Above - Laguna Beach scene by Karl Albert"Baby Junipers and wildflowers" by yours truly, with Karl watching over my shoulder in spirit.
Here is my little plein air painting of the two baby junipers out back with the purple flowers the horses won't eat. I painted it because I was thinking about my old friend, plein air painter Karl Albert. Karl has been gone a few years now. Soon before he passed, over the phone from his home in Italy, he gave me permission to form an art group in his honor, giving his blessing to The Albert Society of Artists (TASA). At the time it had three members... Karl, me, and Diane Whittman Punteri. A great start. Maybe this next spring, I will see if there are some Flagstaff plein air painters I can hang out with a bit. I would like to ad a few members to TASA and have a group show somewhere. I will feel Karl there, approving.
I have been thinking about Karl a lot, especially because I read some ignorant biographical information about him that irritated me greatly. Karl and I did plein air paintings together both in Alhambra and some years later in Palm Desert California. In Palm Desert we painted en plein air years later than the wrong biographies state that he quit doing so! What a crock! People, there is one and only one biography about Karl Albert you should pay any attention to, and that is the one being written right now, by his daughter mentioned above, artist Diane Wittman Punteri. I have written to her and she replied that I may contribute something to Karl's story, and I am thankful about that. I learned things from Karl that I think about, literally, every single time I pick up a brush, or go outside and see something that I want to paint. My plein air paintings done with Karl have been tucked away a long time.
Karl Albert was a man who painted alongside his colleagues, Edgar Payne and Sam Hyde Harris. They were of The California Eucalyptus School, as Karl would say. California plein air painters. And Masters of it, they were. Karl painted with Edgar Payne and Sam Hyde Harris. It is Karl's paintings of desert washes and such, that I remember best. Karl had the gift of appreciating the simple, even mundane, objects in nature. The man could paint a dry weed elegantly composed with a few rocks and elevate that scrub to an object of beauty. I see the world the same way, noticing those little beauties here and there, and when I do, I remember Karl.
When you paint outside, in my humble opinion, you have to be really really fast. Try setting your timer for ten minutes and theboth recognizing and going ahead and blocking in your composition and key darks and lights. I live in the very high mountains, our weather changes dramatically in a short time, and for lighting to stay the same longer than 15 minutes is rare. I have taken to making "notes" with paint in those 10 or 15 minutes, and then, they come inside with me. I don't mind the cold so much but coupled with the wind gusts around the peaks... what can I say.... I am not that much of a trouper. The wind aggravates my eye condition too much. Before I start to paint I snap some photos of that critical light and shadow just the way it most affected me when I first saw it. Later I can finish up a painting in my studio from those references. It is easy to get lost. You have to remember why you wanted to capture that scene in the first place. It was an emotional response, as well as visual. That is what your collectors will feel too, if you get it right.
Maybe some northern Arizona plein air painters will join me in going out and painting a bit, and of course we will have to do what karl and I absolutely required as part of our routine.... bring cookies. Chocolate chip.
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