Red Chair Gallery Presents Artist Sue Lyon-Manley

by JULIA KENNEDY COCHRAN — Red Chair Gallery

Renowned for its stunning landscapes, Central Oregon attracts many artists to live in the area. Their diverse portrayals of our mountains, streams and lakes create a vibrant local art scene. One of the most accomplished practitioners is Sue Lyon-Manley, whose work is showcased at Red Chair Gallery in May.

Plein air painting was popularized in the 19th century by French Impressionist artists including Monet, Renoir and Degas. Painting outdoors, they felt, allowed them to more accurately depict their subject in varying light and weather conditions. It does, however, require a locale with beautiful natural light and mostly good weather. Central Oregon scores high as one of those places.

Sue often paints with fellow members of Plein Air Painters of Oregon (PAPO), hiking to scenic viewpoints in the Cascades and along the Deschutes River. The group schedules weekly “paint-outs”, meeting spring through fall. Even after being a PAPO member for 15 years, she says, “It’s a nice network of artists to work with, and they still find places to paint that I’ve never been to.” Many wellknown local artists are PAPO members and sell their work in local art galleries. slmanleyfineart@gmail.com • redchairgallerybend.com

Working outdoors requires the artist to deal with variable conditions, such as wind, bugs, and changing light. Before applying paint, Sue does a small composition and value sketches to take advantage of the small window of time available to paint in optimal light conditions. Smaller works are usually finished in the field, then brought back to her studio as studies for larger pieces, or remain as a finished plein air painting.

For years, Sue has been well-known for her pastel depictions of local vistas. Lately, however, she has switched to oil and acrylic, entailing new learning processes and challenges. During the long, off-season months of the pandemic, Lyon-Manley found she wasn’t comfortable working with her soft pastels in her studio for extended periods of time. She had painted with oils growing up and in college, and decided to challenge herself to work with them again, especially when painting en plein air.

When an artist changes medium, some adjustments invariably must be made. Now oil paints come in different types and textures, including odorless oils and water-based oils, with accompanying mediums. Modern acrylics include ‘high flow’, liquid and even ‘open’ acrylics that dry slower than traditional heavy body acrylic paint does. “You have to spend some time with each medium, whether in the field or studio, learning it’s particular attributes before you can successfully apply them to your particular painting style,” she explains. Now her goal is to paint with oils or acrylics outdoors on small canvases in an impressionistic mode, then if it seems the piece ‘calls for it’, translating it into larger, paintings with more abstraction.

As our local weather warms, Sue is looking forward to another season of plein air painting in beautiful Central Oregon.