In the Open Air

California artist Brian Blood delights in painting on location

Funny thing about people’s names. Some spend their lives living up to theirs, others spend their lives living them down. Painter Brian Blood, known for his plein-air evocations of Northern and Central California’s coastline vistas, came into the world with a vivid and memorable name. Likewise, his paintings convey presence and vigor. His lively, assertive brush strokes, coupled with a strongly assured color palette, not only suggest an artist whose work is timeless and redolent of the romance of old, unspoiled California but also one who is in sync with his contemporary world. There’s excitement in each one of Blood’s works, a palpable sense of triumph at having met the challenge of ever-changing outdoor conditions and having seized upon a perfect time and place.

Says the 43-year-old, “In my own way, I’m trying to be as truthful as I can with color, composition, and subject. I can’t entirely say I’m a representational painter. I’m technically an impressionist and I’d put my work under the umbrella of ‘California Impressionist,’ even though that’s a vague blanket. I call myself a plein-air painter. I’m not trying to achieve any political or social reform, but I’m trying to convey a sense of happiness, of completion for me. I love living in Monterey because there’s such a great history and subject matter I want to share with the rest of the world. So a lot of my work depicts everyday life and scenes that I’m exposed to. The Monterey Peninsula is inspiring, scenic, peaceful, accessible, and not overcrowded. We have miles and miles of coast where I can just ride along on my bike with my painting supplies, and go, ‘I think I’ll stop right here’ and paint the whole day.” 

Having amassed a number of awards—last year alone he received Best of Show at the San Luis Obispo Plein Air Festival, Artists’ Choice and People’s Choice at the Carmel Art Festival, and awards of excellence at both the Oil Painters of America national exhibition and the Salon International show at Greenhouse Gallery—Blood could well be judged to have attained an enviable place in his life and career. But a story he tells suggests anything but a sense of complacency: “I was in a reception line talking with this world-renowned, big-shot artist at an exhibition of his work, and he said, ‘I’ve painted everything I can paint,’ and, basically, ‘This is as good as it gets.’ Really struck by that, I said to myself, ‘You know, that seems like a really stupid thing to say. What’s the point, then? Why don’t you just get the gun out and blow your head off and end it?’ I’m never entirely satisfied with what I produce. I always think I’m only as good as my last job. And that’s a good line to hold true and close to you. Otherwise you get a mentality that you’re all big and hard about yourself. Get over it. Make it happen today. That’s what makes a successful artist stay fresh and move forward.”

Born in seaside Weymouth, MA, just outside of Boston, Blood grew up with his realtor father, homemaker mother, four sisters, and one brother on the Atlantic Ocean. Spending much of his time around the water and winters with his father painstakingly restoring old fishing boats, Blood, who describes his younger self as having been “rebellious and non-conforming,” says he always had artistic talent. He recalls, “Even as a kid I drew cartoon characters, imaginary creatures, and hockey and sports scenes featuring guys I idolized like Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Johnny Bucyk, and Carl Yasztremski. When people said, ‘What do you want to do for a career?’ I’d always say, ‘I’d like to be an artist,’ even though they’d look perplexed. My mother and father were supportive of whatever endeavors I pursued, which gave me confidence to pursue my art without any inhibitions or concerns about the pitfalls. They’d buy me supplies and encourage me to draw and paint.”

Girded by talent, parental support, and a business sense inculcated in him by his father, Blood graduated from high school and then spent three years at the 100-year-old Vesper George School of Art in Boston, which closed its doors not long after Blood received a degree in commercial art in 1982. He augmented his studies by attending the Museum School of Boston for two semesters and, during sum-mers, taking workshops, one of them held at the Art Institute of Boston. His training led to freelance graphic arts work, but it was on his painting treks with artist friends to such scenic seaside locales as Rockport, ME, and Cape Cod, MA, that Blood found more stimulation. He today describes those endeavors as “clumsy and comical compared to what I do now, but from that a seed that had been planted started to grow within me.” Usually, the ocean was part of it.

In the fall of 1984, a friend offered him a lucrative position at a California publishing company, so he relocated to the West Coast to design a national publication for teens. But several months of 16-hour shifts doing graphic arts proved unfulfilling. So he enrolled at San Francisco’s Academy of Art College, obtaining both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine art there. “That’s where all the training and academics really paid off and where they showed me the real way to paint. One of the teachers who influenced me was Craig Nelson, who is director of fine arts there now. I also was really influenced by studying early California Impressionist painters who did representational work, especially Edgar Payne, Xavier Martinez, and John Gamble, as well as some of the American impression-ists like Dennis Bunker, Willard Metcalf, Childe Hassam, and Frank Benson,” Blood says.

Before he had even graduated, Blood secured gallery representation, and now his path was clear: He would stay in California and stay the course of fine-art painting. Of his predilection for the plein-air discipline, he reasons, “Plein-air demands you to be very quick, spontaneous, and intuitive. You can’t muddle and fester over things or contemplate your significance in the scope of the world. You’re out there for a couple of hours doing a study, then you move on with another one. Meanwhile the light does change, and there are bugs, people, sirens, whatever. You have no control over anything except setting yourself up, looking at the composition, reacting to how it should be painted, going forward, and finishing it. Whatever nature throws at you, you get. That’s the excitement and the uncertainty.”

Both Blood and his wife, Laurie Kersey, are plein-air painters. The pair met at the Academy of Art College, where Blood now teaches. The couple’s Monterey home features separate studios at opposite ends of the dwelling. As Blood describes it, his studio is “about 150 square feet, a large bedroom in the back of the house with tall cathedral ceilings, well illuminated by large windows as well as with warm and cool lighting systems so that I can paint at night, too. There are big studio easels, shelves full of work, computers that I use for archives and all the creature comforts like a big sound system, TV, and DVD player, and guitars that I play. I collect and listen to a lot of live music, mostly classic rock like Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Dylan, Pink Floyd. There’s a lot to keep me occupied.”

Attending to creativity’s highs and lows is the main work here: “When I’m painting and it’s going well, it’s a very calm, peaceful, and satisfying kind of excitement I feel. Everything seems fluid and natural, like a Zen nothing-can-go-wrong-in-my-world kind of feeling. The decision process is precise and confident, almost like a chess game, with things falling into place. Your strategy is working, and you only need to make three or four moves to win,” Blood explains. “When your technique or brushwork isn’t working or your color mixing is sloppy, it’s like an internal war where you’re trying to get from point A to point B. That’s when you start swearing, stuff flies around the room, and all sorts of emotional baby fits take place. Sometimes that helps and sometimes it doesn’t. But you can always start over and try to avoid going down the same path.”

Although he enjoys an enthusiastic coterie of private and corporate collectors such as the Ritz-Carlton hotels, Blood admits he isn’t always ready to part with his paintings right away: “Sometimes when I finish a painting, I hang onto it for a while because there’s an energy that I can take from it, something that reminds me of the feeling I had when I painted it.” In the end, he explains, “I paint paintings for myself. I don’t paint them for other people. It’s a driving force within me that wants to just work and pick scenes. I see scenes, situations, lighting that attract me and pursue them. I just try to capture little snapshots for myself. And if others like it, well, that’s great. Good for them. But I do it for me first.” o

Stephen Rebello, who also has written for GQ, US, Premiere, and Cosmopolitan, has interviewed everyone from Chuck Yeager to Tom Cruise.

Blood is represented by K. Nathan Gallery, La Jolla, CA; The Garden Gallery, Half Moon Bay, CA; William Lester Gallery, Point Reyes Station, CA; Westbrook Galleries, Carmel, CA; ArtHaus, San Francisco, CA; and Greenhouse Gallery of Fine Art, San Antonio, TX.