Plein Air on the Rim

Williamson Tapia
Trying to locate definitive plein air painter Williamson Tapia working in the field can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack somedays, and others it can be hard to avoid bumping into him walking popular trails:  "I'm generally more in the open during the early and late times of the day, when the extremes are less taxing on my energy reserves, so at the end of a shift lasting 10 or more hours, I have enough strength left to carry everything back to my base.  The more I can work under a tree or natural shelter during the full tide of sunlight and wind, the more successful I usually am at finishing a good set of plein air paintings."
    Tapia began competing in plein air shows in 2004, but has been working en plein air since 1978, when an intrepid Painting Instructor at Glendale College led his students outside the studio confines for a day.  Already exposed to the wilderness since his youth, the determined artist spent subsequent years adapting and utilizing traditional tools in both oil painting and hiking, to maximize his plein air studies while taking steps to minimize his impact on the environment:  "I nearly always use the regular trails, and look for perches and situations that are sturdy enough for me to occupy for a stretch of hours over a course of [one or more] days.  A lot of times I wind up right where a visiting photographer wants to set up his perfect shot, so I become something of an obstacle, but in most cases I can take a break to allow them shared access to the view.  If it's a really popular spot with limited access, I'll try to look for a timeframe when less people are around, and work from that [timeframe] instead."
    Will loves painting outdoors, and has grown accustomed to having people watch as he develops his plein air compositions.  He says he doesn't mind visitors asking questions on occasion, and always appreciates a warm gesture, or compliment.  He keeps a stack of biographical cards handy that describe his work and process for the times when he says he is simply too busy to make conversation:  "Most of the time you are on you own and working in natural silence.  You learn to absorb and reflect upon the full character of your surroundings, essentially becoming part of them.  The occasional contact with people is what reminds me that I am also a visitor here with a need to share what I discover with others."

    Tapia will not work from photographs or camera-fed displays, and does all of his compositional study at the point-of-view.  He will spend time, depending upon working conditions, removing dust from the surface of his outdoor studies in oil, before framing and final submission and usually at a different location.  Will doesn't re-compose work away from the painting site, and supplements each painting with a signed testimonial on the reverse, where he also includes notation and GPS coordinates for people inclined to visit the actual point-of-view:  "The best way to find where I sat or stood, is to follow my written description, then use a GPS to compare it's coordinates to the ones I have written down.  Try not to stumble while tracking, and then spot the most likely place where a painting easel can be set up, relative to those readings."  He says he only began recording coordinates in 2007, so finding locations for anything he painted before that time, might be hard to pinpoint, especially when you consider the growth or decline of flora while factoring in the human development of natural areas:  "Part of why I paint the outdoors is to keep people mindful of the need for conservation and ecology in our diminishing world.  It is a gift we cannot afford to throw away for the sake of profit ... for what have we gained anywhere, in any time, if we lose our future?  Working at the Grand Canyon, and at other places where the wilderness line has been drawn, teaches us the importance of learning from nature even as we strive to subsist in it."
Williamson Tapia

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Artist's Website: http://williamsontapia.com/
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