When the Plein Air Painters Chicago Steering Committee created its mission statement, camaraderie as one element listed after painting, improving, and selling paintings. It wasn’t at an afterthought, but all aspects of painting ranked higher on the priority list. As it turns out, members usually rank the interaction to other artists as the second most important reason they belong to the PAPC. They came for the painting and stay for the people who care about painting, and are willing to console and kavetch about painting. They want to commune with someone who knows what its like to feel discouraged, be driven to paint, or need a nudge to submit a painting for a contest or enter a competition. Camaraderie doesn’t mean family, but it can be the ease of old school friend, the excitement of learning new things from a date or the shared intimacy of disappointment and success. 

So, I’ve been thinking about how the members of the PAPC experience camaraderie. I admit, I didn’t love the word when we first placed it in consideration for our mission. I suggested instead, the word fun, but it took little convincing that we should expect more. Words like welcoming, inclusive, and supportive shaped the concept. It was quickly decided that we welcome everyone to paint with us, paid membership or not. If lunch after a paint-out is in the works, everyone is invited. If someone’s discouraged about matching a color, getting the shape of a car, or struggling to give a figure more dimension, they only have to ask.  PAPC comrades in art will come to the rescue.

Here are other ways for any of us to show camaraderie.

Social media –

• When a painting is posted on Facebook and Instagram, like it, better yet, make a comment. 
• If a fellow artist shares a promotion for a personal or group show, share it, attend it and take friends who like art or like you. Consider sharing promotions from the Palette and Chisel, what helps them helps the PAPC.  That goes too for any of your instructors.
• If someone posts a newsletter, share that on the same social channel, and, copy and paste it to another. Whether the newsletter is written for artists or collectors, it may benefit someone. 
• If you’re also a figurative or portrait painter, invite models to bring family and friends to a show to see their likeness. 
• Grow your network. Keep track of people who buy or are interested in your work. Let them know not only about your own show, but group shows as well.  
• We all need support and camaraderie at one time or another. Use your social networks  to ask for what you need… be the receiver and expect that your comrades in art will respond.

Critiques

• Critiques onsite - Plein air painting reminds me of my son’s high school track meets. Everyone worked toward personal bests and there were MVPs, but every team member stayed till the last competitor completed their event. You may choose not to submit a painting for critique,  but you sticking around till the end, offers support and encouragement.
• If someone asks you for a critique of their work. Start with a question, How will my critique help you? Focus on that. 
• Begin with a positive, ask if they want more. Be precise and don’t offer an opinion if you don’t know how to fix something that’s not working.  Err on the side of encouragement. 

Visit Museums and Galleries with Artists

There’s nothing like looking at a painting with someone who shares the language and understands what it may have taken to create the image you’re seeing. It doesn’t have to be an art expert, I’ve learned. In fact, for me, some of them have a tendency in explaining to forget the feeling. 

• Once immediately after a paint out in Grant Park, Ray Vlcek and I toured plein air paintings at the Art Institute. Maybe it was our fresh encounter with landscapes, but those few minutes we took to notice and discuss the capture of light, composition, shapes and patterns was especially useful. Check out the light in this 1909 plein air landscape on display at the Art Institute of Chicago by George Gardner Symons.   
• Discussing online work with a fellow painter can be valuable too. After staring at raucus waves in changing light for a couple hours I was no closer to capturing them. Studying Anders Zorn’s paintings Sommamoje, Caique Oarsman and Pier paintings with an artist, helped me see them better and stop obsessing. BTW, while I still don’t paint water well, but it helps to know that Zorn spent more than twoyears on some of his paintings. 

Camaraderie for me is still about fun and sharing the joy of painting plein air.  How can I encourage you? How can we encourage each other?

Last Saturday was the first day of a figure drawing class at that Palette and Chisel. I loved every second of it. Each two-minute and five-minute sketch felt like a second, the hour-long pose felt like a minute. If we weren't offered a break, I wouldn't take one. It didn't matter whether my depictions sucked. It was three hours of peace, of breathing in and out and feeling whole and flowing. 

The teacher might be late 40s, there's a guy in the class in his 30s and there's two people in art school likely still in their teens and me. One of youngest asked me if "this"... art was a hobby? I took offense at the question.  I had a reaction but it wasn't to her. My response filtered through years of other experiences. I know, I recently took a Crucial Conversations course at work, and they said so.

No future - came to mind first. She didn't see that I could be, like her, in or considering a career. Old came next. She just met me and I presented as an old person. Okay, I'll give her older... 40 years or so. I could be two generations ahead of her. In my self-aware state I recognize that I don't say, even to myself, grandmother. I am definitely filtering. Then again, her choice of a word felt like a paper cut.

When I heard the word hobby,  it reminded me of an argument with my former husband about my business, when early in its life it wasn't making money. He called it a hobby. I took umbrage then too. He wanted me to close it. He wanted to take vacations. He wanted me to get a real job and not invest any more of our money into it. We discussed and argued. I realized he meant the future value of my earning power. The business gained momentum, but still, as new businesses go, required financial reinvestment. I stood my ground. A battle won... at all cost. He left and I dug in. I would 

prove it was worth it. I completely retooled. I let go staff and refocused the business model. What business I was in was decided and the business took off and went on for another fifteen years. I may have proved him wrong, but I didn't prove me right. Damn. 

Still mulling about the meaning of hobby, I asked my wise friend Lynn for her definition. She said, it's what brings us peak moments... when time stands still, where your mind finds rest. It's not work. Peace.

In an NPR's Morning Edition story recently, they asked rock-star scientist, Neil deGrasse Tyson to fact check the time (relativity) effects of gravity in the new movie Interstellar. The stronger the gravity, the more time slows. The time on our phones that go through the far out GPS satellites has to be calculated and slowed to account for the difference in the speed of time in space. My time is slowed when I'm drawn to drawing.

Now that I think about it, that young woman may have done me a big service. The word hobby for me obviously triggers a reaction. It's clearly time to rethink and retool, to find a response that speaks of my experience of flow, joy and peace.

Thanks for the provocative words, Kurt Vonnegut.

"If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something." Kurt Vonnegut

11/14/14