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| My winning painting: Incoming Weather, 9x12 oil - SOLD |
What better way to start a plein air festival than to win an award? Yesterday, on the first day of painting at the Sedona Plein Air Festival, I won the Gamblin Main Street Paint-Out Award. But let me back up a bit.
When I drove to the Sedona Arts Center in the morning for orientation, I could see it was already raining along the Mogollon Rim, just north of town. This didn't bode well, as we had to lug in canvases for stamping and paintings to hang for the start of the show—not to mention the Main Street outdoor painting event! The prediction was for 70% rain, most of which was due in the afternoon. It didn't rain in the morning, and by the time the paint-out started, the sky looked reasonably clear, save for a few puffy clouds.
While painting, I rarely pay attention to anything but what is directly in front of me. The sunlight may come and go, but I roll with the punches and stick with my original concept. So, except for a few people stopping me to chat about the Festival, I was unaware of my surroundings. Imagine my surprise when the first drops fell. This was followed immediately by a downpour.
Fortunately, I was putting the finishing strokes on the painting, and I had my umbrella up. I slid all my gear under the (rather slim) rain shadow cast by the umbrella. In five minutes, the rain ended, but it left my backpack and paper towel rolls soaked. Winning the award made up for all of this.
I'll be posting more as the week rolls by. You can see the full schedule of events for the Sedona Plein Air Festival at
www.sedonapleinairfestival.org, and you can follow each day on the Facebook page,
https://www.facebook.com/SedonaPleinAirFestival. In the meantime, here are some photos from yesterday.
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My "wall." This is work done previously that we are allowed to hang until we start to create new plein air paintings.
The bit of blue tape to the right demarcates my six-foot swath of wall. |
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| Morning hanging of work. |
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| My good friend, Betty Carr. There are 14 landscape artists participating this year. |
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| Paintings painting, tourists chatting. |
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| At the Main Street Paintout awards ceremony and sale. |
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| Opening reception. This is just the landscape portion of the event. In the room to the right behind the black curtain are the figure painteres and their reception. They are having a "Speakeasy Salon" theme through Wednesday. |
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| It's not Sedona unless you have a pretty sunset view of Camelback (and Snoopy, cropped off at the right.) |
