Joshua Been Workshop

MISSOURI PLEIN AIR • LANDSCAPE ART • OZARK

After the Augusta Plein Air Event I was home for a few days and turned around and went back for a three day workshop with an artist on the rise. I've competed with him at five plein air events since 2008 and always been impressed with his work. He had me rethinking everything about the way I paint through discussions, demos and guidance on the small timed studies we did (he would usually give us a 30 minutes to one hour per piece.) I ended up doing 7 paintings and would have done more but I opted to watch him do demos instead. The four pieces reproduced here were each done in an hour.

 Bamboo Path, 6" x 8", oils

I love exotic gardening and bamboo can actually do well here if you can handle how invasive it is. The Augusta Brewery has a nice grove started and has cut an inviting path through it.

 Ancient Roots, 6" x 8", oils

This piece and the next were painted at a lovely section of Femme Osage Creek. This massive sycamore will probably show up in some future paintings. Make that definitely.

 Looking Upstream, 6"x 8", oils

I was spoiled to grow up surrounded by Ozark creeks like this. In KC they are all muddy gray.

Tree Skeleton, 6" x 8", oils

This was painted in the backyard of my host family, Jan and Jim Rohfling (thanks again.) They have a beautiful home and a great view of the Missouri River valley. The subject is probably something only another artist will appreciate (i.e. not very sellable.) I learned way more than I was able to process during the workshop, am still putting all the pieces together and expect upcoming paintings will really show what I got out of it.