Discover how plein air painter Lorenzo Chavez transforms landscapes into artistic masterpieces by embracing sensory exploration, slowing down, and noticing the beauty around him. Learn how his creative ideas and unique approach to painting can inspire your creative journey.
By Jenn Rein
The Rocky Mountain West has been Lorenzo Chavez’s stomping grounds for decades. It’s there that he most often collects imagery and inspiration for his paintings. Expressed through both oil and pastel, the development of his unique artist’s voice has been driven by love of subject. He says, “I think if you follow your heart and convey what you want for the love of conveying it, the personal voice in your art will find its place.”
“I remember when I started seeing the randomness of things,” he says, “even having to do with a crack on the wall.”
This artist, who is also a longtime instructor, might now call it simply “noticing.” It’s the power to notice one’s environment and the scene that lays in front of the artist’s eye that he believes is essential to awakening core creative abilities. Along with the noticing, he refers to “slowing down,” and developing a method of painting in the outdoors that has to do with not just seeing, but with feeling what is happening in the environment, while at the same time creating.
As a plein air painter, Chavez encourages the act of being present with your materials as much as trying to filter through which pieces of a landscape you hope to capture. Whether he’s outside with pastels or oils, he considers exploring the outdoors to be an adventure. “Try to be present and enjoy the moment,” he advises.
Assignment: Relocate Your Senses
Although Lorenzo is deeply practiced at depicting his own vast backyard, which holds an overwhelming amount of visual data, he is not beholden to one region or environment to inform his art. His time spent in the Pacific Northwest exposed him to soft edges and problem-solving plein air efforts in the drizzling rain.
“When we paint one area or one climate, we get a narrow vision,” he says. “The edges of the Southwestern United States are harsh. But you are enabled to see with new eyes if you go to another location. The Northwest has soft edges, and when you look at the desert again after returning from that rainy environment, you have heightened your ability to see.”
He looks at the extremes of a hot day and a cold day in a similar way. “We paint winter scenes so we can better express how to paint hot desert scenes. They work together; one exists for the other.” Certainly when it comes to the filtration of light, witnessing one extreme versus the other aids in developing the artist’s manner of seeing, and the way details are processed.
The inverse also rings true. Chavez points to The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and an assignment within those pages. Cameron encourages sensory deprivation, and one of her lessons is based on eliminating reading from one’s daily routine for a full week. Her intent is to encourage using time for other pursuits. Ideally, we should be creating or allowing the brain to rest from the noise that is presented by the external environment.
Exposing our sight and other senses to situations that may not be part of our existing routine allows us to step out of our pattern, breaking norms of creative comfort. It encourages what Chavez refers to as “a beginner’s mind” (full of curiosity and wonder), and allows us to take on the unknown in order to grow the seeds of what is already feeding an artistic practice.
Editor’s Note: How can you “relocate your senses” this season? Challenge yourself: What’s a new type of setting you can plan to paint in this season? Share it with us in the comments section!
And, don’t miss your opportunity to create lifetime memories at PACE! The next Plein Air Convention & Expo is May 19-23, 2025 in Lake Tahoe and Reno. All training sessions are indoors on giant, high-def screens, with plein air paint-outs in the afternoons. Beginners and pros feel right at home, so register now to join us!
And browse more free articles here at OutdoorPainter.com
Plein Air Today covers artists and products we think you’ll love. Linked products are independently selected and linked to for your convenience. If you buy something using a link on this page, Streamline Publishing may receive a small share of that sale.
