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     Painting en Plein Air gives the artist so many benefits - a chance to capture those fleeting moments of light and to experience many exciting encounters. Encounters with other artists, the wind, wild animals, domestics, birds, bugs, snakes and sometimes the most entertaining and the most challenging of all - People!

     My composition was blocked in and I was just starting to get my special interest areas delineated  on my painting when a woman stopped beside me and started asking some of the questions we are all so used to: "Are you painting?", "Are those oils?", "Do you live here?", "Do you sell your work?", "How much would that painting sell for?", "Really?", "Are you someone?" and then either - "My Aunt paints" or "Do you know ________?". You can usually predict what is coming! However, this time after many questions she paused, looked at what I was doing for a while and then asked, "Are you making that up?"

     I choked. For just a short pause - and then I showed her which elements I had chosen to use in the composition, which I chose to leave out and why. She seemed nonplussed and left a bit later saying she would be back and that she was sure the painting would be beautiful when it was done. She did come back later and gave it an approval rating, asked where it would be displayed and went on with her day.

     I went back and forth between amusement and contemplation about this encounter. It brought me back to the period about eight years ago when I was transitioning from having spent 20 years as a sculptor to learning the 2-D world of art. After a year of studying books and videos, I was understanding how to get the paint on the canvas and then I went out plein air painting with some friends. It was both exhilarating and frustrating (had to tie my easel to a fence to keep from blowing away!), but the biggest learning experience was checking out the compositions that the other artists created from the same scene. I was extremely upset that they seemed to be painting a scene that wasn't quite there! Finally a friend, Dena Kirk, stopped me to say - "Jenifer, you will learn what to leave out, what to move slightly and what to emphasize - just give it time!"

     So now, I have had time and I find that one of the most enjoyable things about creating a composition is deciding what to leave out, what to move slightly and what to emphasize. And yes, I get to decide, so I realize that yes - I am making it up!