Our Day at the World Wide Paint OUt

This is the 7th year of the World Wide Paint Out - a weekend during which painters 'round the world set up their easels out of doors to complete thousands of plein air paintings, under the umbrella of International Plein Air Painters .

This is the 2nd year the event was held locally at Salt Springs State Park. Despite the postponement of one day on account of rain and a decidedly gray & misty start to this one, ten painters appeared out of their cozy down comforters and Saturday morning chores & errands.

The real early birds started the day cooking pancakes over an open fire...they were hardly gourmet, but with real Pennsylvania maple syrup, charred butter & authentic smoke, they never tasted better. A carafe of decaf and some crisp local ginger gold apples completed our fuel. We were ready to paint and paint we did! I thought I was doing fine to complete a 12 x 12 pastel by lunchtime. Most of the watercolorists had done two paintings by that time ( I did hear a few dream requests for hairdryers to dry their soggy but beautifully saturated paintings...it was a very humid day.)

There were no scary wildlife sightings by the time I left the park around 2:30, but there were about a dozen watercolors, two oils, one acrylic, two wash & sharpie drawings and my one pastel. That's almost 20 new paintings!Trees & water featured big (Silver Creek & Fall Brook run right through the Park) , lovely Park architecture, some early turning autumn trees, pastures full of fall wildflowers, resident llamas, and more trees....(this is Pennsylvania, you know and the park is home to some huge first growth hemlocks, as well as sycamore, black cherry, maple, ash & more).

From top down (I hope) Joanne Benson, Jan Henning, Chris Lathrop & Barbara Kapalski show their UNFINISHED paintings and, in the center, the early birds, (Pam Summa, Joanne Benson, Rip Howard, Chris Lathrop & Rodrica Tilley) stuffed with pancakes, ready to seize the day.