Seeds of Inspiration

"The Point"
Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2015

I wrote recently about destroying a number of old paintings. One group of paintings that I would never consider destroying are my small plein air paintings. I must keep these, whether they are "successful" ones, or remain unresolved. They are the fruits of my working outdoors, interacting directly with the subject, and "seeing" with all of my senses. Some of them are pictured in this post. No photograph could inform me, no snapshot could inspire me, as these paintings do.

"My Covenant"
Oil on Linen, 14 x 7
(c) Lesley Powell 2015

I often work from these paintings to create larger works back home in my studio. I am not alone in this approach. Charles Movelli has written in his essay "In Praise of the Painterly Painter" that so-called "painterly painters" prefer to work directly from their subject, or from sketches done on the spot. They call these pictures their "brains". Interestingly Morvelli notes that painters rarely sell these pictures. In that regard, he quotes the great English landscape painter John Constable, who said "I don't mind parting with the corn, but not with the field in which it was raised!"

I'm hoping to cultivate these fields even more this year...