– Bob Bahr reporting, Editor PleinAir Today –
It took the winner of last month’s PleinAir Salon contest, Timur Akhriev, a week or more to paint the plein air piece that earned him plaudits. That’s a function of his painting approach.
Lead Image: “The Ties That Bind,” by Timur Akhriev, 2013, gouache, 13 x 30 1/4 in.
“I was visiting my friends in ‘Flora-bama,’ that part of Alabama on the Gulf next to Florida,” recalls Akhriev. “I am very particular about painting spots, and when I saw the boat I knew that with all the colors it would look good in afternoon light. So at the end of the day, for a week and maybe one more day, I would go paint it. I loved the clean nets combined with the decaying nets on the side of the boat. The weather was good, and every day I would come back and first check the drawing. I would fix details and work on the drawing some more, and by the time I was finished with that, the sun was at the right spot and the color was right and I was ready. Sometimes I would be there for almost three hours.”
This is not atypical for Akhriev. “I like details and I’m obsessive about getting everything the way I want it,” says the artist. “I work hard and fast, and yet precise, so it was a pretty interesting challenge to finish this painting in this certain way. Sometimes it is hard on me because sometimes it doesn’t go well. That piece is 90 percent what I want it to be. I was pretty happy with it. I am so hypercritical.”
Akhriev, who was raised in Russia, has traveled the world, painting in Europe, Africa, and America. Most of the time he paints on location, and most of the time, he returns to the same spot repeatedly. “Things are so fascinating to me,” he says. “Maybe too much? The plein air painting influences my studio work greatly. But I want to challenge myself by doing something more than a sketch. You learn about yourself when you paint something large.”
The painter doesn’t do thumbnail sketches. He does take time to think through the composition and how the viewer’s eye will enter the composition and travel through it. Akhriev says he doesn’t move around elements in the scene or bring in elements outside the composition. Instead, he thinks about how people look at the world. For Akhriev, that means painting as if through a fisheye lens.
“Some use viewfinder,” he says, “but our vision is so wide and the details on side are really important in the painting. The viewer’s eye needs some interest to lead them. I learned this from my dad. I enjoy it because it gives you a sense of that view. It’s about not just painting the house and rosebush. That can result in a mundane landscape. For instance, in ‘Resting,’ I didn’t want it to just be about the boat but the material the people were working with.”
Akhriev says his upbringing in Russia, where the working class is perhaps more celebrated than it is in the United States, is a factor in his choice of subject matter. “People are still working with their hands, and that is important,” he says. “People work all day in the field and work hard, and then they come home. That is always attractive to me. I am painting a portrait of the life of a fisherman, what they do and what they are about. What materials they use.”
The PleinAir Salon consists of six bi-monthly contests, with the First, Second, and Third Place winners of each contest, and the category winners, automatically entered into the annual competition. First prize in the annual competition is $15,000 cash and the publication of the winning image on the cover of PleinAir magazine, along with a feature story. Second Place earns an artist $3,000 and an article in the digital edition of PleinAir magazine. Third Place yields $1,500 in cash. Three additional finalists win $500. Aside from First, Second and Third Place overall, categories include Best Oil, Best Pastel, Best Watercolor, Best Acrylic, Best Plein Air, Best Building, Best Figure in the Landscape, Best Floral, Best Landscape, Best Outdoor Still Life, Best Nocturne, Best Water, and Best Artist Under 30.
The winner of each bi-monthly contest is featured in this e-newsletter and profiled on OutdoorPainter.com. The $21,000 in prizes will be awarded to the annual winners at next year’s Plein Air Convention & Expo.
