2-day Plein Air workshop on the farm with Jef Gunn. 

Plein Air painting is simply painting in the open air. That’s what we’ll do.

Painting itself can be tricky, managing a palette of colors and a canvas in response to the always moving world around us! Our focus for this workshop will be all of that. Composition, simplification, color, palette layout (and management!) , gumption, place, light and shadow, mystery.

This will be quite the adventure in painting in the out of doors on a beautiful landscape with historic significance. A farm and its buildings sit along the confluence of the Lewis and Columbia Rivers, on land once occupied by Chinook and Cowlitz peoples. We’ll cover color, composition, palette management, and keeping your cool while managing all that!

It’s going to be a great weekend out on the land. Jef is an experienced teacher with a wealth of knowledge to offer and we’re so excited to welcome him to the farm for his first Ridgefield workshop. We will provide coffee, tea, water and snacks. Participants should bring water bottle, lunch, clothes for the weather, and the materials listed below.

If you have any difficulty acquiring materials, please get in touch and we will see how we can help! As always, limited scholarships are available. While we work to accommodate participants with mobility support needs, this workshop is out on the land and may not be accessible to all. For questions about materials, scholarships and accessibility, please email arts@pnfarm.com and we will work to meet your needs!

Jef Gunn has studied and practiced drawing and painting since the 1970s, with formative experiences in California, Barcelona, Paris and Seattle. He began working in encaustic in 1985, integrating materials such as paper, ink, tar, fabric, and gold leaf to explore layered meanings influenced by Asian art. His work has been exhibited nationally, including solo and group shows at Oregon State University, Marylhurst University, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. In 2006, he co-curated the national encaustic show Impulse. Jef has taught painting and drawing in Seattle and Portland since the mid-1990s, and his work is represented by galleries in Seattle, Edison, Honolulu, and Portland. With a balance of humor, broad knowledge, and helpful insight, he is able to draw from each student her or his own natural way to paint.