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Gaining Perspective

Awakening | Fall Pleasures | High Desert Vistas | Aspen Exploration


I would like to invite you to share the transition over time of my physical and mental journey through the art process.  The first attempt at Plein Air painting was done in September of 2006 during my first workshop at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu NM.  I was so utterly discouraged, I put all my supplies away, and gave up. In the Spring of 2007 I heard about Anita Louise West, and her Plein Air workshops.  I began to study with her throughout the summer about once or twice a month.  She nudged, encouraged, and mentored my progress with a steadfastness I am exceptionally grateful for.  In the summer of 2008 I jumped in head first and ego last into the Masters workshop Anita and her partner Albert Handell were holding in Taos, NM.  It was a grueling observation to the level of my abilities compared to the many artists who were far beyond me in experience and talent!

I had decided to go back to the same place in ghost ranch every September to paint in the same place I did my "first" painting in 2006.  It has been fun to watch myself evolve as an artist, and plan on continuing this tradition for many more years.  

I was reading through my art journal recently and came to realize that as my technical abilities have expanded, so have my perceptions and relationships with the art process.  These inner observations are the greatest gift I receive through my art.  So, for each year, I have selected one of the more meaningful observations I had journaled to share. 


Please click on each image for a larger view.

click to enlarge
Pedernal Journey 2009
12" x 9"  unframed

Artist Note:

      Appreciating imperfections...
One day in my study of tree forms and their interactive relationship to the sky, I came to realize that trees - bent, twisted, windblown - are glorious in their imperfections. As I reflected further and wrote in my journal about this, I came to realize that every one of us has personalities with imperfections. We live in a imperfect world, and it is these imperfections that give us character. Yet we are so driven by the illusion of perfection, which binds us and keeps us from experiencing ourselves fully and honestly.

click to enlarge
Pedernal 2008
9" x 12"  unframed

Artist Note:

     Relaxing into the stillness...
I crave the quiet, yet in order to move into the stillness I need to paint, I battle with the intensity of my energy. I have found if I can allow myself to relax into the now, I connect with something deeper in myself. When I do that, my painting will reflect that living moment of energy - both the energy in myself in the moment, and the energy of the place itself. There comes an ease in the stroke, a conversation of color that is effortlessly projected into the painting.

click to enlarge
Pedernal 2006
9" x 12"  unframed

Artist Note:

     Worthiness...
I have such a drive to produce an outcome, to justify the time I have invested in a task. Just giving myself the gift of taking time to paint is challenging. I am filled with the mind chatter of "nothing to show for it," or "good time wasted." After battling the mind chatter for a year, I came back to painting. One extremely cold spring day, painting Plein Air at the Dixon apple orchard, I was curled up in the back of my SUV, wondering what I was doing out here. But, sipping on the warm tea I had brought and watching the fragrant blossoms laced with icicles from the night before, I suddenly understood why I'd come. Why I was painting. It was a quiet gift to myself. A day off, to be free of the mind chatter, to sit in wonderment at the scene before me and just be present.

art & content © 2010: Tobi Clement

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