Ryan Gonzalez, Church California Co-founder
Painting in the Open Air
"Plein air", French for "open air", is the practice of painting an outdoor scene directly from real life. To go outside and paint in natural light, real weather, with the sun actually moving across the sky while you work - it demands a certain urgency that studio painting doesn't.
Traditionally painted with oils, plein air pieces tend to have a looseness about them - visible brushstrokes, soft edges - but it's the color that is perhaps the truest signature: shades that exist only in that light, at that hour, on that day. Artists like Claude Monet built entire bodies of work around painting the same scenes over and over, trying to catch the light at a specific moment before it was gone. Today, as most of us spend the majority of our waking hours indoors and on screens, there's something quietly radical about a practice that demands your full attention and presence in the outside world, with nothing between you and it.
Meeting Bodhi
We connected with Bodhi Hope the way most good things happen - organically. He paints regularly in West Marin, out along the Point Reyes coastline, which happens to be the same stretch of land where several of our botanical ingredients are sourced.
Bodhi is a young artist who has quietly built a life that most people only imagine: earning a living doing work he loves, outside, on his own terms, connected to the land in a way that is increasingly rare. He grew up in the North Bay and now lives in Petaluma, right at the Marin-Sonoma county line. He paints almost every day. When he's not painting, he's hiking, or on the beach.
"The way the water meets the land, the way things collide in this region... there's nothing like it. I think anyone who lives here can attest to that." - Bodhi Hope
His philosophy around materials — in his art and in his life — runs along the same lines: as close to the source as possible. He uses oil paints made by a small company in Northern California called Natural Pigments, working from archival formulas that are hundreds of years old — earth pigments, linseed oil pressed from flax. The same materials that Plein air artists would have used a century ago. "The tools I use and the traditions I use to get to the end product are just as important to me as the end product," he says. "And the same goes for my health — getting things from as close to the source as possible. Wildcrafted, local. It's a way of life."
On location: Point Reyes Lighthouse
In late October we were out at Point Reyes with photographer Allen Danze, gathering content for our skincare collection. We asked Bodhi to come along so we could document him doing his thing. We got to the Point Reyes Lighthouse a couple of hours before the golden hour. Bodhi set up on the bluff just above South Beach overlook, took his shoes off, and got to work.
Allen moved around him quietly with the camera, gathering shots on film. As Bodhi went about his work, he said, "Painting is almost like making music out of what I see instead of what I hear. It kind of unfolds in front of me — I'm actively listening to what I see."
He's notably unhurried while he paints. He looks for a long time before he makes a mark. When we asked him about that, he said painting is really just his excuse: "I can look at these scenes forever. Painting and observing them deeply is an excuse to look at something beautiful for a long period of time."
A day with Daniel
A few weeks later, Bodhi drove out to Chimney Rock (also on Point Reyes), with Daniel, Church California's co-founder and head of all things art and creative ( Daniel is also a painter). They worked side by side on the bluff above Drake's Bay.
Bodhi usually works solo. Solitude deepens the observation; there's a quality of attention that comes easier when you're alone in a landscape. But that morning was different."We set up and had a beautiful time together", Bodhi said, "It was a pristine day. And sharing that kind of time with another deep thinker — it's enlivening in a different way."
At some point during the session, Daniel ended up in Bodhi's painting. It's something Bodhi does often — places a small figure in the landscape, a person out in the world doing their thing. Livestock in a country scene. Someone walking their dog by the river. This time, a friend painting the same scene, a hundred feet away on a coastal bluff. "It's a way to bring in the humanity," he says. "I love the stillness of nature and I love seeing people enjoying it. Maybe it's kind of creepy — they don't even know I'm watching them, when in fact I'm placing them in my paintings. I just love it."
The connection to Church California
Bodhi and I were talking about what connects his practice to what we do at Church California — the shared instinct toward real ingredients, toward things that are wildcrafted and local and made with care. He put it simply:
"What you do is so similar to what I do. These products feel real. They feel different. We're both creating things that bring nature back into people's lives. That's why we do what we do with love and care — we see and feel the importance of it.”
That's it, really. Not a philosophy so much as an orientation — a choice, made daily, to stay close to the source. For Bodhi it looks like driving out to Point Reyes with a bag of earth pigments and standing barefoot on a bluff until the light is right. For us it looks like the plants we source from the same coastline he paints. The through line is the same.
What's strange is that in 2025, this is somehow a niche position. Bodhi noticed it too. "When the most important things becomes niche," he said, "how did that happen?" It's a fair question. Being outside. Using real ingredients. Paying attention to what the world is actually made of. These aren't radical ideas. What Bodhi does with a canvas and what we do with a formula are both, in their own way, an argument for getting back to something obvious.
Spring is coming. Bodhi is outside. And so are we.
Bodhi Hope is a plein air painter based in Petaluma, California. Find his work at bodhihope.com and on Instagram at @bodhi.hope. Photography by Allen Danze, shot on film at Point Reyes National Seashore.
