RICHARD SWANN ART

First plein air day of the summer with the Battle and District Arts Group and it’s a day of rain at Mountfield.  Starting as a few drops on the canvas (Daler Board chopped to fit a pochade) then getting heavier and interfering with the paint.  Oil paint repels rain but the water sits in place in drops and eventually, such is the decisive speed of your brushstrokes, you’re aquaplaning.  How on earth does Roos Schuring manage?  (Quick bit of internet research – having stabilised the easel with a bag of sand she tapes an umbrella, a white wedding umbrella, to it to keep the rain off the painting surface).  Being made of less stern stuff me and my Dad opted for sitting under a tree.  Then under a bigger and denser tree when the rain got heavier.  To be fair we were the last men standing, if only metaphorically.  The results are all a bit grey and get progressively broad (as in broad brush strokes and less detailed) but this is no bad thing – having to make a painting from decidedly uncolourful scenery in the rain is the sort of out of the comfort zone thing that plein-airing is supposed to provide.  The things in the field in the first painting are sheep, in case you were wondering, and the third one is two trees and a column of smoke from a gypsum works, as any fool can tell.