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Jared Slack doesn’t usually do portraits. The 50-year-old painter and art teacher works primarily on landscapes — scenes from campgrounds that his family has visited in their Airstream. But on this crisp morning at campsite No. 10 in Dan Nicholas Park Campground in Rowan County, that’s what Jared is painting. In situ, no less.

He peeks around the edge of his easel, lifts his brush to the canvas, and adds a dab of cerulean blue, a whisper of titanium white. The sky begins to take shape above the subject of his latest composition: the Slacks’ gleaming silver Flying Cloud Airstream.

Jared Slack photograph by Peter Colin Murray

As far as art models go, she’s a beaut. She’s less camper and more a mirror on wheels that reflects everything around her — the puffy clouds drifting overhead, light dappling through leafy tree branches, the artist at work — all in a bent, fun-house-mirror kind of way.

This isn’t this Flying Cloud’s first visit to Dan Nicholas Park. In 2023, on one of the family’s first trips with the Airstream, a tree introduced itself to the trailer. The skin wasn’t punctured, but the impact bent and creased enough metal to run up a $25,000 repair bill. Still, the Slacks camped that summer, dents and all.

But this year, she’s all cleaned up, and today, she’s ready for her close-up.

• • •

As Jared pushes a brush full of viridian Green oil paint across the canvas, it’s obvious that he is not going for a gauzy plein air or a photorealistic depiction of the campground.

“I want my paintings to look like they were painted,” he says. “I want you to be able to see the marks and enjoy the marks.”

Jared’s landscapes, like this pasture scene in Asheboro, favor suggestion over precision. — light, color, and movement working together to capture a place rather than define it. painting by Jared Slack

Jared calls himself “kind of a fast, messy painter.” But to be clear, his fast is not hurried, and his messy is not sloppy. “I like to find the beauty in every day,” he says.

In previous landscapes, black-and-white cows delicately punctuate a pasture. Trees rise in rough masses of sap green, yellow, and orange. The Airstream wears a purple blush at twilight.

• • •

The instinct to carry art into ordinary places has shaped most of Jared’s life.

He’s been teaching art, in one form or another, for more than two decades. In Macon, Georgia, while teaching middle school, he met his wife, Lynley, who was finishing medical school. They married in 2009 and, two years later, found their way to Asheboro by way of Virginia, buying a house across from a Uwharrie National Forest trailhead.

“When I found out that I could live right across from the wilderness area, I was like, ‘OK, that’s great!’ ”

In his art, Slack uses light, color, and movement to capture a place rather than define it. painting by Jared Slack

These days, he paints, sells at art fairs across the state, spends his weekdays in a classroom with Randolph County elementary students, and leads art appreciation and education courses at the college level. And he travels — across the country and to all of North Carolina’s state parks, from Jockey’s Ridge to Mount Mitchell — finding beauty in tucked-away places with his family and Airstream in tow.

As with many artists, Jared is not the only painter in his family. His father, Tom, is also a creative and introduced him to the idea of painting in the outdoors.

“Growing up, we were poor, so if we ever did anything as a vacation, it was camping,” Jared says. “But it was just out in a tent. My dad and I would go a lot, and we’d go fish and would make fishing pictures together.”

For years, Tom pursued more “practical” career paths — sales and insurance — reluctant to risk becoming “a starving artist.” Eventually, he went back to school to study art around the same time Jared was earning his own degree.

From Soco Falls near Cherokee to Jockey’s Ridge, Slack captures North Carolina’s landscapes. painting by Jared Slack

“He was like, ‘Well, if I’m going to starve to death, I might as well be doing what I want,’ ” Jared says.

Turns out, his dad did not starve, and he’s still painting — mostly portraits — but he’s never owned an Airstream.

• • •

Further up the family tree, the Slacks’ daughters are finding their own ways to create.

Evie, 14, works in oils and is already capturing portraits of friends. Jacque, 11, fills a sketchbook with stylized figures and elaborate backstories. Maddie, 9, makes art out of whatever she can find, leaving behind a mess of materials in her wake.

The girls and Lynley also show up in Jared’s paintings — not posed but present. Part of the landscape. Sometimes they appear in a moment that almost slips by — three girls gathered at the edge of an overlook, looking out over a stretch of North Carolina. Or in a creek bed, where one child pauses mid-step while the others are focused on making their own small discoveries.

• • •

By late morning at the campground in Rowan County, the girls have scattered, and the light has shifted.

What began as a cool mix of cerulean blue and titanium white has warmed, just slightly. Jared adjusts — a touch more lemon yellow, maybe a hint of something softer to take the edge off the sky.

Later, back home in Asheboro, this moment might return as something else. The sky simplified. The colors pushed or pulled — sap green leaning into yellow, maybe a note of cadmium orange where the light breaks through.

On the canvas, the Airstream catches it all, reflecting a world that’s always changing — until what’s left is what Jared’s made of it: a painting.