On a stage lined with this year’s PleinAir Salon finalists, Kyle Ma was running numbers in his mind as he listened to each name called for the final winners: “I had three paintings in the running for the awards, and all day I was trying to do the math — what chance did I have to win the grand prize? During the whole Opening Ceremony, the anticipation was killing me.”
I had the pleasure of catching up with Kyle in between the demonstrations and paint outs at the Plein Air Convention & Expo (PACE) in Reno, Nevada, where the PleinAir Salon awards were announced in high anticipation.
Third Place went to Deborah Tilby for “Winter Trees” ($1,500 cash prize) and Second Place went to Lisa Egeli for “Moment of Clarity” ($3,000 cash prize).
And then the First Place, $15,000 Award, going to Kyle for “Maricopa Point Morning,” was announced. “When I heard my name called, it was an incredible moment,” said Kyle, who broke the record for being the youngest winner of the PleinAir Salon. “It was so heartwarming to see everyone clapping for me and cheering me on. And even afterwards, I was taken aback at how many people came up to me and congratulated me on my accomplishment. It really meant a lot.”
“I think ‘Maricopa Point Morning’ and one other that was in the Top 40 — ‘Cathedral Wash’ — are two of my best works,” Kyle shared. “They really capture how I feel about the subjects and my knowledge about geology and the landscape, along with my personal experiences painting in the American Southwest.”
In addition to feeling the excitement of winning the Grand Prize, Kyle lit up when I asked him about his inspiration and process for “Maricopa Point Morning.” He pointed out that because it’s a fairly large painting (at 40 x 30-inches), “in person, you can actually physically move around the painting to see all these details and I feel like that adds a lot of richness to the work.”
The Grand Canyon, like for many of us, moves Kyle in deep ways. “There are endless elements to explore visually,” he said. “I wanted to create a piece that has a strong overall design, but also invites the viewer to look closer and discover more and more nuances — similar to how explorers hiking the canyon can zoom in on individual rocks, looking for fossils or taking note of the variations in color and texture of the different layers. I wanted to create that same sense of exploration in the painting.
His process is also fascinating; besides repeated visits to study the location’s geography and light, Kyle brilliantly uses Google Earth first to scout the area. He explained: “Google Earth has a 3D feature that allows you to see the land forms, and I can predict where the sun might be in the morning or in the afternoon in relation to the different structures, and make educated guesses about where my shadow patterns would be and predict where I might see good compositions at a given moment. It saves me a lot of time scouting out locations.”
“To me, being an artist is certainly a challenging career, but what’s most rewarding to me is that every day I get to wake up and spend my time celebrating what I find beautiful,” Kyle said. “That’s very meaningful to me. My career in the arts has afforded me some incredible experiences, and I’ve gotten so many opportunities to meet amazing people and visit amazing places.”
On Entering the PleinAir Salon Art Competition
“I was motivated to enter the PleinAir Salon after I got invited to do a demo for this year’s [PACE],” he said. “I thought, wouldn’t it be embarrassing if no one showed up to my demo? But if I could win even an honorable mention in the Salon and get to go up on stage at the Opening Ceremony then people would at least know my name and then I’d have at least some attendance to my demo. It was amazing that I won the Grand Prize, and my demo was really well-attended, and I was able to share with a good number of people my philosophy of painting and the things I’m passionate about.”
When asked for his advice for other artists, Kyle shared that it’s important to not take rejections personally. “In my career I’ve been rejected countless times and lost countless competitions,” he said. “It can be very discouraging but what kept me going was that I always believed in my own abilities, my own vision.
“Accept that art is subjective and just because one particular judge doesn’t see what you see in your art doesn’t mean it’s not worthy. Keep putting your work out there. Keep painting regardless of how many rejections you get. The artists who are successful in the end are not the ones that never had failures or setbacks; they’re the ones who get up again and again, and keep going.”
Browse more articles here at OutdoorPainter.com
