Home Sweet Home (Summer Part One)

Our Utah trip was wonderful. It was sad to leave loved ones and the constant party, but we are happy to be home. We had so much fun, the entire month! So much fun, in fact, that I will have to break up my report into a series of posts. I'll start way back at the beginning (June seems so long ago) with the Thanksgiving Point Plein Air Painting Festival. My sister, Cass, put together a youtube video to chronicle the event. I never know what to say when she is filming, so I just make goofy faces. I'm a dork. Enjoy, it's a lovely film.

Longest day of the year, indeed

Well, we painted plein air.

We painted the exquisite water lilies on Friday, serenaded by bullfrogs and giant jumping fish.
On Saturday we worked in a grove of shady trees, avoided the worst of the heat, and got to enjoy dad's interactions with his fans.You have good days, you have off days. For me, I'll just say, you can't win them all. We sure had a lot of fun though.

Whoa Daddy

And so the adventure begins. Tomorrow is the first day of the Thanksgiving Point Plein Air Painting Festival. We call it an adventure to cover our inadequacies when we are faced with painting landscapes, from life, in two days... to display for our peers and potential buyers. In order to do all we can to be prepared, this afternoon we drove around the gardens for an hour in a golf cart, scoping out paintable vistas and vignettes. Though we had a lot of fun hanging off the back of the cart with my dad at the wheel... we came up with nothing. No idea what or where we are going to paint. I'm not nervous yet, but I am getting there. We also try to cover our shortcoming with humor, so you can expect something off the wall and out of the plein air norm. Here's to hoping we come up with something brilliant.