BY KAREN BOSSICK

John Horejs held forth his paintbrush, which he’d just dabbed in blue paint, and invited me to try dabbing it on the side of an aspen tree in the painting he was working on.

“Feel the brush. Be part of the experience,” he said. “Most people are frightened to try it. But a lot have gotten started painting that way.”

 Horejs, a longtime resident of Burley, has been painting in Kneeland Gallery’s annual plein Air Exhibition for 30 years. He and nine other artists painted at the Sawtooth Botanical Garden and Trail Creek Cabin this week. They show their works during tonight’s Gallery Walk from 5 to 7 p.m. at Kneeland Gallery.

And Horejs will also offer a free painting demonstration in the courtyard of Kneeland Gallery, 271 N. 1^st Ave, Ketchum, at 2:30 today.

The smell of fresh oil paints mixed with the pungent smell of nearby sagebrush as Horejs painted a wooded scene near Trail Creek Cabin Thursday afternoon. Even though he’s painted in the area many times, he’s never had trouble finding a fresh scene, a fresh angle, to paint.

And, always, the weather adds its two cents worth—something you have to expect if you’re a plen air artist.

On Thursday he had to deal with a brief shower. Then his wife Elaine had to jump in and hold the umbrella shading his work as a breeze came up, rifling through the rabbit brush.

“I’ve got my Mary Poppins hat on,” she said.

One of Horejs’ favorite parts of the plein air exhibitions is talking with those who come to watch the artists at work.

“Most people ask about colors. Why do I have a red undercoat, for instance? Take a look at my painting—the primary color here is green. What’s the complement to green? Red. Red keeps the colors under control, it makes them more interesting. In a few places the red shines through and it makes it warm,” he said.

Cindy Shearstone, who recently moved to Hailey, shared how one of the other artists had told her forefront of paintings should feature bolder colors with the colors softening in the background.

“That’s right!” said Horejs.

Shearstone shared how she was starting to paint watercolor and how she’d just taken a pocket sketching class.

“It was fun because the instructor gave us just 25 minutes to do it in,” she said.

Horejs shared how he uses just seven colors plus white.

“If I had 20 colors and seven brushes, I’d get confused,” he quipped.

He pointed to the button box he uses for painting on site.

“My sister’s a seamstress and she had a button box and I thought: Perfect for my paints!”

Shearstone watched a few minutes more, then reluctantly pulled herself away.

“I love watching these painters at work,” she said. “It’s amazing how they bring what they see to life. The depth that comes out, the colors… They make it real.”

OTHER GALLERY WALK HIGHLIGHTS:

• FRIESEN GALLERY, 320 N. 1^st Ave. N., is featuring the work of Dana Lynn Louis, who will be present for gallery walk.

  Her latest work is inspired by the systems of the body, the natural and constructed work and their interconnections.

  Also on view: Works by Hunt Rettig, who creates 3D creations from molded and shaped polyester on acrylic substrate that produce the illusion of 2D, backlit, digital compositions.

• GAIL SEVERN GALLERY, 400 1sst Ave. N., is showing oil paintings by Kathy Moss, who creates gesso and paint bodies from Renaissance recipes. She uses botanicals as archetypes in her work, which suggest flowers.

  The Gallery has also continued a major exhibition featuring internationally renowned sculptor Jun Kaneko’s glazed and Raku fired ceramic sculptures, including his famous Dangos, Heads and Wall Pieces.

  And it’s featuring works by Julie Speidel, who is influenced by the early earthworks of the stone age and antiquity to the indigenous tribes of her native Pacific Northwest and 20^th century modernism.

• GILMAN CONTEMPORARY, 661 Sun Valley Road, is featuring Greg Miller’s Neo Pop art and the abstract geometric paintings of Alex Couwenberg.

Miller’s visual memory was formed by the billboards, advertisements and pulp fiction covers that saturated popular culture in the California of the 1950s and 1960s. He draws on the graphics of the landscape of his youth to create contemporary works of Americana.

Couwenberg’s abstract paintings balance hard-edge abstraction with lush thick brushstrokes. He, too was influenced by the artistic, environmental and social influences of his native southern California.