Description

2026 Plein Air Artist DemonstrationCreating a Dynamic Composition through a Responsive Processwith Fred JacksonThursday, May 215:30–7pm | Davenport Gallery$20 members | $25 non-members


My paintings begin with observation but evolve through an open, responsive process, allowing composition to emerge by emphasizing the rhythms and elements that feel essential. Color and brushwork move beyond description—pushed and varied to create expressive relationships that carry light, atmosphere, and energy across the surface. The goal is a dynamic composition that distills the subject into its felt presence, revealing what compels me to look and to paint.
ARTIST STATEMENT As a plein air painter, I enjoy exploring new places and discovering subjects that make a place unique. Generally, I like to choose complicated landscape subjects. I enjoy the exercise of simplifying the complexity, bringing attention to the important visual qualities that interest me. In a way it could be considered an abstraction of the subject, but I seek to portray the basic shape accurately. My painting process is not formulaic. I prefer to work intuitively and improvisational, sometimes with no predetermined result in mind. By painting this way, I hope to capture the fresh energy of the experience with expressive paint application. This is an important quality I strive for and what is so wonderful about plein air painting. Often it is the paintings which I have battled the hardest, destroyed and resurrected that become the most interesting.
Register NowWaynepleinair.org413 Maplewood Avenue, Wayne, PA 19087 610-688-3553 wayneart.org

Instructor

Fred Jackson