Return Often

The more I paint, the more I realize that it’s just not that important to always find a new place.

This group of paintings and sketches are all from locations at Rail Gap Pocono Creek Nature Preserve in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania where we live.

Fortunately, we have a lot of interesting locations and subjects in our area to return to and paint frequently. I could have easily offered images from different times, seasons and vantage points of the Delaware River, the Water Gap, Blue Mountain Lake, Broadhead Creek, Deer Head Inn, several waterfalls in the area and many other locations.

Dreams of adventures to far away, exotic locations do surface from time to time but it is the familiar local spots that bring the greatest access to growth as a painter.

Returning to familiar spots deepens your observational skills and allows you to see changing light, seasons, and moods. This gives us all we need to be prepared for those rarer opportunities to access remote locations.

James Guerney mentions in his book “Color and Light that the idea of multiple studies in the same subject goes back to at least to Pierre Veliciennes in 1785. This predated Monet’s Water Lilies or Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire, by a quite a long way…

Great painters from the past often made a series from the same location—each visit revealing something new.

Painting the same place repeatedly is a powerful practice in plein air painting. Far from being repetitive, it deepens your understanding of light, form, and mood. Here are many of the key benefits—artistic, observational, and emotional:

Artistic Benefits

1. Improved Composition Skills

Returning to the same spot challenges you to find fresh angles, new crops, and stronger designs within familiar elements.

2. Mastery of Color & Light

You become more sensitive to subtle color shifts—how greens warm in the morning and cool in evening, or how haze softens distant hills.

3. Refinement of Technique

With repetition, you’re freer to experiment: palette knife one day, limited palette the next, or switching from oil to pastel.

4. Stronger Series Work

Consistency in location can anchor a cohesive body of work, perfect for exhibition or publication.

Observational Benefits

5. Understanding of Seasonal Changes

You begin to notice how the landscape changes through the year: blooming wildflowers, shifting leaf color, snow shapes, or how shadows fall longer in autumn.

6. Heightened Weather Sensitivity

Painting the same view in sun, fog, rain, and snow teaches you how atmosphere affects mood, values, and contrast.

7. Memory Training

You start remembering the place in detail, allowing you to simplify, edit, or invent from memory more confidently.

8. Familiarity Breeds Depth

With time, you stop painting just what’s there and start painting what the place feels like. This comes in part due to the heightened sensitivity we gain in our understanding of subtle relationships between different aspects of a scene, not only in comparison to itself overtime, but also other subjects we may paint when exploring new scenes. This gives your work poetic depth.

Emotional & Psychological Benefits

9. Sense of Place and Belonging

Revisiting one location builds a relationship with it. It stops being “a view” and becomes a friend—a part of your painting life.

10. Creative Anchoring

On days when you feel uninspired, a familiar location removes decision fatigue and lets you simply begin.

11. Meditative Focus

The predictability of place can free your mind and settle your attention, making your practice feel grounding and peaceful.

12. Growth Tracking

Your older paintings become benchmarks. When you return, you can see how your eye and hand have evolved.

Summary: Why Repetition May Lead to Revelation

In plein air painting, repeating a subject doesn’t diminish creativity—it amplifies it. As Monet did with his haystacks and cathedral, or as Andrew Wyeth did with the landscapes near Chadds Ford, artists often find their deepest voice by returning again and again.