Even if you don’t subscribe, you have to read Robert Genn’s newsletter today. Dry plot summary: He is painting plein aire in a town plaza somewhere in Mexico. He describes the scene around him, a conversation with a passerby, the sounds of mundane daily life.
Yet because of his practiced eye and cultivated voice, he makes this experience completely come alive with gorgeous sentences: “A two-litre bottle of Fresca came by with a four-year-old girl attached.” Isn’t that so much more evocative than an ordinary description of a little girl drinking a big soda?
Read. Observe your surroundings today. Then plan how you can translate that experience into your art — in words or in images — and go make something beautiful from something utterly ordinary.
