ECAF, Part I

I am back from the 2018 Escalante Canyons Art Festival.    Some festivals are only about showing art. Vendors come with finished products, set up tents and sell what they brought.  The Escalante festival is more than that. It includes Plein Air painting competitions. Which means that artists show up with frames and blank canvases and make art outdoors.   That creates a different experience altogether.  Making art outside is hard. Bugs bite, wind blows, rain falls, light changes. Artists get lost, get stuck in deep sand, get stranded when roads wash out.   We paint all day and get together after dark to eat, make music, and swap stories. We catch up on each other’s lives. Then we bring in the art we have created. Some of it is amazingly good. Some less amazing.  But there is a feeling of fellowship in having overcome obstacles to share our individual takes on beauty. There is a fair amount of hugging. Sometimes some tears. We go home feeling encouraged, inspired, befriended, understood.   My time there was brief this year, but it’s always worth it.

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