Painting Boldly

tinyExpanse North Idaho

A blogging, painting, exploring good time up north!

Reeder Bay - 5am-11am

It's documenting day - enjoyable in that I get to review everything I've created in the past week, and in that I get to have paint-free hands all day!

As I worked with the images from 40 paintings completed this week, I began to think about the purpose and meaning that images have. As a landscape painter, sometimes I feel that I am simply trying to recreate what is in front of me in a mediocre representation of the real thing. But thinking further, there is more to it than that. A Plein Air landscape painting is an accumulation of perception that includes all senses, not just visual. The temperature of the day, the elements of the place, the changing of the light throughout the painting session, and of course my own mood and thoughts, swirl around together in a big cauldron and assimilate themselves into the resulting image.

That being said, I still think the experience of the real thing is best. I hope that my images spark curiosity for places not yet seen, and love and dedication for places already experienced. In a world with many different perspectives, perhaps the one thing we can all agree on is the beauty of nature. An image might be superficial, but if it can spark something universal that inspires each of us to preserve this beauty, then I'm satisfied with my work.

A gallery from my week in North Idaho follows…starting with the tinyExpanse collage which is by the way available on Etsy, along with small prints of the Priest Lake painting.(https://www.etsy.com/shop/tinyexpanse)

For information on the purchase of originals, please contact me at rachel@teannalach.com.

25% of proceeds for both prints and originals go to Idaho Conservation League.