55.  Original Plein Air Watercolor Painting, “Plein Air, 8:30-9:20pm, After Sunset at Doc’s Sunset Grille, Oxford, MD 7.14.24”, watercolor, 22 x 30”, 2024

Location: Oxford, MD

Event: Plein Air Easton

Event Awards: Grand Prize, Quick Draw; Auto-invite for Plein Air Easton 2025

I had no intention, at all, of painting this evening. This piece from Plein Air Easton is from the same day as making two other paintings, a pre-sunrise work, “Plein Air, 5:45-6:15am, Pre-Sunrise, Safe Harbor, Oxford, 7.14.24”, and an ambitious and challenging piece of a travel lift, "Plein Air, 12:00-2:30pm, Travel Lift, Oxford, 7.14.24”. Both paintings had been successful, I was wiped, and had gone to dinner at Doc’s Sunset Grille in Oxford, MD, having a few beers as well. When I was leaving the restaurant at about 8pm, I couldn’t help notice the spectacular post-sunset effects of the light among hot summer clouds, calm waves, silhouetted piers. Not totally sober when I began painting, I went for it anyways, having tried and failed to paint this particular light at this particular time of day back in Seattle several times over several years. This time, everything fell into place, and at the conclusion of this festival, it was in my opinion the strongest painting of any that I’d made there, and possibly my strongest painting ever, as of that July. I felt totally calm - I knew that at this point I had good work to show, so I was completely free to do whatever kind of work I felt like doing, wherever and whenever I felt like it. Instead of making art in service of the event, I was making the exact art I wanted to make: the event in service of my art. What’s funny about this 24-hour period from the morning of July 14 to the morning of July 15, is I had yet to make one of the biggest breakthrough pieces for me and my art, the following morning, again by accident over design ( - “Plein Air, 6:15-7am, Sunrise Over Rebecca T. Ruark, Tilghman MD, 7.15.24”).