Missing Provence

Untitled
30 x 40, Oil on Canvas
(c) Lesley Powell 2020

This is the week that I planned to be heading off to Provence, to start a month long painting adventure. Alas, those plans have been scratched, due to COVID-19.  

Untitled
25 x 40, Oil on Canvas
(c) Lesley Powell 2020

My summers in Provence over the past eight years have always brought new challenges and sparked growth in my paintings. To keep that trend going, I have been delving deep into my "archives" of plein air paintings from France. I have accumulated many small paintings and studies done on location, which have become jumping-off points for new, larger paintings.

"Amidst the Lavender"
20 x 30, Oil on Canvas
(c) Lesley Powell 2020

These on-site paintings are like my "brains". I take that term from the late Charles Movelli, who wrote that painters who work on the spot often call these paintings their brains.  He notes that the painters rarely sell these paintings. Why hold onto them? Because they are the ground from which springs more fruit. As the great landscape painter John Constable said, "I don't mind parting with the corn, but not with the field in which it was raised!"

"Uphill Climb, Ménerbes"
30 x 20, Oil on Canvas
(c) Lesley Powell 2020

I'm illustrating this post with some of the larger scale paintings I've "raised" from my smaller, on-site paintings. You can see more robust images on my website here.  Thanks for looking!