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Working En Plein Air

While David Mayernik's primary focus is narrative painting in the Old Master tradition, he is an accomplished practitioner of portraiture, still life, and especially plein air work. En plein air he subjects himself to the discipline outlined in the eighteenth century by Valenciennes: that the artist must work within a roughly two hour window of time, in order to respect the rigor of accurately capturing changing light and atmosphere. David Mayernik's work en plein air and the capriccios that have resulted from it were featured in his article in American Aritist magazine.

PHILOSOPHY

"The value of creating resemblance is passing; it is that of the brush which causes us first to marvel, and then makes the work eternal."
--Denis Diderot, "Salon de 1763"
(Le merite de ressembler est passager; c'est celui du pinceau qui emerveille dans le moment et qui eternise l'ouvrage.)

While verisimilitude is an essential goal of all traditional painting, the quality of the act of painting, evident in the artist's brushstroke, was a hallmark of Old Master style and command of the medium (especially in the Venetian tradition). Working on a dark ground was also a fundamental component of much seventeenth and eighteenth century Italian painting; the combination of brushstroke and ground yields a style that is at once lively and voluminous.

CORSICA ROME UMBRIA LINCOLNSHIRE TUSCANY LAZIO

"My subjects often balance architecture and nature, in particular exploring the poignant ways these two environments interact. I look for structure in the landscape, and compelling chiaroscuro. In watercolor I am interested in balancing translucency with contrast, juxtaposing transparent washes with saturated color and shadows. In oil I typically work on a traditioinal brown ground, modelling lighs and darks from this middle value range while relying on the ground to read through when the architecture allows."

see plein air oils here
pleinairitaly blog