Painting at Luxembourg Gardens

 I decided this visit I would try and paint on location.  While I don't often paint en plein air, I get together with some good friends throughout the summer back home and try my hand at landscape.  Its an amazing sensory experience, hearing people chatting, children playing, and all of the great sounds of nature spilling over into the work.  As a studio painter I am overly aware of these stimuli working outside and understand the seduction impressionistic painters must have had working in some of these same locations.  I couldn't help think of Sargent's painting "Luxembourg Gardens at Twilight".

I remember seeing this painting in high school when I was first exposed to a lot of his work.  I was so taken with his fluidity and poetry, and the miraculous economy that was employed to capture the 'impression'.  Sargent always seemed to make more sense to me than the other impressionists.  The work had the hallmark identifiers: that it was carefully observed, yet painted quickly, but was happily devoid of the stereotypical palette and mark-making.  I've always enjoyed how daring Sargent was in his approach, a seemingly ruthlessness that kept the viewer on the edge of his seat as the dance between abstraction and surface, and subject matter.

After a light breakfast, we arrived and walked through. Here are some pics I shot on our way in.

We chose a spot, near the wading where Sargent had painted "twilight".  A few days before I left, Mary Beth suggested I purchase a Pochade 8" x 10" cigar box and so I ordered one and had it shipped overnight.  I was surprised how light it weighs and the ease of set up.  We spent the morning chasing the light.

Getting ready

I wanted to create a blog about my trip to Paris for all of my friends. I hope to share a daily routine of where I'm at, what I see, where I go and of course, what I am eating.  My goal is to update it daily during my stay with pics, posts and maybe some vids.  I fly out this Saturday and wanted to post before my departure.

Its been a few years since I've been to Paris (I've only been there 3 times), but my recollection of my trips is wonderful. In one trip, I was able to spend time sketching from statuary in the Louvre much like I did at the Bargello in Florence as both graduate student at Indiana University and as instructor for Washington University in St. Louis. Here's a pic from the late 90's taking a lunch break outside the Louvre.

Paris offers a plethora of culturally-rich things to savor.  However, my main goal is to build a more intimate relationship with the Louvre and D' Orsay and draw from different parts of the collection to use in my paintings. I collaborate with a friend of mine working from live models.  My approach to my newest work is to paint a majority of the figure from life and then incorporate items such as Attic red-figured vases around the figure.  I'm longing to work from some of these wonderful works first-hand.

I'm also really interested in going back to Sennelier and shopping.  I'll definitely be purchasing some materials there. I enjoyed my visits to Sennelier almost as much as Zecchi's in Florence.

Right now I have to start loading Satie and some other studio favorites on the iPod for those magical museum mornings.  Thanks for stopping and check back.