Walton Ford is a well known American contemporary artist based in New York. His large scale watercolor and gouache paintings take inspiration from the intricately detailed paintings by 19th century naturalists like John James Audubon.

Walton takes that genre’s conventions as a launching point for his excursions into oblique cultural and historic commentary on colonialism, industrialization and political aspects of the human condition.

Ford also changes the context of his subject by painting them at a dramatically larger scale, as well as including references to odd historical and pop cultural incidents and figures. You can get an idea of the scale of some of his work in the view of his painting “I don’t like to look at him, Jack” in his studio (images above, bottom two).

Ford also works in multi-plate etching as well as painting. These is a collection of his work, Pancha Tantra, published by Taschen.

His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Walton Ford: Watercolors is an exhibition now on display at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York that runs to June 21, 2014.

As far as I know, Ford does not have a dedicated web presence.

Northern California artist Kathleen Dunphy works both in the studio and on location, but even her studio landscapes have the kind of fresh immediacy often associated with painting on location.

In her pursuit of the character of light evocative of particular times of day, seasons and weather conditions, she employs a crisp, direct and painterly approach. I particularly enjoy her sensitivity to muted value contrasts in scenes of mist, fog and overcast daylight.

Dunphy studied at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, where her instructors included Craig Nelson and Brian Blood, and has studied more informally with painters like Kevin MacPherson, Dan Gerhartz, Scott Christensen and T. Allen Lawson.

On her website you will find examples of her studio and location painting, as well as a selection of still life. Dunphy teaches plein air workshops both in California and out of state.

There is a podcast interview with Dunphy on Artists Helping Artists, a YouTube video with a brief bit of discussion about her plein air process, and a bit more detail on Dunphy’s blog.