Welcome to the first of many newsletters. I’ll be sending these quarterly. This one has a lot to cover from my first year as a full-time artist, so let’s start with day one. It didn’t start with any of the fanfare that I had hoped for. All of a sudden the last paycheck from my steady, easy, full-time job at the toy store was direct-deposited and I had nowhere to be on Monday. Or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday… It was all up to me, total freedom, but the paychecks stopped.
I bailed out to a friend’s place in Vegas to process the transition, pedal my legs off on the bike, get on some rock climbs, make a plan. My friend went to work, and so did I, starting about ten paintings in his spare bedroom in as many days, feeling productive with occasional anxiety attacks about the future. One of the bigger ones I started that week, an 18x24 of a view perched on the summit of Lone Peak in the Wasatch, just sold this week, one of the biggest sales I’ve ever had. I think I’ll take that as a sign that “it’s working.”
Lone Peak Exposure, 18x24. SOLD
I cooled off in Vegas, painted most of a 30x40 housewarming piece at my brother’s new place in Tucson, made it back to Zion for their annual plein air festival again, and locked in a month-long trip to Maui in January.
MAUI
The Maui trip was formative to say the least. After years of rock climbing, ultrarunning, peak bagging, ridgeline scrambles, and sunup-to-sundown bike rides, I’ve learned I’m happiest when I combine as many human-powered activities into one outing as possible. I think this is what sets me apart from so many other landscape painters. So naturally I couldn’t just go to Maui with a plein air kit, I had to bring the accompanying road bike, trailer, backpacking kit, and build enough panels to never run out of any size a painting called for.
This wasn’t my first trip to Maui; I know the lay of the land, the weather patterns, the obvious fun challenges to take on, and what to avoid. And this wasn’t just my trip, my parents spend part of each winter in a condo there (Dad uses it as “Maui Bike Camp”; Mom slows down and soaks up paradise), so I glommed on and used it as plein air base camp. I hit the ground running, selling the first painting made at our family’s “sunset beach.” We usually plan dinner around walking across the street to watch the sun dip into the ocean. Painting sunset with my feet in the water, and selling to another family with the same tradition brought me so much joy! If you have a spot like that, I’d love to paint it for you!
You can see the full collection of completed paintings from a month in Maui by visiting my Recently page.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Meeting up with the Wednesday morning plein air club a couple times, getting inspired and sharing our love of the nuances of life as a painter.
Pedaling all over the island in all ways possible. I packed a plein air kit on me more often than not, looking for spur-of-the-moment inspiration to pull over and capture a moment. I walked into galleries in spandex, rode with my dad and his friends, headed into the upcountry for coffee, and got pushed all over the road by the trade winds. Then I took on Haleakalā, the 10,000 foot volcano that forms most of the island, with confidence and ease.
What ended up being the *Main Event*, pedaling the infamous road to Hāna with a heavy trailer full of painting supplies and backpacking gear to spend 3 nights at the stunning black-sand beach, Wai’ānapanapa State Park. I had a lot of successes; I sold a painting right off the easel the first morning to a couple who were as excited as I was to be there, explored and painted in a bamboo rainforest, and alternated painting the waves and swimming them. On the way home I fought a headwind for 30 miles with a smile on my face, fully saturated with a love for that type of mission.
CHALLENGES:
Water and waves are not easy subjects. How the water acts in real time needs to be represented accurately or the painting is wonky. If the wave is curling like this, then the shoreline is doing that. You can’t just put a wave anywhere you’d like; there’s a story unfolding with each curl, and they tend to change pretty quickly!
Choosing a subject can be difficult when there are so many possibilities all around you. Sounds like a good problem to have, but there’s often a bit of regret in choosing one scene over another.
A bunch of other minor hiccups. I consistently fought my easel blowing over, my umbrella died, and I got plenty of sand in my paintings. I crashed on the way to Hāna. Sunburn, flat tires, fighting with cars, a scary descent in the clouds down Haleakalā. Nothing too crazy, but sometimes you just need things to go smoothly.
Eight paintings in three days! Hāna is incredible, it was hard to leave.
MOAB
In March I took the lessons learned in Maui and headed to Moab for five days, the town outside Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, which are feeling more and more like another big backyard to play in these days. When I arrived in the afternoon, the sunset light in Arches called to me as it would any painter of red rocks. Once you swap the car for the bike to bounce around the roads, simply on the hunt for beauty, you can really hear the cowboy music in the air.
I slept in my car near some spots I knew I wanted to paint at sunrise, ended up in Arches for a few stunning sessions, and spent a night out camping, after towing a loaded trailer uphill into the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands. At the very end of the road there, I got an unrepairable flat, stuffed the tire full of clothes, and rolled it home.
11 paintings in 5 days, more camping off the bike trailer, Arches, Canyonlands, the Colorado river…
HIGHLIGHTS:
An incredible variety of painting locations, including the Courthouse Towers, Park Avenue, Broken Arch, several places along the Colorado River, and way up on the rim of Island in the Sky. To put it lightly, I got around and went home tired.
Pedaled to the end of the road in Arches and Canyonlands, just to know more options for potential painting spots, and met some fun people along the way, park rangers and tourists, giving me energy, hinting with their enthusiasm that I’m on the right track.
Embracing the “let’s go have a look” mentality, not knowing if/what I might find, but open to being inspired, setting up the easel, and getting to work.
I drank the rest of my beer, found a bucket hat on the long road out of Canyonlands, and stopped for an hour to make one of my favorite paintings of the trip at Navajo Rocks. I titled it Navajo Rocks.
CHALLENGES:
Getting good sleep in a bivy is tough for me. I wake up late feeling stiff and unmotivated.
Camp meals take time; biking or driving to painting locations takes time. Early-morning and late-afternoon light is best, and it can be a challenge to plan time to feed myself, travel, and arrive in time to get the most out of a painting session.
You can see the full collection of completed paintings from the Moab trip in my Recently section.
SUMMER EVENTS
Jam. Packed. As one event ended, it was immediately on to preparing for the next. I participated in three very different plein air competitions, varying from small and relaxed up to huge and intimidating: Bountiful-Davis Plein Aire: Painting the Great West, Plein Air Paradise, the largest in Utah, and Helper En Plein Aire, with 40 artists in one small desert town. I won FIRST PRIZE at Bountiful with my painting Valley Glory and was thrown into the deep end in the next, trying to feel like part of a community of painters going through a similar wringer to mine. Learned lessons, got critiqued, made friends, made sales, and felt like I got a glimpse of the deep end of the pool. I kept busy between my summer events doing a few commissions and building frames. I got used to flowing in and out of the Saturdays selling at the Downtown Salt Lake Art and Farmers Market at Pioneer Park, getting some painting done while chatting with art and nature lovers, connecting and reminiscing about our adventures in the mountains and desert. In September I participated in the Art at the Park fest, live painting in my booth for three days. I hope some of the people reading along here are people I connected with this summer, because I really value the shared smiles when gushing about our favorite places!
WHAT’S NEXT
The holidays! I’d like to remind everyone that the walls in a home and the homes of your loved ones should make you feel happy to walk in the door, an expression of what’s important to you! Paintings last longer than any toy, tool, or electronic that I can think of. Handmade is in. Mass-produced is out. I make my own linen panels, build my frames, and ship with care. And I add stickers to all my orders—what more could you ask for?
There’s something for every budget:
Prints of my favorite paintings, from $60
Little originals (4x6 to 8x10), from $120
Larger originals, from $500
Commissions of your own favorite place, from $160 for a 5x7. Reach out by November 15th for delivery before Christmas.
Browse everything I have available in my STORE or contact me HERE. Order by December 15th to have it arrive in time.
Since leaving the steady paycheck, I’ve continued to have my usual wild adventures, but now I have time and energy to dedicate towards honoring and commemorating them. In the next issue I’ll tell the story of how I became a landscape painter in Salt Lake: a childhood packed with travel, exploration, creativity, and learning to love a good view.
Maui was a prototype of an idea I’ve had for a few years: treat bikepacking and painting the way people approach a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. Pick a looooong route to pedal-paint, ship food and blank panels to myself at checkpoints, swap out finished paintings for fresh ones…then keep pedaling. It worked, and I am INSPIRED. Once it warms up in the Spring, I’m considering the Eastern side of the Sierras, the Tetons/Yellowstone, or perhaps the California coast. If you’d like to help fund the trip, you can reserve one of the paintings I make along the route.
Thanks for reading, and for being part of year one. Hit reply and tell me your favorite spot; it might be my next painting.
— Brian
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