Award-winning Arkansas painter Jason Sacran spent nearly a decade on the competitive plein air circuit, earning major honors while producing work under the intense deadlines, travel demands, and sales pressures of outdoor painting events. In his conversation on the Plein Air Podcast with Eric Rhoads, Jason offers a candid account of what that life taught him, what it cost, and how he is now rebuilding his painting practice with a renewed sense of purpose.
Enjoy Plein Air Podcast Episode 271 featuring Jason Sacran:
Key Takeaways
- Compelling plein air subjects can be found close to home, not only in famous locations.
- Competition success requires professionalism, endurance, respectful pricing, and authentic artistic choices.
- Consistent outdoor practice, ambitious goals, and strong fundamentals drive long-term growth.
Great Subjects Are Often Close to Home
Jason now paints primarily at dawn, often beginning around four in the morning and finishing before Arkansas heat becomes too severe. He doesn’t need a dramatic mountain vista to find a painting. Much of his current work begins in his own backyard and local surroundings.
That approach reflects a lasting lesson from painter Joe Paquet: meaningful subject matter is often found in the places nearest to an artist. Jason believes the strongest work comes from painting what is personally familiar, rather than chasing spectacle for its own sake. As he put it, the most beautiful places you can paint are the places that are nearest and dearest to you.
Competition did teach him that art collectors at a destination event often want recognizable local subjects. A Grand Canyon paint out, for example, creates real demand for Grand Canyon paintings. Still, Jason stressed the importance of balancing market awareness with personal vision. Painting an iconic sunset may help sales, but an artist should not produce only what is easy to sell.
The Competitive Circuit Demands More Than Painting Skill
At his peak, Jason completed as many as 16 plein air events in a year, averaging roughly 12 annually for several years. The work involves much more than arriving with an easel. Artists have to choose frames, pack or ship supplies, plan travel, maintain materials, make paintings, meet deadlines, socialize, market themselves, and try to sell.
For Jason, it became a form of survival mode. He described arriving at events needing to make the best work possible while also being friendly, professional, and ready to sell. Extended trips sometimes kept him away from his wife and four daughters for four to six weeks at a time. The return home required another adjustment, shifting from the adrenaline of competition back into family life.
He also learned that an artist’s conduct affects the entire event community. Extreme underpricing may produce fast sales for one person, but it can undermine other artists. Likewise, presentation should support the work without turning into an attempt to overpower neighboring displays. Respect includes fair-minded pricing, thoughtful framing, and making work that remains true to the artist’s own convictions.
Illness Changed the Pace, Not the Commitment
Years of travel, fatigue, pain, and heat exposure took a toll. Jason contracted Lyme disease after a tick bite, likely years before symptoms became severe. By 2021, he was bedridden, unable to paint for about four years, and his wife returned to work to support the family.
He encourages outdoor painters to take tick prevention seriously, inspect themselves after working outdoors, and seek prompt medical guidance after a bite. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides current information on preventing tick bites and recognizing Lyme disease.
The forced stop also gave Jason time to consider how competition had shaped him. He recognized that self-belief can become ego when it is left unchecked. I started to believe all the hype, and I needed that humbling,
he said. An experience he shares made him more grateful simply to be able to paint again.
Back to Painting, One Step at a Time
Jason is now managing ongoing fatigue, brain fog, and joint issues while returning to work at a sustainable pace. He has no intention of resuming the punishing event schedule. Instead, he is focusing on studio work, art galleries, art competitions, and painting outdoors when he can.
His plein air painting excursions now frequently serve as field study for larger studio paintings, although he still enjoys returning to a location for several sessions. For a large outdoor piece, he works at the same time of day across three or four sessions, sometimes totaling eight to ten hours. This preserves the consistent light while allowing for a level of development that a short competition window may not permit.
A Word of Advice: Keep Going and Get More Ambitious
For beginners, Jason’s advice is simple: paint outside regularly, start small, use a large brush, work quickly, and avoid overthinking. The first effort may be dreadful. That is normal. Improvement comes from repetition and from putting miles on the brush.
For artists who have reached a plateau, he recommends more ambitious scenes, somewhat larger canvases, stronger fundamentals, workshops, design study, and close observation of great painters. Jason especially admires Russian landscape painter Isaac Levitan, whose work reinforced the value of painting the places that shaped him.
The central lesson from Jason’s career is not that success requires relentless travel or constant competition. It is that outdoor painting can sharpen skill, deepen authenticity, and reveal what matters most. The goal is to keep painting, while building a life that leaves room to keep doing it.
Connect with the artist: jasonsacran.com
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Blog post prepared for the web by Cherie Dawn Haas, Editor of Plein Air Today
