Plein Air Art Podcast · PleinAir Magazine

Joe Paquet on Artistic Choices and More

·1 hr 31 min·5 clips

Joe uses George Inness and Thomas Moran to show why volumetric form can matter more than stiff outline.

1. Plein Air Art Podcast episode 257 centers on Joe Paquette and his ideas about artistic choices, painting from nature, and the start of a picture. 2. Eric Rhodes hosts as publisher and founder of Plein Air Magazine, and Joe Paquette appears as the guest painter whose teaching Rhodes first studied at a Plein Air Painters of America workshop. 3. The episode asks how an artist finds a voice without copying others, and Joe answers by tying that problem to principles, study, and direct observation in nature. 4. Joe says he was born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1962, studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and later learned the prismatic palette from John Philip Osborne in Ridgewood, New Jersey. 5. Rhodes describes taking 35 people to Japan to paint plein air, then uses the show to promote the Plein Air Convention with 76 or 78 instructors, five stages, and locations including the Biltmore Estate and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. 6. Joe argues that the “organic path” to voice is richer than adopting the mannerisms of other painters, even if imitation can bring a quicker result. 7. He says artists should learn sound basics, then go to nature to see harmony, relativity, and the subjective choices that create a personal voice. 8. Joe warns that artists who chase shortcuts can end up with work that reminds viewers of another painter instead of themselves. 9. He compares this to historical shifts, saying the Macchiaioli painters in Italy kept distinct visions until Cézanne’s influence pushed painting toward homogeneity and flattened forms. 10. Joe also points to George Bellows after the Armory Show, saying Bellows traded neutrals, tonality, and character-based draftsmanship for chroma and screaming color. 11. One of the strongest examples comes from Joe’s Met Museum story, where he placed George Inness’s Autumn Oaks beside a Thomas Moran waterfall painting. 12. He says Moran had accurate outer shapes but little internal form, while Inness made oak trees feel like basketballs you could put your arms around. 13. Joe uses Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks to show how suppression of information can make a painting work, especially the quiet window and the reduced road behind the figures. 14. He says Hopper created a “plausible fiction” by combining enough observation to feel real with enough subjective choice to feel personal. 15. Joe explains that during COVID he made larger paintings from nature, drew more with charcoal, and worked beyond brush-only drawing. 16. He describes a start-to-finish process that begins with line, balance, unity, variety, interest, and contrast, then moves into underpainting and frozen shadow patterns. 17. Joe says he often leaves large paintings in a frame for a day or two, because trying to bulldoze through the last 5 percent can ruin the work. 18. The tone is direct, teacherly, and argumentative, with Rhodes pressing questions and Joe answering with long, principle-based explanations. 19. Artists who want plein air process, drawing, and art philosophy. 20. Listeners wanting light banter or quick beginner tips only.

As heard by us

A composition-first art talk about line, balance, movement, and the choices that hold a painting together.

Joe Paquette's conversation stays close to the bones of a painting before it feels finished. Eric Rhodes returns to line, balance, unity, variety, interest, and contrast, and to the idea that a composition can reach beyond the rectangle itself.

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Want a painterly conversation about why composition holds everything together?

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