by Jill Stefani Wagner

"Eden Soaring"   oil   11x14   At the end of September I snuck in one more 2019 plein event. It had been a long season but I couldn't pass up painting the area around Cincinatti with my friends in the Ohio Plein Air Society. They hold this 4-day event every year in a different region of Ohio. This year it was SWELTERING, but fun just the same. Every night, groups of artists would get together to eat, laught and talk art. My idea of heaven. In fact this comradery is every bit as important to me as the actual glorious hours of painting.   The first [...]

"Vega de Carmona Shacks"   oil   9x12   I'll admit it. Spain would not have been my very first choice for another European painting workshop. I mean, really. There's no place as wonderful as Italy, right?   But my good friend Nora Venturelli had been hired to teach in a tiny town outside of Seville, and the more I thought about it, the more it intrigued me. I'd visited Spain a couple of times, but never armed with my oil painting supplies. And heck, we were going to be housed in a lovely refurbished castle with a pool, 2 bars and a restaurant. What's not to [...]

"Antiques"   oil   12x16   As usual at plein air events, I got up and out early in the morning, driving til I saw something that caught my artistic eye. I slammed on the brakes when I saw this old antique store bathed in dappled light. It was on a busy street, and it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but I just had to paint it.   "Vineyard with a View"   oil   11x14   I returned to a favorite vineyard on the lake... and spent a whole day at a iris farm filled with flowers and old farm buildings. But I have reached the stage in [...]

"Table for Two?"   oil   8x8   The first couple of days at the Wayne Plein Air Festival, it rained. For some reason that seems to happen more often than not. In this event we were allowed to paint indoors if the weather was bad. (Others force us outside to paint in hail storms with combat helmets.) So I headed to a beautiful floral/decorating store to paint my first piece. Then off to a bar to capture the lunch crowd. To say that patrons in these establishments were curious is a gross understatement. "What? Painting in a bar?" Much explaining ensued.   "Liquid Lunch"   oil   12x12   I [...]

"Golden Daze"   oil 9x12   I spent a lot of my time this spring, summer and fall "on the circuit." To tell the truth, I have for the last five years or so...and it has become a bit of an addiction.   What is "the circuit" you may ask? It is a slang term for the many plein air festivals that outdoor painters attend. Over the last 10 years, these art events have multiplied with each state offering their own versions of non-stop painting bonanzas. Each attracts different types and levels of artists, with the best festivals jurying in 35-45 top notch painters from around [...]

"Arbor Lane"    Plein Air Oil Landscape Painting    8 inches x 10 inches       See Pricing   I've been off my artblog grid for awhile. And to those who follow me or have been trying to figure out where I disappeared to... I apologize! Its been a crazy year and I've had a hard time keeping up. I've been at 2 plein air festivals and 2 additional painting trips since the last time I've communicated with y'all. Sometimes I am so consumed with this art journey, I don't know where I am. Or where home is.   Some of the biggest joys in my new [...]

"Palace of Fine Arts" Pastel Cityscape Painting   8 inches x 8 inches     SOLD    Nancie King Mertz and I arrived early for the Plein Air Convention and took some time to paint an amazing icon of San Francisco, the Palace of Fine Arts. It’s a gorgeous monument honoring creativity that was built in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and seemed an appropriate subject matter as we began a week of celebrating painting outdoors.   "Palace Grandeur"   Pastel Cityscape Painting    12 inches x 9 inches        See Pricing The next day I stole a little time and painted the trolley turnaround just a [...]

“Promenade” Pastel Cityscape Painting   9 inches x 112 inches     See Pricing When I do demonstration paintings at my workshops, I rarely finish them to the extent I would in the studio. I’m more interested in teaching my students a new concept or technique than I am in creating a perfect piece of art. And, I don’t want to take up all of their painting time finessing my work. But I do bring in my practice examples of the exact same painting to show them what a finished piece might look like.   The painting above was done with a value under painting [...]

“Parc Offering” plein air oil painting   6 inches x 6 inches      See Pricing We’re on our way back from a lovely couple of weeks in the warmth of Florida. Sometimes you just have to escape Michigan winters. I did a lot of plein air paintings down there and will post them when I get a chance to photograph them properly. But meanwhile, I thought I’d post a few little pieces I did last year when we were down south. I worked on small panels capturing intimate scenes… between dips in the pool, Mai Tais, and sun worshiping.  ;o)   “Parc du Soleil [...]

“Sunday Shadows” plein air oil painting   9 inches x 12 inches      See Pricing I’ve painted this farm 6 or 7 times over the years, but somehow I always come back to it with new eyes…   ___________________________________________________________________This artwork was created on: Linen PanelMedium: Sennelier, Gamblin, Utrecht and Richeson Oil Paints [...]

“The New Jersey Home” pastel painting   11 inches x 14 inches    SOLD I was lucky to have quite a few commissions during the last couple months of 2018. They came in so hot and heavy that I didn’t remember to photograph them all. I’ve posted 3 that I did shoot before they left the studio.   Commissions are interesting conundrums. When I agree to take on these assignments, I have to be aware that although the people who come to me undoubtedly like my art work, they want me to create THEIR art work.  Their subject matter, their size, their medium, their [...]

“Sun Drenched” plein air oil painting    8 inches x 10 inches    See Pricing Some of the pieces I painted in the fall after the national festivals were over, but when the colors were still beautiful outside…   “The Neighbor’s Shed” plein air oil painting   8 inches x 10 inches      See Pricing “Behind the Old Place” plein air oil painting   9 inches x 12 inches    See Pricing ___________________________________________________________________This artwork was created on: Linen PanelMedium: Sennelier, Gamblin, Utrecht and Richeson Oil Paints   [...]

Plein Air Architecture Painting    8 inches x 10 inches    SOLD  There’s a beautiful old pink Victorian house on one of the side streets of my home town. Every time I drive by I say “Dang, I gotta paint that place.” Finally one late summer Saturday morning I did.   While I was painting a really nice woman, the owner of the house, came out to talk to me. She loves her home and was so proud that I thought it was beautiful enough to paint. She made me promise I would show her the finished painting by email. When she saw it, [...]

Plein air landscape oil painting    12 inches x 9 inches       See Pricing   A late October piece showing some of the beautiful hues of Fall around Ann Arbor, Michigan… ___________________________________________________________________This artwork was created on: Linen PanelMedium: Sennelier, Gamblin, Michael Harding, Utrecht and Richeson Oil Paints [...]

“Misty Morn” plein air landscape oil painting    10 inches x 10 inches      See Pricing What a lovely year 2018 was for plein air painting. Besides attending 5 national plein air festivals, I painted constantly around my own home town. There’s something about creating art on location that gives me waaaaay more information than any photo ever can. I painted this piece onsite on a foggy, wet, fall morning which allowed me to capture:   Big Shapes – I find it easier to see these fundamental building blocks of a composition when I squint my eyes outside and ignore the smaller shapes.   Atmosphere – The moisture in [...]

"Down Pine Street" Pastel Plein Air Cityscape Painting  9 inches x 12 inchesPlease contact me if you are interested in this or similar artwork.   It was the last day of Paint Grand Traverse and I was up at dawn to paint Traverse City. It was cloudy with a bit of fog and the sun was just coming up over the bay. I found a sweet street view near downtown which I painted on a board prepared with pastel ground. The random brush strokes create texture and dynamics to an otherwise quiet scene. My wonderful hosts, Debra Van Leen and her husband 'T' [...]

"Fountain Point Daze" Pastel Plein Air Architecture Painting  9 inches x 12 inches   See PricingPlease contact me if you are interested in this or similar artwork. Midweek Paint Grand Traverse Plein Air Festival held a Quick Paint event at the historic Fountain Point Resort. Little white cottages and boat houses dot the grounds on Lake Leelanau, and the whole place has the comfortable feeling of times gone by. There were 40 professional and 60 emerging artists participating along with hundreds of viewers and guests. I arrived late to find my spot and decided to forgo the water scenes at the crowded lake [...]