Plein Air Art Podcast · PleinAir Magazine

Joe McGurl's Connection to Nature

December 19, 2024·1 hr 35 min·4 clips

Episode 265 brings on Joseph McGurl. Eric Rhodes opens by calling him an incredible artist and by saying a week working with Joe changed his own artwork forever. That sets the tone right away. Eric also does his usual loose housekeeping, mentioning Christmas, a little unfinished shopping, and the fact that he went painting instead. It feels like the normal warm-up before the real conversation starts. Once McGurl is talking, the focus turns to plein air color. He explains that outdoor paintings have to survive a different light once they leave the field and end up hanging inside. That is the main trick. A bright beach scene in Florida can still need more push on the canvas. A desert painting can have the same problem, even when the sun is blasting and the color looks vivid in person. McGurl uses a Glen Canyon example too, and the point stays simple. What you see outside is not always what reads later. So the artist has to think about value, brightness, and how much to exaggerate. Eric keeps pulling on that thread. He asks whether there is a fixed number of values to adjust or some reliable measurement. McGurl says not really. Instead, he talks about checking a painting by turning it into sunlight or into shade halfway through. He also mentions that an umbrella can help, even if the wind makes it a nuisance. The conversation stays easy and encouraging, with both men talking like people who have spent real time in the same painting world. It ends as a useful reminder that plein air painting is partly about what the eye sees now and partly about what the painting must hold later.

As heard by us

A practical plein air conversation about color, value, and what survives once the painting comes indoors.

The discussion follows Joseph McGurl through a practical plein air problem: how color, darks, and brightness stay coherent when a painting made outdoors is later viewed indoors.

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Why you'd press play

If you paint outdoors, this helps you judge color for how it will read back inside.

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