Summer ‘23 Plein Airs

For the 10 weeks that I was in Fort Myers this summer, I set out to paint two plein-air gouache paintings a week, documenting some of my favorite places in my home town. Painting '“en plein air” means that I carried my painting setup out to each location and painted each of these scenes from life. I also did not bring water to paint with but used the naturally occurring water from each site, no matter how murky, to thin and mix my paints. I would then take the resulting image, in various stages of completion, back to my studio to touch them up from memory or cut them into a quilt-inspired design and reassemble them on a larger page. Each piece was a chance to explore the bounds of my media, approach, and understanding of the landscape while staying within the limitations I had set for myself from the start. All works show below are either 11” x 14” or 12” x 16” on paper.