Henry Chadeayne Martin

Two Pennsylvania Plein Air Painters Explore the Desert Southwest

            Always I wanted to paint in the desert southwest. My childhood hero, the explorer John Wesley Powell, brought this land to life for me. I too wanted to explore this wild country, this wilderness of undulating rock forms known as the Colorado Plateau, only I would do it paintbrush in hand, my guide the blazing sun on Utah's stone phenomena. Fortunately, meeting the right woman provided the impetus for the trip. Alison and I met painting in the park, for we both adore plein air painting. Although a beginner, her talent and enthusiasm inspires and motivates me, as Alison brings me out of myself to become myself. Alison's family held a wedding on the west coast, allowing the perfect excuse for the trip. After some trepidation and debate, we realized we had to....just do it!

            Alison and I approach painting from a realist standpoint. Alison studies at Incamminati, the Nelson Shanks Atelier. I studied at the Pennsylvania Academy under Arthur DeCosta, and my paintings stand within the school's tradition of atmospheric naturalism. At Incamminati, the perception of shape against shape serves as the fundamental building block of the visual language. Arthur's approach, however, stresses the concept of form in space. I remember, as a student, being told to "load the lights," and allow the highest values of a painting the richest density of paint. Through this idea I build a sense of atmosphere, with the intent of achieving luminosity and depth in my landscapes. Both schools of thought hold that cleanly painted lights and darks on a toned ground create the illusion of the third dimension. The challenge, to the plein air painter, is to employ these principles in the field, within the perplexing infinity of nature, as we shoot from the hip.

            Another challenge to the landscape painter, even more daunting, remains supremely relevant to all art. The process of giving life, mystery, and soul to a painting can not be taught. Much has been written about mixing colors, how to make the blues recede, how to layer paint, and other topics related to landscape painting. Although this knowledge is indispensable and inseparable from the act of painting, this knowledge is merely the "grammatical structure" of art, and not the art itself. Perhaps Robert Henri offers wise words when he states that in order for a painting to be alive, the painter must be more interested in life than in art. In our case, the life lay not in the everyday hub-bub of the ever swelling city, as it did with the Ash Can school. Our interest lay in the eternal life of the planet itself, etched within the stones, the weathered corpuscles of time looming indisputably on every horizon. Exploring this hypnotic region seemed no time to practice or discuss grammar exercises. I wanted the landscape to live within my paintings. I wanted majesty!

            So here we are, two plein air painters from Philadelphia, leaving behind the gentle greens of Pennsylvania to begin our odyssey in the desert at the height of summer. We intended, after the wedding, three weeks of camping and painting in the national parks of the Colorado Plateau, including Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, and of course the Grand Canyon. Major highways of the Colorado Plateau traverse broad expanses of uniform strata yielding unvarying vistas. Driving fuses the hours into a drone inside the lonely splendor of space. The smaller roads, however, lead the painter through some of the most mesmerizing scenery of the planet. Bryce Canyon, a billowing tapestry of stone, had always intrigued me as a subject. We chose our other locales for their variety of topography, the colors of the land, and, in the case of the Grand Canyon, the artistic majesty of the subject itself. With only three weeks at our disposal, and a new vista around every bend, the anticipation of discovery remained unabated throughout the trip. I truly was roaming and painting the Colorado Plateau, all because of Alison!

Our first painting session, coinciding with the full moon, speaks volumes to the life of the plein air painter, to the terror and wonder of the experience. We chose, within Canyonlands National Park, a promontory from the "Island in the Sky," a region of bewildering vistas. Toward the sunset, two thousand feet below, the Green River splayed its meanders within a hazy range of buttes and mesas, and dissolved into distance. Toward the east, a maze of rose and lavender canyons hid the Colorado River within a labyrinth of eerie citadels, spreading in silence and solitude toward the horizon. From the beginning, I encountered difficulties. With such majesty at every glance, what does one paint? Every landscape painter stumbles sometimes on this hurdle. In addition, the land held unfamiliar colors, as the alkyds I chose to use handled and dried differently from my usual oils. A series of wipe-outs ensued, each failed attempt eating the precious evening light. Facing the despair only a plein air painter knows, I began packing toward the car. Yet during this crisis, Alison unintentionally rescued me. Although frustrated, Alison remained steadfast in her effort to paint the sunset over the buttes. Her determination wore off on me, and "Canyonlands Sunset" resulted, my favorite painting of the trip. I remain truly grateful for her presence in my life.

            Upon this wondrous finish of our first painting session, we beheld a celestial marvel. Our promontory gave a full view of the sky above the canyon walls, allowing us to witness, at the precise moment the sun slid behind the corridor of mesas to the west, an eerie spark of gold kiss the eastern lip of the world and slowly swell into the full shape of the lunar orb. We stood spellbound before the moonrise, wrapped within an instant that will last forever.

            What is this strange wilderness called the Colorado Plateau? Edward Abbey pens it well, when he states, "The desert poses a riddle that has no answer." Were we, as animals, standing within the heavens, or the celestial dynamo itself whirling within our cells, as our painting perch, upon the slow rolling of the stone, slid into darkness at the moon's very aphelion? Imagine opening a little box and finding it full of sky, to behold within a singular vista the entirety of time. The earth herself also lies open, allowing a view into the distant past. Within the depths of the Grand Canyon, the southern flank of the Plateau, lie some of earth's oldest rocks. Devoid of fossils, these rocks do not represent the legacy of a lifeless planet, merely one whose life force lay dormant, waiting for something to happen. Somehow, within the recesses of time, life issues forth and the fossil record opens. Each layer of subsequent strata displays a legible interface within the ascending current of living matter as it spirals ceaselessly from the dark past toward the present. At the crest we stand, paintbrush in hand, gazing into the living canyons. In other locales the rocks resemble strange goblins, a testament to creation's weird and whimsical sense of humor. Often each turn in the road yields surprising beauty. And of course, with some of the clearest air on the planet, infinite, yet almost palpable, is the crystal cloak of night. I remember a shower of fireballs, those rare meteors heavy enough to trickle through the earth's lower atmosphere, as a faint glow endured in the west several hours after sunset, evidence of our planet's shadow upon the sky. Is it any wonder that here, in the desert, one senses that the heavens and earth we paint truly are alive, alive from within?

            Our trip was hardly void of hardships, however, for the desert presents a land of extremes. The heat, like an iron straight jacket, at times made each breath painful. On another occasion, our drinks froze to the campsite table. Above all, the fantastic, terrible silence of the summer sun ruled our days. Burning us out of our tent at six for our morning painting sessions, the June sun soon climbed too high to endure, its searing rays tearing into my immune system. The solar inferno forced a five-hour hiatus each day as we waited for the sun to drop and the land to cool. Often, after we returned from our second painting session of racing the setting sun, only scant time remained for sleep before the sun would blaze us out of the tent, once again, for another day of heat.

            And what were they like, our painting sessions in the land of extremes? I recall painting Bryce Canyon, a lifetime goal. I wondered why there are no paintings of Bryce Canyon? Upon the attempt, I discovered the answer: the fierce conditions. A maze of undulating rock forms known as hoodoos, Bryce is not really a canyon at all, but a grotesquely weathered escarpment of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. As such, its vistas and ledges funnel the wind into the face of the painter. As I sat on the ground, wedging the paint box between my legs and the easel into a fence, clutching my hat with my free hand, the wind still continued to sway my balance, buffeting my painting hand with every stroke. Somehow, like Vincent in the Mistral, I persisted. I encountered the opposite extreme the following morning in Red Rock country, as I set up in the shade of a juniper, grateful for tranquillity. In the complete absence of wind, however, I soon became a mecca for gnats, as every surface of the desert floor exuded their tiny whine. Craving moisture, they cluttered my eyes and prickled my nose. With my hands covered in paint, I couldn't swat them; I could only endure, as they smeared themselves into my sunblock, my palette, my bug repellent, my painting, and swarmed throughout my field of vision. Somehow, like mad, I persisted.

            The desert, however, as a true land of extremes, also bestows a strange tranquillity to the painter, a rare peace. Forced to wait out the midday sun, we found ourselves content to simply witness the shadows change across the land. The question: "What do we do now?" became as irrelevant as the concrete treadmill of the contrived world. Doing nothing, we became an integral aspect of the rhythm of the desert, where clouds gather, sometimes, and then dissolve. Nothing moves, except perhaps a lone raven spiraling within a canyon. Dragonflies flitter within the sage, their peculiar staccato whirring the only reminiscence of sound, unless a sigh of wind would breathe within a pinyon pine. Beyond, the shadows continue to change, in silence. Wrapped within an envelope of hours, content with no other goal than to exist, we became complete.

Of course, no painting trip to the desert southwest can be whole without a visit to the Grand Canyon. Other locales may lend themselves more readily to painting, yet as a destination the Grand Canyon can not be missed...because it's there! Our painting session proved pleasant in a most surprising way. We set up on the north rim, as the shadows began to climb upon the serrated earth below. Another artist set up behind me, and a crowd gathered, as it would have anyway above the prismatic abyss. However, there was no competition between artists, as is so often the case, and Darren Wilder and I began to chat. Our conversation spread to the crowd, and then died, only to begin again at random intervals. The onlookers looked on, talking, not talking, always curious yet never obtrusive, as two kids from Iowa approached me, scrutinized my work, and asked polite, astute questions. I am always happy to entertain a stranger while I'm painting if the visitor behaves with proper decorum. I remember the moment fondly, a gentle snapshot into the warmth of our nation. Is it surprising that my most salient memory of painting the Grand Canyon is not the Canyon itself, but rather the souls with whom I shared the moment?

Three weeks of painting in the desert passed all too quickly, and Alison and I began preparing for our passage home. Driving toward Los Angeles, we left the Colorado Plateau behind. Such a short visit to the desert southwest seemed only a scouting mission, a cursory survey of the possibilities of the subject matter. Perhaps three weeks would be sufficient for painting one locale, but then would be lost the sense of discovery, the quest for the vista over the next hill. This quest was the thrill of our first visit to the desert. Painting within the bewildering infinity of nature, one often feels inadequate and lost. A painting will, at best, capture only a glimmer of the majesty of the landscape. Yet it is through painting, and only though painting, that one comes to the deepest understanding of the natural world.

Was our painting trip to the desert a three week vacation from reality, as many on the outside world may believe? Or was it a journey to the core of our identity, to a deeper reality than that of the fabrications and demands of the clockwork world? Our paintings will stand as indisputable, silent testaments to our primary, human response to this world for many generations, because they are paintings! We paint, because......we can! Outdoor painting is, of course, a recreational activity that yields a take-home prize, like fishing. Yet it is recreation in the truest sense of the word. We don't know who created this world, or why, who made the moonrise, the fairyland canyons, or the labyrinth of time. We only know that when we stand within it, painting the natural world, we become, just for a moment, part of it, and it our essence. In this sense, the painter bonds with creation in a way even the mystics will never understand. Validating our identity and freeing our souls in a way no other activity ever can or ever will, because it's real, painting may just be the biggest and best thing anyone can do!

So on that note, I think it's time to go out and paint.

Do it!