Nothing plain about plein air

This year’s Black Hills Plein Air Paint Out, hosted by the Hill City Arts Council, drew a wide variety of artists to the Heart of the Hills region. Two of them, Michael Walter and Nick Hix, show the diversity of the field that comes to compete for best in show and cash prizes.

Walter heard about the Pelin Air show through an advertisement in a Plein Air magazine. He had wanted to do it last year but the dates did not work out. But this year he jumped in.

“I’ve been waiting all year to come here,” he said. Walter has been to South Dakota before. “I remember the scenery and thought ‘I would love to be painting out here.’”

Walter  came all the way from Wexford, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh and much like the Black Hills in terms of trees and hills. 

But Walter notes some differences. 

“I love the color of the pine bark. It’s different back home,” he said. “I like drawing and painting hemlocks because they have that ruddy tannin color to them and the pines out here have that same orangey tan but they’re much bigger pattern bark.”

He describes the rocks in the Black Hills as well. 

“Back home it’s all the sandstone and limestone,” he said. “But here they look  like they’ve been scoured and rolled ... and  that wonderful lichen-colored granite ... I’m looking for those color differences between cobalt and teals and oranges and just the striking diagonals that are formed by  the rocks and the trees and the meadows.”

Even the grass out here, he notes, is “soft and wavy” as opposed to the short grass he sees back home. 

Walter has been painting since he was a child but has been focusing on landscapes since 2009.

“In  the  warm months I like to go out and paint landscapes because I react to the color,” he said. “Very, very rarely do I have any element of built environments.” 

As such he was concerned about the quick draw event in which artists were asked to stay in town and focus on the more “urban” landscape of Hill City. 

“Usually I look at a landscape as just a pattern of color and light and contrasting sizes and shapes,” he said. “I don’t do an underdrawing at all. I go straight in with the color.”

Nick Hix is a local artist from Rapid City who works mostly as a bladesmith.

Hix was born in Custer and had his art in a gallery on 7th Street in Rapid City where the current Staple and Spice store is located. Hix was featured on the television show “Forged in Fire” that appeared on the History Channel in 2019.

 A self-taught artist with a large portfolio of skills, Hix focuses mainly on metal sculptures and creates custom blades in his forge behind the fairgrounds in Rapid City. He has been painting for 39 years but he doesn’t get to do it much because “life interferes.”  He usually paints for himself. 

“This is one of the first times I got into a contest,” Hix said. “Since we were up here this summer and found out about it I thought this is something we’d enjoy doing.”

Hix’s entries to the Plein Air show were all urban landscapes: a scene from Deadwood, a snapshot of the Mint Bar in downtown Sheridan, Wyo., a vision of  the Alpine Inn and a rendering of the Jon Crane Gallery. 

Hix concerned himself with several things as he painted his first submission into the contest “First the Wind,” which forced him to weight his easel with a Menard’s bucket and caused his paint to dry very quickly, causing him to use a paint retarder. He said oils are different from acrylics in that oils don’t dry out. His other concern was time. 

“I don’t paint with a time schedule,” Hix said.

Like all the Plein Air artists his submission was due by 4:30 that afternoon. He figured he would work on his painting all afternoon.

 As he applied paint to his palette and then his canvas, Hix noted he is mostly a studio painter, “so this isn’t really my deal.” But Hix loves urban landscapes. 

“I like the idea of bringing trees, flowers and stuff into the urban landscape. I like busy scenes with lots of action.” 

Hix began by getting the perspective, taking his time to really look at the scene and create a vision in his mind. He then went to work blocking, getting everything blocked in before  he began construction of the piece. This meant painting with two colors, black and blue. 

“All the highlights will come in later,” Hix said. “We need shadows for buildings to come over with lights for the street.”

He says the hard part for him is getting started.

“When you get started it’s all very difficult finding subject matter. Once you’ve started it begins to change,” he said. That’s when he begins to calm down.

As for when his painting is done, “That’s a really good question. It’s hard to know when you’re finished. Suddenly it hits you. You run out of things to paint,” he said.

Tanner Lamphere took home the Thursday Best of Day while Friday’s best of day went to Alissa Millsap.

Best downtown Hill City went to Stephen Randall.

Jill Tesnow won the People’s Choice award, with the Artist’s Choice award going to Mary Boylan. Kimberly Larson got honorable mention.

Best of Show went to Cheryl LeClair-Sommer for her work entitled “Hidey Hole.” LeClair-Sommer found the spot behind Pine Street and noted “the morning light is perfect.”