How One Spin Became the Trip of a Lifetime ~ The Art's Big Glass Of Wine

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

How One Spin Became the Trip of a Lifetime

By Mike Bonar

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Mike Bonar with Eric Rhoads at the Plein Air Convention & Expo, after winning a trip to New Zealand

Our custom 4-wheel drive motor coach spun to a perfect stop. One last big step and I was onto the sheep and cattle pasture. I grabbed my backpack filled with paints, canvas panels, and all the gear I needed to create my personal best plein air painting. I was immediately struck by the fabulous scene in front of me. It took my eye down the bush-speckled slope to the turquoise-gray glacier-fed Dart River and up the other side to the steep, rocky New Zealand mountain tops covered with snow and bathed in sunshine. Wow!

Painting along the Dart River at 36 degrees and almost gale-force wind

My thoughts, however, were, how I possibly capture this amazing scene when the temperature was 36 degrees and the wind was practically at gale force? I wouldn't be able to hold my brush and could easily have to chase my pochade box and canvas down the hill. I searched around and found a perched area near some bushes to get the best view and try to break the wind, anchored my tripod with my water bottle, tightened up all the knobs on my pochade box, made a quick pencil sketch of the scene, opened my paints, and went to work.

I was actually surprised when our Senior Travel Designer, Angela Morgan, said our two hours were up and to start wrapping up and get on the bus. I took a last look at that fantastic scene and then at my painting and told myself, not bad; it has some real potential. Sometime in the future, I will remember it and it will transport me back to this amazing spot. That was a good day.

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I was standing on that hillside with 25 other artists/painters literally because of one amazing spin. Back in May of 2022, I attended the Plein Air Convention and Expo (PACE) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. On the last day, over 600 of us were in the convention hall getting amped up and ready to go paint outside. Eric Rhoads drew my name from a barrel full of other names for a chance at the Grand Prize: an all-expenses-paid trip to paint in New Zealand.

The mist from the Stirling falls in Milford Sound is rumored to reduce your age 10 years

Believe me, I was shocked to hear my name called. My hands and feet began to tingle. I was the final spin of the conference. I spun that wheel and couldn't see it but heard the crowd; they were very loud, then the noise slowly subsided just before they exploded! I won, I won, I won! What a full-on adrenaline rush. I am going to New Zealand! I later calculated that my odds of winning were about one in 9,000. So lucky! For the rest of the day, people came up to me and said, are you that guy? The New Zealand guy?

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Artist Spotlight: Lee MacLeod

My studio is my place to combine plein air and reference on larger works.

How do you find inspiration?

Lee MacLeod: As a landscape painter who gravitates to painting clouds, I live in the perfect place to find inspiration. New Mexico has wonderful and dramatic skies as storms move through, and I have a lot of opportunity to observe them. I am quite enamored with how the sky vaults and how the temperature of clouds varies as they recede. My plein air sketches have been invaluable to me for color. The camera, which I do use to record dramatic shapes, rarely gives me the color information that I need. Having painted many sky paintings, I have also grown familiar with cloud colors and often rely on pencil sketches of the cloud shapes and my familiarity with sky color to create more finished paintings done in the field. However, having said that, I am amazed how often I get thrown a curve ball and the sky does something totally unexpected. Those are exciting moments and one of the reasons to be outside observing and painting from life.

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