Painting While Travelling: Charlie Easton on India, Plein Air & Seeing Differently

Making art somewhere unfamiliar can be incredibly transformative. The rhythms change. The senses sharpen. A sketchbook becomes more than a tool for recording, it becomes a way of paying attention. For artist Charlie Easton, travel and painting have become deeply intertwined, a way of slowing down, observing more fully, and responding to the world with openness rather than certainty.

Following a recent painting trip through India, and ahead of an upcoming move to Morocco, Charlie reflected with us on plein air painting, sensory overload, colour, community, and why sometimes the best place to begin painting is simply wherever you already are.

I visited India 20 years ago, just with my sketchbook and pens, and I found it so inspiring, but I needed paint! The colours of India are just so vivid, and the experiences so intense, that I’ve been looking for a reason to go back ever since. When the opportunity came up to go with a group of professional painters that I really admire, it was ideal.

Travelling anywhere as a painter forces you to slow down and to take in a scene fully, and in India, there’s always a lot to take in.

When you travel somewhere new, it breaks you out of your mould. You can’t rely on generalisations or previous successes. Here in BC, I have years of visual muscle memory, in India all of that was put to one side. Every doorway, every fabric, every shadow was something I had to look at with fresh eyes rather than recognise.

It’s exhausting in the best possible way. Your senses get cranked up to ten because you’re trying to absorb as much as you can. In fact, when I got back to Vancouver I had physical withdrawal symptoms from the constant stimulation and three weeks of hyper awareness!

A few days in, I caught myself fussing over a piece, trying to impose order on a street scene that had absolutely no interest in being orderly. I was trying to make everything perfect, especially in front of other artists I really admire, and it wasn’t working.

I had this little internal conversation: “this isn’t you Charlie, be more intuitive and just let it rip”, and from that point the work loosened up. I became more open and less technical and more responsive. The brushwork got freer, the decisions got faster, and I stopped fighting the chaos and started using it.

The paintings from the back half of the trip feel more honest because of it.

What I love about plein air painting is that if you approach it with the right spirit, being open, channelling what you are feeling in the moment onto canvas, then your sketches become undeniable. By that I mean the painting carries evidence of a real experience, the weather, the interruptions, the energy of the place, your own mood in that moment.

People may or may not like the final painting, but they can usually sense when it came from somewhere genuine.

So whether the light is moving, the weather is changing, or there’s 30 people gathered around asking what you’re doing, you have to be purely present and let all of it get into your process. You have to stay positive, open, and process oriented rather than product oriented.

It sounds hippy dippy, but when I’m in that state of flow it’s the purest feeling I know.

Plein air painting also teaches a bit of humility. You fail often, but importantly, you also fail fast, so you can take the learnings and move on. I know for a fact the more I paint outside, the better I get at it. It may sound obvious, but it bears remembering for all the newbies. Stick with it, and you’ll get better.

There were two kinds of painting experience, times when I was compelled to paint, and other times when I just set up my easel next to a fellow painter and found something cool to paint. Both are valid. One is an exercise in responding to a physical or emotional reaction to a place, the other is an exercise in stopping and deeply observing.

In India there’s so much sensory bombardment that sometimes it was difficult to choose just one thing. I found myself drawn over and over to doorways and archways, those transitional spaces full of intention and detail.

Architecturally they’re beautiful, but they’re also emotional cues. Are they open to you? Closed up? What’s behind the door? They became a way of holding a manageable slice of India in a single frame while the rest of the chaos hummed around the edges.

The festival of Holi definitely did. It’s the festival of Spring and an intense celebration of colour. Twelve painters who all, by their nature, love colour, completely covered in pure, unapologetic saturation. No subtlety, 100% saturation, pigment everywhere.

I did some paintings during the celebration that were pretty intense as a result!

And in terms of the light, Indian architecture has this extraordinary sensitivity to it, the way passages channel light and present it in unexpected ways. We noticed in one building how they painted the underside of the archways a slightly warmer colour than the walls, making the room feel full of reflected light.

The reflected light in India was unbelievable, colours bouncing everywhere, and I’m finding I’m looking for it more back home here in BC. It may not be as intense, but it’s there, and it really helps paintings come alive.

India was a human experience. BC, for me, is a natural one.

In India I was floored by the layers of history, culture, and centuries of human opportunism that have created a visual tableau that is truly mind boggling.

In BC, especially out on the coast or up in the alpine, I can paint for hours without seeing another person and see a hundred jaw dropping views that fill me with awe and a sense of purity. Massive skies, glaciated peaks, lush greens.

India was urgent, intimate, and sensorily overwhelming. BC in summer is immense, dramatic, and freeing. I’m lucky to experience both.

If you followed my trip on Instagram you may have noticed that I pretty much wore two outfits the whole trip! It wasn’t a fashion parade, it was a work trip.

I made sure I had as many art supplies as I could fit into my small duffel. It’s actually much more challenging to pack for winter painting trips when you’ve got to take loads of layers and prepare for every kind of weather. India was always going to be hot, so clothes were at a minimum.

I actually used water mixable oils on this trip. I also took pens, sketchbooks, and a gouache set. Acrylics would just dry too quickly in the desert of Rajasthan.

I liked not having to worry about solvents with the water mixable oils, and they worked really well. I also painted on pads of oil paper and managed to do around 40 oil paintings without the results taking up my whole luggage allowance.

The pages dried within a couple of days in the Indian heat, so I came back with a stack of paper paintings that didn’t take up too much space.

My U.Go easel on a carbon fibre tripod earned its keep too. Solid, well made gear lasts, and you don’t want things breaking down in the middle of a once in a lifetime trip.

Arteva is still in its infancy and we’re trying to work out exactly what it will be, but I’m super excited about its potential. The artists we have in our group are awesome, some really incredible painters and lovely human beings.

We’ll be travelling more together, teaching workshops together, and probably exploring other digital forms of learning so anyone can be part of the conversation and spirit.

Travelling with other artists to paint is such a great way to see new places. I make a point of looking at other people’s work while they’re still mid decision, you learn so much from watching how someone else solves a problem in real time.

Asking those painters for advice, and getting it freely, has made me a better painter.

Oh, do it.

A sketchbook isn’t there to produce masterpieces, it’s there to help you experience your world differently, more intentionally. You notice more, you slow down, you challenge a different part of your brain, and you create an artifact that becomes deeply memorable.

I have sketchbooks from when I was 18 travelling around France. The drawings aren’t great, but I absolutely cherish them, and they help me remember those places so much more vividly.

Sketching in any medium is so positive for your mental health too. I could go on forever about the joys of creating outside.

Absolutely, doodle, sketch, paint whatever, wherever, whenever.

I was out the other day with a friend and we nerded out painting an Airstream trailer parked on my street. Last night I painted my recycling bins in the evening light because they seemed to glow. There’s interest and intrigue everywhere.

The world is incredibly generous to anyone who slows down enough to look at it.

If I can give a few words of advice to people who like the idea of sketching or painting on site more, remove the barriers to actually doing it. Have your gear ready to go, have no expectations of quality, focus on the process, and commit to doing it regularly.

Because as I said above, the more you do it, the better you get, and the more you fall in love with it.