Two weeks ago, on Saturday, August 28th, Marie and I headed up to Wallsburg to paint. We were joined by our other art friend Kathryn. She teaches art at a local high school. I was telling them that Linda Christensen painted some of the Oquirrh Mountain temple murals up in Wallsburg and I wondered if she had painted them in the old ward house turned Community Center.
Marie said, "Wouldn't that be neat if she saw us painting and stopped to say 'hello'? We got set up and within the hour a dark SUV pulled up and a woman got out and walked up to Marie and introduced herself as Linda Christensen! Yes! the very one! She talked with us and said that she would like to paint with us sometime and would show us some good spots!
This past Friday evening we went over to Kathryn's house for the first part of our Artist's Retreat. Marie, Laura and I enjoyed a wonderful dinner of Thai food prepared for us by Kathryn. We ate until we were full to the brim, including strawberry birthday cake made from scratch for Laura.
We intended to paint on Kathryn's beautiful pastoral land near the bird refuge. It had been such a wild day for me that I just soaked it all in and watched Marie paint. Her painting was fantastic.
The next morning we headed out early for the 2010 Artist's Studio Tour in Spring City. Kathryn and her husband joined Marie and I this year which made it more fun. We ran into a number of our friends that had participated in the Plein Air competition.
It was a great show again this year. We heard that 70 painters had participated this year, which was up from the 50 from last year. Marie and I renewed our desires to be there next year. With my new enthusiasm for landscape painting, I went out painting today. I was grateful that Kyle joined me for support. (He was great fun.)
He snapped this one of me while I was hard at work. My painting isn't good by any stretch. But, I do think that a few things are beginning to work out a bit better. It took two hours to paint.
This might be the first plein air painting that doesn't get wiped as Kyle wants to hang it in his room!