PaintOut
Time, Place and Purpose: the Oregon Coast PaintOut and Workshop - Erik Sandgren
The Sandgren PaintOut is an outdoor gathering of painters. We have met on the Oregon Coast each summer since 1978. It has evolved into two segments: the Workshop and the PaintOut. Together, they embody a generational thru-line of camaraderie and critique.
The Workshop comprises three days of paid instruction, demonstration and critique. Class size is limited. Participants work in their preferred medium. The focus of the outdoor workshop is observation, drawing, composition and discussion of skills and strategies applicable to any medium. Participants make real efforts to interpret the painting problems on offer. Shared assignments are the focus of critique. A rough and ready approach to painterly handling is encouraged while no single style of representation, stylization, media or technique is privileged.
The PaintOut is open to everyone. No advance registration or payment is required. Serious painters of all levels of experience are welcome. Typically, the group of twenty to thirty painters are spread out over the location to paint. We gather in the afternoon to review work done that day. The PaintOut reviews are absent the specific focus that characterizes critique in the Workshop format.
Workshop and PaintOut painters gather rain or shine, at the sites posted on the daily schedule and itinerary. Painters may stick around to work on into the evening light. The event is known by word of mouth and personal invitation. It is endlessly inspiring to see other painters handling the same challenges.
For me, the PaintOut continues to be a good way to observe how other painters choose their gear and develop their motifs. I support freedom of approach while minimizing external pressures to perform. I look forward to seeing expressive differences amongst painters while attempting my own ever-more direct and painterly responses to nature. In the context of these deeply familiar places, my whole effort is to keep the work alive and evolving and to help others do the same. My personal objective is to encourage authenticity, connection and immediacy.
Erik Sandgren
Erik at Seal Rock 2015
Afternoon Review and Critique at Seal Rock
Nelson Sandgren 2005
Critique and Review at Bandon 2019
Doppelganger at Rocky Creek
PaintOut History
Origins - the Sandgren Oregon Coast PaintOut and Workshop
The PaintOut began in 1978 as a summer course in watercolor taught by Nelson Sandgren for Oregon State University. At its inception, June on the Oregon coast could be relied upon for rain. Nelson loved that environment and found the dampness conducive to his characteristically broad wet handling on a large scale of highly saturated watercolor pigments. When he retired from OSU in1986, friends and students prevailed upon him to continue the coast painting experience as a class. Under his own auspices the workshop format fostered a tradition of camaraderie, the stimulus of painting problems, mutual critique and encouragement. It evolved as a fee-based Workshop co-taught by Nelson and Erik. When Nelson retired in 2004 from formal obligation to teach, he bequeathed the event to Erik. Nelson last attended in the summer of 2006 just before his passing. Those who were there witnessed his focused on-site production of powerful compositions right up to the very end of his life.
Nelson concluded his annual “Dear Artist Friends” letter of 2004 with the following: “After over fifty years of both teaching and painting at the coast I feel that it’s time to pass along my enjoyable role. Erik...has much experience, enthusiasm and competency with outdoor painting; we’ve done a lot of it together through the years. You, he, and I will have much opportunity to extend our mutual observations and interactions as we enjoy our usual group get-together times. I thank you all for your long friendships and cooperative spirit, your love of painting. I’ll continue to be one with you. See you July- at Newport! With Appreciation, Nelson Sandgren”
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Erik and Nelson at Bandon Cliffs 1999 photo Kathryn Cotnoir
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Erik and Nelson photo Yolanda Rementeria Valdes