Starting a 4' x 5' Plein Air Painting

My two person exhibition with Andy Paczos at Kim Storage Gallery is scheduled to open October 2nd, 2026 and run until November 7th. Our reception will coincide with MKE Gallery Night on Friday, October 16th from 5 - 9pm. Please save the date to join us for the public reception.

When Kim reached out about a two person exhibition I was ecstatic to share the space with Andy's plein air work. This exhibition will feature plein air paintings from both of us. I've started to organize a series of paintings that will be in the show. Last fall I built six large stretched linen and cotton canvases that were oil primed in preparation for large plein air paintings this spring and summer. I'm thrilled to start these paintings now that the weather is becoming more approachable. (I'll have a few winter plein air paintings in the show too). Today I want to share a bit of information on a current work in progress that I started last week. Its a four by nearly five foot canvas (one of the largest planned for the show) that I'm focusing on local tree houses in my neighborhood.

Growing up in Bristol, WI on a small hobby farm I was fortunate to have a childhood full of adventures in nature in our backyard. My uncle built my siblings and I a tree house platform that we intended to build a small house on, but never got around to it. I remember making doodles in my school notebooks of tree house plans and ideas, some of them included a skateboard shop where I imagined my friends coming to buy their gear. In hindsight I'm glad that we didn't have a finished tree house because I was exposed to the sun, sky, and wind on our platform. I remember looking out from my bedroom window at night and seeing down at it as this mysterious form. The "tree house" was a haven where I could escape whatever it was I was going through at the time. A lot of my youth was filled with mystery surrounding my father and not knowing why he or my siblings' father were not in our family. The tree house provided me with security, space, and separation from reality. Even though I wasn't protected inside of a "house" structure I still felt hidden from the rest of the world because it was off the ground. Its funny now to think about the parallels between that idea and "figure vs ground" in painting. I think there's a benefit to growing up with projects that were incomplete or unfinished. That way I could always imagine what the tree house could be! Unfortunately when I was in college, the big beautiful ash tree that shaded the tree house platform, an above ground pool we used to have, and our first dog Simba's shed, had to be removed after it was jeopardized by the invasive Ash Bore Beetle. Our house never felt the same after that. Its weird looking back on the memories of my childhood knowing that the tree house nor the tree are still there on the property that we sold at the end of 2019.

When Megan and I bought our first house in Grafton a few years ago we started walking the neighborhood with our dog Lenny. These walks have become a routine that I'm so grateful for. Walking has always made it easy to focus on what's important without the distraction of screens, apps, media, etc. On our walks I've noticed various tree houses in backyards of our neighbors. Some of them look new but many of them have seen better days making it seem like the kids in the family have grown up like me and are off living adult lives. I wonder where those kids are now and what their youth felt like in Grafton. Were their tree houses havens for them too? Unlike the platform we had, which was exposed and surrounded by wide open rural land, these tree houses are propped up in between nearby houses. I love how these tree houses are part of the community yet if you look closely they feel like their own separate structures.

Over this winter I've been brainstorming locations that I want to paint in preparation for the Kim Storage Gallery show. I knew I wanted to get into Milwaukee this spring and summer to make plein air paintings, maybe paint along the Lake Michigan shoreline, some local farms, small neighborhood compositions of houses, but I can't stop imagining a painting of tree houses! I decided two weeks ago that one of my paintings would be of local tree houses and with a few sunny days last week I started to block it in.

Last year I started committing to plein air paintings with "multi-view" compositions where the picture plane is divided into different subjects. Sometimes I'll combine varying views that are unrelated and then force them into a visual dialogue in the paintings. Lately I prefer the idea of choosing a theme and then seeing how the painting can reveal combinations that are related to that theme. I enjoy the conceptual and compositional challenge of that approach. I made a short video for my social media accounts that gives a nice look at the process so far. I hope you enjoy the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9yhmOZ03r0

Thank you for following my blog and art.

Let me know what you think of the painting and plan to come see it in person in October!