MBU’s art gallery is now featuring work from local plein air artist, Shawn Cornell. The artist creates all of his work 100 percent on location with no touch-ups after completion. Plein air painting is about the interaction of the artist and their surroundings during the real moments which they are happening.

“For me, painting ‘en plein air’ is more than just creating two dimensional representations,” Cornell said. “It’s my wife’s companionship as she illuminates the canvas with a flashlight so I can paint the full moon. It’s my dad and me sharing a thermos of hot cheesy tomato soup while we paint a frozen, snow covered stream. It’s spending time to see the extraordinary in things many would call ordinary. It’s a brief moment of life, captured on canvas.”

Most paintings are created in a studio – produced in a controlled environment, under little time restraints, in privacy and isolated from public view until their completion. Painting outdoors “en plain air” provides little to none of these properties. In addition, he uses oil and limits his color palette to five colors.

The paintings in the MBU gallery are from his exhibition, “Missouri Prairies,” which contain 125 works revealing prairies from around the state in the different seasons. The collection was recently located at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum in Saint Joseph, Mo.