I love painting. Anytime I can paint, I am happy. I was at a convention in Las Vegas when I was offered to go painting for an afternoon in the desert. The offer came from an old friend from elementary school who I kept in touch with using Facebook. He had no clue that I was a painter. I hadn’t seen him in over 40 years. It was great to catch up. I met him at his house, and he showed me some of the Americana paintings he had completed and some wood he was curing for frames. That wood inspired me. It had an unfinished live edge complete with bark. When I got to the location to start painting, I made an oil painting to match that wood called “Bonnie Springs.” I’m not sure how I got it home cause it was wet, but I framed it using live-edge wood when it dried. I took a class in Encaustic Painting in Boulder, Colorado. Encaustic painting means painting with wax. It is difficult to paint with and even harder to get sharp lines and shapes. In preparation, I researched and discovered a way to use my laser printer to make line drawings that could be transferred to the wax. I printed the drawings in reverse and then dropped the paper on the hot, wet wax. The fibers of the paper merged with the wax. Once it solidified, I used water to rub the pulp off, leaving only the part I printed. It was easy and worked out great. I got involved with The Plein-Air Club of Palm Beach. Plein-Air means to paint outdoors. The Plein-Air Magazine is produced near my home in Boca Raton. Florida is perfect for outdoor adventures if you drink water and dress for the sun and heat. I stumbled upon something I call ‘Highway Mountains’ and did a few modern landscapes. They are fascinating to me, visually showing speed. I did them using my iPad Pro and Apple pencil. Because of my methods of working, this is not considered plein-air painting.
I did another plein-air painting with the club of a home in the historic area of Boca Raton called Old Floresta. I wasn’t satisfied with the result, so I went home and turned that landscape into a pseudo-circuit board. You are not allowed to do postwork on a pure plein-air painting. I equate this to Bob Dylan playing electric guitar at the Newport Jazz Festival. It was both outrageous and genius. We should encourage people, especially young people, to be creative and use whatever tools they prefer as long as they put their heart and soul into the result. The more significant challenge will come when a person takes a simple photo with their mobile phone, uses an app to make a 2-second adjustment, and then calls it a plein-air painting. In 2017, no one could have imagined what artificial intelligence could do by 2023.
Stephen Shooster aka Shoosty 2017
481
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online