artist profile
JOHN P. LASATER IV
Sharing the Plein Air Journey
This Arkansas artist has made rapid improvements in his paintings and won major festival awards, in part because
he received instruction, guidance, and encouragement from artist friends. His example motivates
us to help one another learn, grow, and enjoy the plein air journey.
O
Rural Colors
2014, oil, 11 x 14 in.
Courtesy the Rice Gallery of Fine Art,
Overland Park, KS
Plein air
A friend watches
John Lasater paint
during his first 24
Paintings in 24
Hours event. Photo:
Aus10 Photoartists
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ne can learn a great deal in art classes
and workshops, and there is no better
way to understand the technical
aspect of painting than to practice, practice,
practice. But while those activities might bring
artists technical competence and put them
on a level with other plein air painters, they
won’t be enough to distinguish their work from
the average outdoor painting. The reason is
that artists often don’t know what they don’t
know. That is, they judge themselves by their
own limited experience. They aren’t receiving
objective responses from others who may know
more about the creative process.
Not all of us want that kind of objective
criticism; many of us are looking for an enjoyable
pastime that doesn’t involve competition, awards,
and sales. We may be completely satisfied with
our current level of accomplishment, and our
goal may be to enjoy the social aspects of outdoor
painting. There is certainly nothing wrong with
focusing on the pleasurable side of plein air.
However, if we are aiming to create better
paintings, work that could potentially attract
the attention of collectors, awards judges, and
students, then we need to take steps that help
us create paintings that are better than average.
Those steps are likely to include interaction with
other painters, some of whom will be measurably
better at their craft, who will challenge us, offer
constructive criticism, and encourage us to go
further.
One of the best ways to receive objective
comments, encouragement, and motivation is to
spend time painting and talking with others who
share our passion and are willing to give us time
and the benefits of their experience. That person
could be another member of a plein air group,
a good friend who shares a passion for outdoor
painting, or an experienced teacher who is available for one-on-one critiques.
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Crossroads
2014, oil, 10 x 12 in.
Collection the artist
This painting won
the Second Place Oil
award in the Augusta
plein air event in
Augusta, MO
Generations of Frederick
2014, oil, 14 x18 in.
Collection the artist
This painting was the Best
of Show winner in Easels in
Frederick, Frederick, MD
ARTIST DATA
NAME: John P. Lasater IV
BIRTHDATE: 1970
LOCATION: Siloam Springs, AR
INFLUENCES: “Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Payne,
Richard Diebenkorn, C.W. Mundy, and Carolyn Anderson.”
WEBSITE: www.lasaterart.com
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artist profile
Demonstration: Old School
John Lasater’s setup for this
painting demonstration
STEP 1: Lasater
brushes in some
big shapes to
determine the
strength of the
abstract design.
STEP 2: He then
adds highlights to
provide reference.
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STEP 3: Lasater finishes blocking in local colors.
STEP 4: Final details are added to the buildings.
THE COMPLETED
PAINTING
Old School
2014, oil, 20 x 24 in.
Collection the artist
Plein air
“Textures refined
overall to achieve
better variety,” says
Lasater.
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Last Gleam
2014, oil, 11 x 14 in.
Courtesy the Rice Gallery of Fine Art,
Overland Park, KS
Plein air
“One of the important lessons I learned that
I pass along to others is to find a peer artist you
can paint and travel with,” John Porter Lasater
IV told John Pototschnik when interviewed for
a blog post. “You’ll grow much faster as an artist
and you’ll enjoy the journey more. Moreover,
you’re more likely to stay motivated if each of
you challenges the other to keep moving forward.
We’re part of a community, and by supporting
each other, everyone benefits.”
The good friend who spent so much time
teaching Lasater was Todd Williams. “I was
30 years old when I first started painting and
expanding beyond what I was doing as a graphic
designer and illustrator,” Lasater recalls. “Todd
invested a lot of time helping me, especially
after I decided to become a full-time artist. He
encouraged me to take workshops and to begin
participating in plein air events. My first outdoor
event was the 2005 First Brush of Spring event in
New Harmony, Indiana. I had the good fortune
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to watch and talk to artists who were generous
with their time and information. It was at that
event I met great artists like C.W. Mundy and
Carolyn Anderson, who had a positive influence
on my growth as an artist.
“Everything I learned from Todd and C.W.,
as well as in workshops with Carolyn Anderson
and John Budicin, was an eye-opening revelation. Their combined experience was vast, and
the fact that they were generous and encouraging allowed me to make progress toward finding
my voice as an artist. It’s hard to know how to
eliminate our deficiencies, and we need someone
with experience to show us where we can make
improvements.”
Great paintings are not the result of community activity, of course, and at some point
each individual artist has to find and express his
or her own particular voice. Lasater has recently
done that by taking on subject matter that is
not necessarily pretty and therefore requires a
different level of appreciation from him as well
as from the viewers of his completed works. He
sets up his easel in back alleys, near parked cars,
alongside railroad tracks, and under a streetlamp
at night. He finds something beautiful in the
least picturesque section of a town and presents it
with energetic strokes of oil color. He has become
particularly fascinated by the way nocturnes can
change a boring building facade or a beat-up
truck into a glimmering jewel of sparkling reflections, mysterious shadows, and subtle glows. All
of that helps to attract attention to his work.
Soon after becoming involved in plein air
events, Lasater started traveling and painting
with Jason Sacran, another gifted artist from Arkansas. They now drive between locations, share
housing, split the costs of travel, and even divide
super-sized McDonald’s meals to cut calories and
expenses. “We have similar backgrounds, values,
and family situations, so we can help each other
keep up the pace of plein air events,” Lasater
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artist profiles
says. “But more importantly, we encourage and
support each other through the struggles and
celebrations.”
Blending all these influences, Lasater has
established his own particular approach to
plein air painting that helps him select subjects,
compose shapes, manage relative values, control
edges, and resolve his oil paintings. “Selecting a
site for painting is as much an intuitive process
as it is an intellectual one,” the artist explains. “I
let the arrangement of shapes guide me first, I
decide if the idea will come across, and I review
the limited effects I need in order to pull that off
successfully. Overcoming my fear of failure is the
next barricade I have to attack, so I try to center
myself spiritually so I can dive right in and play.”
As he begins to apply strokes of oil color to a
panel, Lasater keeps in mind his original concept
for the painting, the composition of shapes and
values, the techniques needed to work the oil
colors, the color mixtures that match the value
composition, and the edges. That final manipulation of edges owes much to the instruction Lasater
received from Mundy. “I start by splashing some
shapes on the canvas and judging whether they
would be interesting if they were only black and
white — somewhat like a Franz Kline abstract
painting,” he says. “I basically want a clumsy and
soft rendering of my shapes as a block-in. As I
near the end of the process, I break up hard edges
and add just a few key hard edges in the last 10 to
15 minutes of the painting process.
“In terms of the way I compose landscapes,
Edgar Payne’s book, Composition of Outdoor
Painting, was a big influence. Also, I learned
about the golden section and fractals, and that
gave me some nerdy satisfaction, and I became
fascinated with paintings that have split focal
points. Another interesting challenge is making centric subjects work with asymmetrical
design. All those formal compositional structures
can be helpful, but so too is responding to an
intuitive sense of what feels right.”
Lasater’s palette of oil colors includes cadmium yellow medium, cadmium orange, cadmium
red medium, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue,
and viridian. The earth colors are yellow ochre,
burnt sienna, and burnt umber; also titanium
white and ivory black. He uses the same palette
in his studio as he does outdoors.
This past year, Lasater hit on the idea of
creating 24 paintings in 24 hours as a way of
generating publicity both locally and nationally
through social media. “The fall of 2013 was a
mediocre plein air season in terms of sales, and
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County Barn
2014, oil, 14 x 18 in.
Courtesy Bay Art Gallery, Sister Bay, WI
Plein air
I needed to do something outrageous,” Lasater
told Pototschnik. “I got the idea of creating one
painting every hour in locations around the small
town in Arkansas where I live. I partnered with
the local frame shop and wound up having the
experience of a lifetime, with friends and family
surrounding me. During the night hours, other
friends arrived and were with me through the
dark hours of the day. The local coffee shops
brought drinks and food to me, and a reception
immediately followed my final painting. The
paintings were already sold, so the reception was
more of a celebration.”
One of the lessons Lasater learned from
this “outrageous” project was that a great idea,
combined with the energy of social media, can be
electric. “At some point I realized how meaningful the idea could be to other small towns,”
Lasater says. “It has the potential to awaken a
fledgling artistic community. A fellow artist and
gallery owner recently called me from the state
of Washington. She said, ‘So you’re on tour? Are
you touring around the country, and if so, will
you be passing through Washington?’ After a
good laugh, I explained that my gigs would probably be around the Midwest to start, but with
a significant travel budget, I might change my
mind. She came through. I painted 24 canvases
in 24 hours in Chewelah, Washington, and I will
be doing another set of paintings in Carthage,
Missouri, in the fall of 2014.”
The author thanks John Pototschnik for his interview with John P. Lasater IV published in his blog:
http://www.pototschnik.com/blog/.
M. STEPHEN DOHERTY is editor-in-chief of PleinAir magazine.
See more of John Lasater’s paintings
in the expanded digital edition of
PleinAir.
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