71.  Original Plein Air Watercolor Painting, “Plein Air, 12:40-2:05pm, Fairy Lake, 7.31.24”, watercolor and white gouache, 24 x 36”, 2024

Location: Bozeman, MT

Event: Plein Air Montana

Event Awards: Bozeman Art Museum Purchase Prize

The journey from St. Catharine’s, Ontario, to Bozeman, MT, was not easy or simple. It's simple to say or write the words “drive 1000 miles Monday, 1000 miles Tuesday”, but doing it, especially when I had not at all been planning to participate in another plein air art event so soon after Plein Air Easton earlier that July, is different. One of the conceits I had to make was not being able to make my usual large-scale work on 30 x 42” arches watercolor paper - no more was available and I’d used all I had while at Easton - so the four paintings I made for Plein Air Montana were on 24 x 36” paper, paper I had cut down from 26 x 40” specifically to fit the frames I was able to buy at Michael’s, all 24 x 36”. This piece was the first I made during Plein Air Montana, just wiped from the drive, exhausted, and swatting away inch-diameter horse flies (I had scars on my wrists from their bites), dealing with an off-leash dog breaking one of my painting boards, an insufficient shade setup, and having to pull out the white gouache to achieve the effect I was looking for in the water. It did occur to me - that I may have overstepped my luck. A quick call to my friend Max (the very same who is in multiple portraits in this collection of 100 works from Art Tour 2024) reassured me that 1. I got this and 2. I need to take an afternoon and an evening off to just chill and get organized. Painting more that day would have run me even further into the ground. It’s critical to test your limits, and critical to respect their current location, even if you plan to rock through them in the near future. After all, I knew, at least, I would have this one painting to display, even if nothing else turned out.