Apr 05, 2026

Arizona Painting Adventures

I have a big birthday coming up this month (yes, I'm turning 30 again 😜) and after thinking it over for some time, the one thing I realized I really wanted was to go away for a week-long plein air painting workshop. Narrowing it down to where and when was a bit tricky, but when I realized Phil Starke was teaching for a week in March in Tucson, AZ, I knew that was exactly where I wanted to go for my birthday. Tucson is a special place for me, we used to visit every summer when my grandparents lived there, and I haven't been back in a really long time.

My painting on my last day at Honey Bee Canyon Park

Not only was it wonderful to be back in place that feels like home, but it was such a different landscape that I quickly realized is very different to paint than the trees and skies of the northeast.

I shook off some of the rustiness of my plein air skills in the first day and was a bit overwhelmed at how the colors of the sky were more bold and deep, the sunrises and sunsets incredibly vibrant, and the vegetation in the landscape, for lack of better words, mushes together with no definitive forms. I found myself mixing colors on my palette that I never have before, all sorts of rusty oranges, sage and olive greens, and purples for the Catalina Mountains. Even my brushwork loosened up and I found myself painting more expressively than I usually do.

Painting on location at DeGrazia Gallery In The Sun

I set a goal for myself during my trip that 1: I was going to have fun (duh), 2: this is a learning experience since I've never painted this much outside before, and 3: all of my plein air works were intended to be studies to inform future paintings back at home. Going in with this mindset took a lot of pressure away and I have a small collection of paintings (eight total!) that capture the light and colors the landscape that the photos on my phone miss entirely. They aren't masterpieces and that's ok!

Morning painting in the riverbed at Tanque Verde Ranch

I have so many reference photos and now these studies for a future series of Tucson paintings, and I actually plan on including three paintings in my upcoming show this summer based on where I painted during this week!