town” event, with sincere appreciation to juror James Swanson for his recognition of collage as a plein air medium. A 2nd-place prize was quite unexpected, because it was everything I could do to meet their timetable in the extreme heat. All artwork had to be delivered framed and ready for immediate display by the 8am to 2pm deadline.
   

This event is always challenging for me, because I rarely need to paste as fast as I must for such a rigorous pace. Every time I go outside to create a collage landscape, adequate preparation is important, and then I try to be as spontaneous as I can with the materials that I bring. For this annual competition, the chosen scene is carefully scouted. I make more “prepared ingredients” ahead of time. That usually means additional printed-text gel transfers on a range of colored papers. You may have seen how I often include them for facade patterns, foregrounds, and foliage. Dana (my indispensable partner) dug out some of her mid-century carpet thread for my mobile stash, and I used it during the final minutes for utility wires.

The resulting exhibition is at the downtown branch of Lexington Public Library. For as long as it lasts, please view the artworks online to see a strong body of landscapes completed on that hot day. Buy one!

 

Ode to Grain
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
100% / 0% — site to studio
10 x 10 inches + wood frame, crafted by the artist
available for purchase

•  Second Place Prize

Collage outside stands on painting.

Monday, June 24th, 2024

“I think you have to know more than what is current and ‘hot,’ to use a loathsome word. You have to be familiar with the foundation of the work and understand it’s what you’re standing on.”
— Mike Nichols
 

 

My recent outing to Shaker Village involved a different approach to collage landscape when I made two detailed sketches first, with the intent to tear and glue paper on top of it. I have a keen interest in the fact that those who developed collage as a modern art considered themselves painters. I keep pushing to use paper outside with that foundation in mind. Partly due to my added preliminary time, I was disappointed in the degree of progress for the day. The second start with a more architectural emphasis will be put on hold. I would like to return to this exact spot. I may decide to finish the sheep enclosure rapidly in the studio (to preserve the overall impression and to retain its designation as a plein air artwork by staying within the 50/50 allocation of time), but it might be more desirable to go back and complete it on site. We shall see.
 
 

Sheep Enclosure, Shaker Village (interim stage)
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
12.5 x 5.875 inches

From Their Special Place

Wednesday, June 5th, 2024

“We are part and parcel of the big plan of things. We are simply instruments recording in different measure our particular portion of the infinite. And what we absorb of it makes for character, and what we give forth, for expression.”
— Rockwell Kent
 

I returned to historic Caldwell Farm to coordinate an “Art Out” for the Plein Air Artists of Central Kentucky (PAACK). When I suitably had met my few obligations for the day, I went alone toward the heart of the acreage to locate a spot that the owners refer to as the “Special Place.” Along a well-tended pathway, near a quiet watershed, I set up my makeshift plein air collage rig. From that perspective, I sought to interpret in papers a far-off cluster of corn cribs and structures that once served as the focus of an innovative cattle-raising operation. Two different angles of this agricultural configuration previously had become part of my LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY collection.

I found myself simplifying, simplifying. Paper demands it, of course, but also I had hoped to touch the essence of the early summer scene — a moody sky, the limited palette of buildings, plus an expanse of new corn, barely above the soil. Representational collage, if anything, must be about expression, not craft. What one is blessed to take away from contact with the fusion of nature, ingenuity, and intentional affection is left to individual receptivity. Being a so-called artist is not necessary to reap the potential benefits of experiencing rural beauty.

 

From Their Special Place
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
9 x 7.625 inches
available for purchase

April Burst

Wednesday, May 8th, 2024

“Confidence comes not from always being right, but from not fearing being wrong.”
— Peter McIntyre
 

It has been too “moist” this week for me to make art with paper outside, so I did my studio finish to the collage that I had started at a previous Art Out. Whether or not it is apparent to others, I try to do something different each time, an interpretation or radical ingredient choice that causes discomfort at first. I think it’s important to momentarily frighten myself. Then I know that I might be breaking new ground.

 

April Burst
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
Plein Air Artists of Central Kentucky

Wednesday, May 1st, 2024

My solo show of collage landscapes is back on display — this time at the Eastside Branch of the Lexington Public Library. The exhibition lasts from May 1 to June 30 — Palumbo Drive at Man O War Boulevard.

Capturing an Arcadian Sky

Monday, March 25th, 2024

“I have learned to expect nothing of the weather
but what it gives us.”
— Rockwell Kent
 

Last September at nearby Arcadia Farm, I fell under the spell of a horizon and stuck with the mood of early-morning clouds for the rest of the session. With the prevailing heat, other members of the PAACK may have been praying for more breeze, but I was grateful for hours of no wind. I wasn’t even using clothespins! I wanted to interpret the viewscape as that huge land grant might’ve looked to the original Shelby family in the 1700s. Although pleased with the result that I took home, I knew I wanted to make studio additions at the base of the artwork before declaring it ready for a signature. And so here we are, March of 2024. As I look ahead to a new season of taking collage outside, it made sense to finally complete the studio refinements on one of my favorite landscapes from 2023.

 

Arcadian Sky
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
11.375 x 7.875 inches
available to collectors

Believing is seeing . . .

Tuesday, November 21st, 2023

“Accepting the familiar is the enemy of seeing… Seeing takes work and patience and concentration and focus otherwise we are always walking around in a fog only seeing what we think we know but not actually seeing anything at all.”
— Cecil Touchon
 

 
Although I have worked outside at entirely wild places (river palisades, for example), I seem to be drawn more to locations that have been cared for by others. To truly observe a rural setting and interpret it with found paper as a collage landscape, I need to spend hours slowing down my busy mind. I approach a kind of reverence for it as a place of evident stewardship and quiet beauty. It’s a slow-motion form of rapt attention, and I am able to see it as a fusion of natural creation with human affection. LITTER-ALLY KENTUCKY is the result.

 

Her Brother’s Barn
Boyle County, Kentucky
 
collage en plein air by J A Dixon
8 x 9.3125 inches
16 x 20 inches, framed
giclée print available