Easton

Well, that was a good week. I felt pretty good about my paintings at least until I saw the show and then I changed my mind. but I'll get to that in a minute. It was full on painting from sunday morning until the following sunday afternoon. sun-up to sundown. Although we turned our paintings in thursday eve, I did my host painting friday, there was a quick draw saturday, then I did a two hour demo saturday afternoon. and on sunday morning was the winners paint out, a high-end quick draw and auction extravaganza with great food and drinks and music and amazing house, property etc. The people at Easton have this thing down to a science and I can't say enough good things about how they run the event.

So, my first two paintings were good, I thought, did the above painting, a 20x20 and a 16x20 of a boat at my favorite location on the first day. I was set. The rest of the week was just looking for other cool things to fill out the replacement list (when one of your 2 show paintings sells they replace it with another). I mean I really felt good about my Talbot Lambscape, unusual composition (for me) and well handled drawing, I thought. It won an award for "best pastoral" which is good. But the whole show was overshadowed for me by two painters who just blew me away, Tim Bell and Stephen Griffin. Don't get me wrong there were some really great paintings there by others Ken Deward, Rob Barber, Roger Dale Brown, Gavin Brooks, Scott Prior, Camille Przwodek, and more.  Tim won the coveted artist choice and best marine and Stephen was severely overlooked for an award in my opinion. But these two did large, very inventive paintings that made me feel, well, small. Got my ass kicked. Which is good. So I made some commitments to myself:

1) get a gloucester easel

2) get some cahones

3) go big or stay home