En plein air

It actually happened last year, but I'm organising it this year.

It's an En Plein Air, which is the painting outdoors.

So this is where really resilient artists set up their outdoor easels and they grab a brolly and they paint outdoors so it's always a lot of fun and people

yeah love

In some cases, also, there's a wonderful synergy and similarity between the works, the paintings, and the prints and drawings.

So my PowerPoint is structured as the exhibition is structured and so we enter through the painting on plein air section and the prints that are in that first section also convey and communicate remarkable informality and spontaneity and a sense of the everyday, which is really what makes this exhibition, Monet to Matisse, the framing of it is this encounter with the everyday that is one of the primary concerns.

And a few weeks ago, I gave a lecture as part of our Monet to Matisse lecture series, which considered this period, really, this 100 years or so that the exhibition covers.

And I was reflecting at that time on what a remarkable time of cultural change, it's cultural and political and technological change that that 100 years represents.

And I say that as a preface because that dizzying experience of change what we see in the exhibition and what enables us in a way as we walk through the rooms downstairs is an experience of how artists responded to massive change.

And that in itself is, I think, a gift of the exhibition.

So in the exhibition, as I mentioned, we enter through this period of French painting, but also the American artists who are responding to changing the way that they're working on plein air.

And one of those artists was Renoir.

And so that, yeah, 2004, 2005.

And I started doing, like, the kinda work I'm doing, like, Plein Air, painting in the field and stuff.

Right.

I started about 2015.

I mean, these pieces are incredible, and I, our audience can't see them.

But we're certainly gonna direct them to your website, and go check out this work because it's really impressive.

All of it's Plein Air?

Not all of it, uh, but I would say the majority of it.