Category: Plein-air painting

Destination: Cambria

Cambria, on California’s Central Coast, is one of those special destinations. It offers a spectacular coastline with an abundance of cliff-side trails, verdant hills and valleys ideal for cattle ranching, vineyards and open-air landscape painting. Architecturally Cambria features a remarkable collection of original 19th-century salt-box homes and an early 20th-century downtown district known as East…


Illuminating Nature: How American Luminist Joseph McGurl Creates Transcendent Paintings

“Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all,” wrote American essayist and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1836 essay “Nature.” Leading American luminist painter Joseph McGurl seeks such an experience every time…