Thanks to the few yet potent days of rain in March, the springtime bloom has yielded hillsides singing with the color of wildflowers and grasses awakened by the much-needed moisture. Many local artists are inspired by the natural growth, from photographers to painters, but it takes a special kind of painter to plant themselves outside and paint where they are. These are the plein air artists.
Gallery Los Olivos currently features the work of two plein air artists, who actually specialize in pastels rather than paints. Their work will be on display throughout the month of April. The Pastels of Spring is a duo art show by Kris Buck and Deborah Breedon, who have plenty of experience with paints such as oils, but really prefer the efficacy of pastels.
“A lot of artists get frustrated by pastels. For one, they say it’s dirty—and it is dirty, it gets all over your hands—but it’s pure pigment, so you have to be very careful about washing your hands between colors, so it’s not that dirty,” Buck said. “But I think that the set up and breakdown is much faster than if I’m out there painting with oils, and at the end of the day, if you are out there painting with oils, somehow those oils end up on your clothes and in your car.”
Both Buck and Breedon are Gallery Los Olivos members, enjoying their own space in the co-op gallery. They’ve teamed up to show their pastel landscapes as the featured artists this month. The duo is used to teaming up, as they often embark on their plein air adventures together, exploring everything from the mountains to the beaches in Santa Barbara County and beyond.
They both attested to the powerfully direct experience of pastels—which are a stick of pure pigment with binder—in depicting the colorful explosion of color in springtime, and the often-subtle interaction between the plants and natural light.
“Ideally, painting with a pure pigment, to me, gives the paintings you’re working on an incredibly luminous quality; it’s like playing with color every day,” Breedon said. “With the drought, and now that it’s spring and we’re finally getting some rain, that life is bursting. It’s almost like there’s been so much starvation that the plants are going crazy, saying, ‘I better bloom now, I don’t know when I’m going to get another chance!’ So this is a perfect time to go out painting.”
Plein air painting is not without its subtleties. The biggest challenge is how quickly the light changes, so most plein air artists work on smaller canvases to create a piece that best captures a moment, which can shift in minutes.
Breedon and Buck journey out together and paint in each other’s general proximity, Buck explained. They sometimes work back-to-back, and other times quite far away, but still within sight of each other. They’re both quiet workers, but they often take breaks to talk about what they’re doing or warn each other about any potentially disruptive or dangerous wildlife, Buck said.
“It’s great if you’ve had a really successful day, but it’s also great if you’ve had a bad day where things didn’t come out the way you wanted and you’re frustrated and just need to vent,” she said. “But there is a camaraderie there, where you can go out and have a cup of coffee afterward and talk all about it, so that’s great to have as a painter.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne has never stained his fingers with pastel pigments. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 7-14, 2016.