Artists of dusk and dawn

Jo Ridge Kelley wants you to feel her painting.

To clarify, streaking your fingers across the canvas is generally frowned upon and could result in a stern escort out of the gallery. Rather, the accomplished Waynesville-based artist believes the art of en plein air painting—meaning painting outdoors—produces works that stimulate the full spectrum of a viewer’s senses.

“My paintings are about feeling,” Kelley explains. “When you’re out in the natural world, you are aware of all the sounds, and the textures—you’re experiencing the whole thing. That can’t help but to flow through you and out onto the canvas. I think when you view a painting, you tap into all of the senses. A really good painting is able to do that for the viewer. Sometimes you can actually hear it, feel the wind, the movement of the clouds, the movement of the trees.”

“Plein air” is a French term that means “in the open air.” The approach gained popularity during the late 1800s and early 1900s among impressionists who sought to connect the artist with nature through direct observation.

Meet three Southern Appalachian artists who—whether by paintbrush or camera—have chosen to free their art from the binds of the studio in favor of the wide open outdoors. 

Jo Ridge Kelley • Waynesville, N.C.

Jo Ridge Kelley is so dedicated to the plein air approach that she refers to her car, where she spends ever-more hours chasing her scenic subjects, as the “paintmobile.” But she wants to upgrade to a van—that way she can spend the night inside, out on location, and roll out of bed with the sunrise into her outdoor studio.

Kelley was born in High Point, N.C., and grew up on a dairy farm in the Quaker tradition with her parents and four siblings. She would take a break from her daily chores to recline in a meadow or beside a creek, where she would draw trees, rocks, and wildflowers. ‘I’ve got a picture of me sitting out in the lawn on our dairy farm at 12 years old with a sketchbook. I have been doing it pretty much all my life,” Kelley says. She studied drawing and painting in college and taught high school art for several years. She married nature photographer and painter Ed Kelley, and the two shared a Waynesville gallery and studio, Ridge Runner Naturals, for 22 years.

“We’ve now closed that so we can travel and teach and paint on location,” Kelley said, noting that she’s even willing to sell her work from her vehicle. “My paintings are always available if I have them with me.” She and Ed love to travel out West, with work in Jackson Hole, Yellowstone, and the Tetons among the highlights of her career, she says. She owned a gallery in Santa Fe, too, until it flooded, and she hopes to open another there: “I love it out there in Georgia O’Keefe country.” This year, the two are turning their focus toward North Carolina and the coast.

Trained in oils, Kelley then worked in watercolor exclusively for about 15 years, but she has now returned to oils. Her process is organized and structured, beginning with toning the canvas, then sketching her composition, coloring in abstract shapes, and finishing with darks, highlights, and calligraphy work. She utilizes larger brushes to speed up the work, limiting paintings on location to two or three hours. “It helps if you break it down; it’s not as overwhelming,” says Kelley. “Sometimes you just do a small study and bring it back and do it larger in the studio.” She aims to paint at sunrise or sunset for the most dramatic light, beautiful shadows, and contrasts in warm and cool hues. “You’re having to work before the light changes. You have to work kind of fast, so therefore you’re working more intuitively.”

Kelley notes that many associate plein air painting with landscapes, but “you could also set up a still life or do a figure painting outside.” Plein air is not so much about the subject matter as it is the process. “Your spirit is alive when you’re in the natural world. You escape your everyday obligations around the house. You forget everything. It’s all about you and the painting. It just doesn’t get any better than that as a painter. I really believe that it is the best way to paint.” And with Kelley, the subjects of her paintings are not only driven by the sprawling countryside before her, but by her own internal landscape. “More often, I end up choosing exaggerated and unexpected color relationships and compositions that reflect my emotional response more so than what I’m seeing in front of me,” she writes in her artist’s statement. “I find it much more satisfying to be guided as much by my imagination and memory as my eyes.”

Plein air painting affords originality: “Nobody else is inspiring that work,” Kelley says. “It’s all about you and what you’re out there experiencing in nature.” And it’s spiritual.

“Anytime I’m out in nature, it’s when I rejuvenate my spirit,” says Kelley. “Whether I’m just walking or taking it all in, sort of in a meditative state, or putting the brush to canvas, it is a very spiritual experience. I was raised a Quaker, and I feel the closest to our creator when I’m out there. The experience can be one of a higher power taking over—you give in to just letting it happen. You really don’t get that in the studio.”

A number of galleries carry Kelley’s works, with Twigs and Leaves in Waynesville offering more traditional mountain scenes and Artetude in Asheville showcasing Kelley’s more contemporary works. She is excited and invigorated by the growth of the plein air movement, noting she plans to attend the national Plein Air Convention in Monterey, Calif., in 2015. And she wants to share the movement with others, offering private lessons and many workshops and classes in the area.

“If somebody wanted a plein air experience, they can contact me,” she indicates.

Jo Ridge Kelley’s works can be viewed at joridgekelley.com, where one will find a list of galleries that carry her work. Kelley leads regular classes and workshops at 310 Art Gallery in Asheville’s River Arts District. Call 828.776.2716 or email gallery@310art.com for more information.

Mark VanDyke • Clemson, S.C.

Working outdoors means that Mark VanDyke’s chosen profession is one part art, one part science. He is constantly checking weather forecasts in search of what he calls “dynamic” conditions—those that produce immense clouds, or storms, or snow, for instance. “If it’s the summer, we want to see a cold front,” he says. “People respond to that—they don’t normally get out in those conditions.” Like Kelley, VanDyke prefers early mornings and evenings for ideal lighting, often hiking to his destinations at 3 or 4 a.m. to position his camera and tripod so lens and trigger are ready to capture the first fingers of sunshine reaching over the ridgeline.

VanDyke spent a week in mid-June chasing the Catawba Rhododendron bloom from the Craggy Gardens near Asheville to Roan Mountain in Tennessee, but nature held a little back this year, he reports. It was a “growth year,” he explains. “An okay bloom, but a little less than it could have been,” with lots of leaves but not as many flower buds. A park ranger told him the cold winter sent the mountain shrubs into a growth stage.

“Maybe next year,” sighs VanDyke. “It’s beautiful anyhow, though.”

VanDyke grew up in Fairfax County outside of Washington, D.C., and knew from the time he was a boy that he wanted to work outside. Construction seemed like the way to do it, and VanDyke spent several years climbing the ladder from a laborer building homes to an engineer on health facility projects. “I realized that I was actually getting farther from the trails, rivers, and forests that I longed to spend more time around,” Mark writes on his website. Along the way, he moved to South Carolina for college, where he became acquainted with the Blue Ridge Mountains and Chattooga River. His affinity for outdoor adventures led to the purchase of his first digital SLR camera about eight years ago: “I’m an avid outdoorsman and just wanted to share the locations with family and friends.” He joined the academic world for a time, earning a master’s degree in construction management and pursuing a doctorate in design and planning, even entertaining a few job offers, until, he says, “the costs of completing the education versus the offer had me wondering if I could afford it. That was when I pretty much made the full-time leap [to full-time photography]. I decided it was now or never to try this.”

That was about a year ago, and since then VanDyke has been gaining momentum as a regional photographer, which he credits to an active social media presence and published photos in Our State and Outdoor Photographer magazines. (Among his first published works were two images featured in Smoky Mountain Living’s section of reader-submitted photos, he notes.) “It’s interesting to me—it’s the very first year that people recognize me out on the trail.”

Now, VanDyke jokes that he goes hiking for a living, but of course there’s much more to it than that. Like the mountain creeks that eventually intersect to form the broad rivers of the Piedmont, multiple streams of income provide the cash flow VanDyke needs to make ends meet, and like the weather, much of it is unpredictable. Stock photo agencies purchase his images to be sold for use in newspapers, magazines, websites, and advertisements—“that’s probably my most steady monthly income,” he says. Fine Art America, an online marketplace, connects VanDyke with print buyers. He hopes that licensing of his photographs for magazines and other publications continues to grow, too, and eventually he plans to sell directly through shows and exhibitions of his work.

Unlike the studio photographer guided by a client’s specifications, landscape shooters must think about what might be marketable to a buyer. “Everything we do is speculative,” VanDyke adds. And it’s not the most extreme, exotic locales that seem to interest the buyers; it’s the familiar places that sell—the Grandfather Mountains, the Mount Mitchells, the Outer Banks, the Charleston lowcountry.

“We want an image that’s striking, but at the same time, we want an image that people can recognize,” says VanDyke. “If someone can’t recognize it as a place they’ve been or a place they could be, they can’t connect with it emotionally. Give them places they know, but as beautiful as they’ve ever seen it.” 

Success in the field of outdoor photography comes from having the right equipment and knowing how to use it, including gear for windy and rainy conditions, but more than that, VanDyke claims, it’s a game of strategy and chance. “Once you know your camera and your settings, it’s just a matter of putting yourself in the right place. So much more of this is just chasing the weather,” he says. “It’s who can get to the right spot and who can find an innovative composition.”

VanDyke is content to continue his photographic studies in the region, focusing on the mountains and coastline of the Carolinas and Virginia, where he soon plans to relocate. 

“There’s so much here, every time you return you get something different. Everything changes. The wind, the sun—there’s no similar scene two times in a row or me. It keeps it very fresh.”

Find Mark VanDyke and his spectacular landscape photographs at markvandykephotography.com. VanDyke offers photo field adventures for individuals or groups of two or three people seeking to learn more about landscape photography.

Keith Burgess • Hiawassee, Ga.

Keith Burgess spent a career as a graphic artist and illustrator for AT&T in Atlanta, but in 2003 he returned to a love of painting he cultivated as a teenager and refined during his college years. “I enjoyed the work,” Burgess says about his time in the corporate world, but “eventually, I just wanted to express myself more and get back to my fine art. I retired early at 52 so I could pursue my dreams.”

He now resides in the Georgia mountain town of Hiawassee on Lake Chatuge, and for the most part, he paints the rural scenes of the north Georgia mountains, occasionally venturing to North Carolina or Virginia, too. Burgess says he takes mental notes about locations he passes hundreds of times on the road, often returning to “hang out there and study the place” by painting and supplementing with photos and sketches. Burgess combines work in the field and the studio to complete his pieces, which are primarily done in oil.

“I mainly just do the smaller ones on location; the larger ones are done in studio,” notes Burgess. “I’m 63 now, and as I get older I’m not handling really hot and really cold days as well. The more I paint outside, the more information I have to be able to complete a studio painting and have it appear as if it were painted outside.”

“It’s good to paint from nature when you’re a beginning artist, especially,” Burgess explains. “You don’t get the information you need from photos or other sources. It helps you see what light does in nature. A photograph doesn’t pick that up.” It can be an overwhelming undertaking at first, he concedes, but over time, Burgess says he has picked up strategies and methods for focusing his work.

“When you stand in front of the landscape, there’s a lot of information. Beginners especially don’t know how to condense that into a painting,” he said. “You just learn to take from that what you need as a painter.” First, Burgess too seeks out the shadows of dusk and dawn, avoiding the middle of the day, when “everything is washed out from the light over the head.” He uses a French easel he’s had for 20 years, which he prefers even though it is heavier than other styles. Next he finds a good focal point with supporting lines and shapes that pull the viewer into the painting. Aiding him in this task is a small, two-inch-wide “view finder.” “You look through it to frame your subject, to get a feel of how you want to compose it. It helps reduce everything down to what you want to see.” Burgess refuses to become bogged down in the same subject or medium, however, and turns to his charcoal and graphite drawings, portraits, and still lifes for variety. “You always should not become too caught up in the same thing, and find other subjects,” he says. But his landscapes, marked by a realistic and clean application of vibrant color, are his favorite. “I find in the landscape a kind of spirituality and truth. I am honored to place myself in that long tradition of representational painters who have been inspired by the natural world around us,” he shares, in his artist’s statement. “What attracts me to a particular scene is a pleasing arrangement of shapes and color created by the play of luminous light and shadow, usually found at the beginning and end of day. The best advice I ever received as an artist was to ‘squint’ at my subject.”

The north Georgia artist is actively involved in artists’ communities such as the Southern Appalachian Artist Guild and the Blue Ridge Mountains Arts Association, and he has observed an increased interest in plein air painting, especially over the last 10 years, he says. “It’s become very popular to start plein air groups,” he notes, adding that he is part of a loose group of six to eight artists who frequently invite each other to paint on location. Burgess enjoys the camaraderie and meeting other artists, and painting in a group gives some a greater sense of security in remote places.

Burgess’ work has been shown in countless Georgia and Virginia locations and recently has been featured in no fewer than a dozen exhibits each year. He has received a number of “Best in Show” and other awards, as well as numerous commissions, and his pieces are collected worldwide. He is represented by several art galleries and will invite aficionados to visit his studio.

“I always think about art as art and not as something that is commercialized,” Burgess points out. “I try to look at myself as an artist instead of a painter. I think there’s a big distinction. There’s a lot of painters out there, but there’s very few artists. That’s what I strive for.”

Learn more about Keith Burgess at keithburgessart.com, where one also will find a list of galleries that carry his work. Burgess offers lessons by appointment at the Blue Ridge Mountains Arts Association Art Center in Blue Ridge, Ga. Call 706.632.2144 or email blueridgearts.programming@gmail.com to register.

Make it in the plein

Take advantage of ongoing opportunities to meet and learn from professional and amateur artists, or give en plein air art making a try for the first time.

WNC Plein Air Painters

WNC Plein Air Painters was founded in 2003 to form a network of like-minded artists who enjoy landscape painting on location. The group comprises amateur and professional artists regionally located in and around Asheville, N.C., from Charlotte to Boone to Franklin. Members paint together and exchange suggestions, methods, and techniques. For more info, visit wncpap.com.

Plein-Air Painters of the Southeast

Formed in 2001, PAP-SE is an organization of professional plein air painters bound by a common passion to promote the traditional methods of painting en plein air. For more info, visit pap-se.com.