The best painting I ever did will be the next one I do.

That afternoon I noticed the cloud formations were ideal for a fireworks sunset. I put my gear in the truck and grabbed two large panels. I already knew which one I would use. The place I had in mind would be about a one hour drive. I pulled up on top of the hill and wasted no time in setting up. I tied the easel to the truck so if there was wind my panel wouldn’t become a kite. I began mixing large piles of warm and cool oil on my glass palette because I knew when the time came I would have to apply lots of paint fast. I finished and figured I had about an hour before the real light show would begin. I started building my composition of foreground and middle ground shapes using a large flat brush and quickly punched in the impressions of the landscape as it lay out before me. I knew I needed to keep my values dark because I wanted to capture the light as it would play after the sun went down. But the sky would be my main focus for this painting. As soon as the sun dropped over that ridge I would only have minutes to capture those colors. When the sun started dropping over those worn down mountains I put down the brush and picked up a large palette knife and began mixing and applying lots of paint and the sky began moving across my panel. I brought some of those amazing sky colors down as highlights on to those beautiful ridges and plains below.

I step back a lot to look at the over all painting as it is unfolding and try to pick an area to either leave as it is or add to it. These actions are made consciously it would seem at the time but afterword looking at what minutes before was a blank panel it feels as though something beyond the self is at work. At that moment you become immersed in the present, combined with all you see and so very humbled by creation and your attempt to imply with pigment what Light has already stated before you even had a thought about how you might copy it.

I drove away that evening thinking I had come as close to capturing the essences of a sunset as I ever had. Then I remembered what a friend painter once said.

“The best painting I ever did will be the next one I do”.

Oil on panel plein air 24 x 48 (sold into a private collection 2004) artist: Len Sodenkamp

Food for thought

Plein air oil on framed panel 24 x 40 inches by Len Sodenkamp

The top image is a plein air study from a few weeks ago wile on location in the Saw Tooth Mountains of Idaho. Deeply influenced by my surrounding on a beautiful warm fall afternoon I was impressed to paint all that was before me. It was like a cornucopia of delicious foods and I wanted to eat every thing in sight. I thought by subordinating the foreground it might allow the viewer to move more easily into those amazing light filled peaks off in the distance. Was I successful?


The bottom image is a crop taken from the same painting removing the foreground information. Simplification of subject mater especially when painting plein air can sometimes produce powerful impressions. My point being; which painting makes the strongest statement?
Knowing how much information to depict and when to stop painting is always a big?

Happy painting,

Len Sodenkamp

Fall colors in mid day light

Fall color in mid day light,

For years I practiced not using color straight from the tube; that is to say no white or neutralizing. Needless to say you can find your self in unfamiliar territory using full strength pigment especially with a limited primary palette. Taking the path less traveled invites the possibility of becoming lost. Most of us can recall the feeling of being lost and how humbling it is. Life teaches us to avoid unpleasantness and to stay in our safe zone. So should one not stand metaphorically on the last rung of the ladder and reach out for once thought unreachable fruit?

Fall color in mid day light was painted on location 9-27-11 at Fisher Creek Saw Tooth Mountains of Idaho. Palette: cobalt blue, cad red, cad yellow light and medium.

Oil on framed panel 24 x 24 inches plein air (fall color in mid day light) by Len Sodenkamp www.sodenkampart.com