“Conference, Earth and Sky” by Louisa McElwain

Louisa is amazing to watch paint. I’ve only seen her on You Tube, but whoa! I bet no one has ever told Louisa to “paint with paint” (I can still hear it now “Barbara… PAINT WITH PAINT”, ugh!), she applies it nice and thick. Her canvases for the most part are quite large, especially for plein air painting. I encourage you to check out her website. She seems like such a cool person!

One of my favorite photos is on the home page of Louisa McElwain’s website, you need to check it out! It’s a photo of several women sitting at a table and it appears they are having the time of their lives, I love it! You may also notice that on the WORKS page of her site, she sells something other than paintings… I’ll let you figure it out ;)

Here is a great YouTube clip of Louisa painting… check out her set up… SO creative!

Here’s a blip about Louisa from her website:

I have lived and painted in New Mexico since 1985, working outdoors under a wide variety of conditions, open to the impulse of changing light, wind, heat, cold, insects, forces of Nature which bring life into my paintings. For me, painting is a dance to the tempo of the evolving day. 

Usually, I paint off the back of a pick-up truck, which gives me access to many wonderful places, and provides a way to stabilize and transport large canvases. Here in the West it seems that the canvas is never big enough. To include my entire field of vision at arm’s length, 60×90 ins. is about right. I paint with knives and masonry trowels, which allows me to work fast. Each painting is completed in less than 4 hours, regardless of size, as permitted by weather and light. 

Painting large canvases outdoors invites another interaction with Nature as, inevitably, insects, particles of plants and soil end up on the painting. I see these as valuable contributions to the work. Sometimes I put little stones, bones or pieces of glass and plants into the paint, in the same spirit as the Navaho weaver who incorporates things into her blanket to bless those who will receive it, and as a way of acknowledging the temporality of things.

My process is an inquiry into sensuous potential of paint. To explore the mystery of sensation, to touch that which is known but cannot be measured, understood yet indescribable; the act of painting is an expression of my connectedness with God and Nature. I am Nature.

Catch you back here tomorrow!