I’ve been reading about the Scottish artist Joan Eardley , American post-war painter Lois Dodd and British traditional painter Fred Cumings’ books this winter, energized by their take on landscape paintings incorporating their vistas, painterly nuances and environmental interpretations. It seems many of the painters I have recently come to love and study, create work in Plein Air and utilize this arena as inspiration for their vast and energetic compositions, unlike studio painting from photographs. I feel a huge personal growth opening, pushing forward this year with abstract landscape oil paintings, and am scheduling time to visit the Rocky National Park and barns around Berthoud, Ft. Collins and Grand Lake in Northern Colorado. I think I finally see beyond the wind, bugs, short sunlight issues, limited palette choices, traveling easel and schlepping supplies, and realize the intention of truly seeing, truly feeling a sense of place, in this way. I’m excited to see what happens with my work this year, incorporating my experience of landscape and nature into my work with outdoors painting and sketching.