VT Plein Air Festival
This is a follow-up to Cheryl’s earlier blog where she talked about our weekend in VT when I participated in a Plein air painting festival. If you missed her blog, you can see her post on this website.
For my birthday present this year, Cheryl planned a 4 day weekend in early August to Warren, VT where I would participate in a Plein Air Festival in the Mad River Valley in Waitsfield, VT. Plein Air is the French term for painting in the outdoors. The subject of this year’s festival was “Barns and Covered Bridges.” We were provided with a map of the possible painting locations so we decided to check out some of them right away in order to be able to start painting first thing the next morning. It had rained almost every day in July in this part of VT and the weather forecast for the weekend wasn’t very promising so we weren’t very optimistic about painting outdoors. However, next morning we drove to a beautiful farm near the top of a mountain. The farm looked out over the Green Mountains and into the mountains in New York State. The view was spectacular. I set up with a view of a beautiful red barn with fields of goldenrod and Joe Pye Weed in the distance. To top off this beautiful view, the dark, cloudy sky was beginning to show spots of blue so we were lucky that the day was clearing.
Day 1 Mountainview Farm
Day 2 Warren Covered Bridge
Cheryl spotted this covered bridge while doing her early morning birding. Fortunately, the bridge was 5 minutes from our Inn so if rain was to be part of our day, we would be able to get inside quickly. The bridge is in use and I while I was painting, I had cars honking, walkers stopping and bicyclists waving as they went by. The day turned out to be sunny and while I didn't complete the painting, I did enough of it to finish at home in my studio.
Old Farm in Warren
My last day of painting was a Sunday and I decided to paint an old barn next to a cemetery. I figured I wouldn’t have many people to talk to during my painting session. The morning was mostly cloudy but little slivers of blue would appear periodically. This was not a working farm. The barn was ramshackle but the weeds and wildflowers that were growing up around the property were beautiful. II set up from the cemetery with a clear view of the barn and a mountain in the distance. After about 3 hours, the sky turned dark and raindrops began to fall. I had to decide whether to continue painting or give up. the rain began to fall harder and I decided to call it a day. We quickly packed up everything and by the time we got everything in the car, the rain was coming down in buckets. but I had a great weekend and look forward to another Plein air opportunity next summer.