Sedona Plein Air Festival Wrap-up
I won an award!
I’ve been an invited artist at the Sedona Plein Air Festival ten times now, and yes, I’ve seen many changes over the years. At last week’s event, I suddenly realized that nine years had passed since the last time I painted in it, in 2016! Gone were many of the faces I knew among the staff and invited painters, all of whom, I hope, have moved on to greener pastures. Despite that, I found all the new folk just as friendly and eager to help, and I enjoyed making some new friends.
The weather for the week was fabulous—not too warm, not too cool, and sunny with the occasional grouping of clouds. We had some brief showers one morning, but I was able to paint in between them, and in the desert Southwest, clouds are always welcome in what can be an uninteresting empty blue sky. Sedona in late October can have a mix of weather, and we were very fortunate; I remember one year I painted in a snow squall up in Jerome, and another year, Hurricane Bob wheeled through.
I was hosted a few miles out of town, near the end of Verde Valley School Road, a new place for me as far as the festival goes. It gave me an opportunity to paint in some locations I hadn’t painted in before. New prospects always help the energy level, and I was glad to be there. For my paintings, I tried to focus not so much on red rocks—my experience and that of other local artists is that red rock paintings, surprisingly, don’t sell very well at the festival—and more on other subjects, like water and trees.
Besides painting on our own, we had two group paintouts, one at the Dancing Apache Ranch, a vineyard and winery in Page Springs, and the other at a private home in the Aerie development just west of town. The winery featured a large pond, a willow tree with long, draping limbs, plus goats and sheep and, of course, the vineyard. I was a little surprised that only I and one other of the 22 artists opted to paint the vineyard; it seems that when you’re presented with a vineyard, that’s what you paint. I ended up selling that painting and winning an Honorable Mention for it. The Aerie development, an expensive gated community with fantastic views of Doe Mesa, the Coxcomb formation and the full range of peaks north of Sedona, was all about painting the red rocks at sunset. I chose to paint one end of Doe Mesa, and that painting also sold. At each of these paintouts, there was plenty of food and drink and patrons milling about vying for paintings. For me, it was a bit of a drive to get home in the dark, but having sold both paintings—plus won a ribbon—made the drive worth it.
(By the way, I will say here that receiving an award from your peers—the judge who awarded me my ribbon was noted Grand Canyon artist Bruce Aiken—is a weightier validation than receiving one from a non-artist who doesn’t necessarily know the struggle that one goes through to create a winning work. Once, I was also awarded a ribbon by highly-respected artist Jim McVicker, and I was particularly pleased by that, as well.)
