The Garden Party

I painted The Garden Party en plein air during the Celebrate Great Falls special event "Between Two Gardens" at L'Auberge Chez Francois. I had spent a very full weekend at the Northern Virginia (Reston/Tephra ICA) Fine Art Festival and abandoned Randy right at closing time to take down my booth by himself. (That's a VERY tough task with two people.)

On that Saturday, the Paint Great Falls competition had officially begun ... and event I was also in ... and this painting could potentially be submitted as one of my two pieces for the competition. (It did not end up being submitted and another piece of mine from the following week, Horse Whispers, won Best in Show - First Place.)

If I hadn't been involved in the Fine Art Festival, I would have been out painting for the "Between Two Gardens" event before it started at 4pm. Probably around 2 or 3.  Two fellow artists, Vicky Zhou and Rajendra KC were capturing the event and surroundings live ... all afternoon. That evening ... around 7pm-ish, the pieces were to be auctioned off.  I started at 5:30pm and was far from finished at auction time. Plus the painting hadn't been framed. I felt a bit of an unprepared mess but still thoroughly enjoyed being there. It was a beautiful event and evening.

The Garden Party was won at auction by Tom Tucker, a fellow artist with this being his first piece of mine. I finished it in the studio to follow ... and in the end it turned out to be one of my favorite pieces. This is just what the evening looked and felt like to me (minus the uncomfortable personal time crunch).