72 Artists Magazine May 2019
M
arcia Burtt creates
bold contemporary
landscapes in the
plein air tradition, approaching her
subject with a sense of adventure and
discovery. As she describes her pro-
cess, her voice conveys a thrill-seeking
kind of energy—an energy that allows
her to capture the fleeting, breath-
taking moments that occur where
light, land and water meet along the
Pacific coast of California.
Burtt is intrepid, trekking at any
time of day, in all seasons, with her
easel and paints to the numerous
beaches, coves and islands that can
be found a short distance from her
central California home. “I live on a
ranch, so there’s not much water
directly around me,” she says, “but
painting water is my favorite activity.”PAINTING WATER
IN MOTION
As long as she’s been an artist,
Burtt has worked directly from life.
Her early exposure to art was as a
teenager at the Otis School, in LosAngeles, where she attended figure
drawing classes. Her life drawing
experience honed her approach to
painting, grounding it in astute
observation and fast, decisive
mark-making.
Burtt’s initial training also taught
her to render quickly, so she’s often
able to complete a plein air painting
in an afternoon. At other times, she’ll
return to the same site, at the same
hour, day after day, until she gets apainting just right. In Littoral Drift
(pages 70–71), Burtt’s practice with
gesture drawings from figure studies
informs the way she paints water
in motion.
Burtt describes painting the ocean
and its waves as the challenge to paint
movement, trying to capture one
wave in a second or two and then
waiting for the next wave to come in
to reclaim or revise that impression
on canvas. “You don’t realize howEnd of Day, Forney’s Cove
acrylic on linen panel, 10x18Marcia Burtt
captures the
movment of the
waves from her
spot on the beach.