Plein Air Painters of America Show - Lake Tahoe
http://www.p-a-p-a.com/

I've painted in a few plein air painting shows in the past, but this was a completely new experience! Not only did Caesars Hotel give all the artists a $75 a day voucher for meals at their gourmet restaurants, put us up in rooms for two weeks, and then throw the classiest show and dinner I've ever seen, but they even had built-in hot-tubs in all our rooms (which every one of us used to store all our boxes, frames, and other junk -- you can lead an artist to water, but you just can't force them to wallow in it when there are landscapes like those in Tahoe just waiting to be painted!). 

Skip Whitcomb out painting some of the pastures surrounding the Tahoe area.

John Budicin and Mark Rittorno, an excellent painter who also sidelines as the president of Caesars Hotel and Casino in Lake Tahoe and the main reason for us having the show there.

George Strickland.

What a gorgeous place!

Here's one of the paintings I did of a farmer baling hay in the valley near Tahoe. The farmer and his son said they didn't have any photos of him doing his work, so I made them a CD of the photos I took of him as well as this painting I did out there that day and dropped it off later.

"Barbed Wire" Carson Valley  12" by 9" oil

Joseph Paquet; an artist of few words, but many brush strokes!

John Cosby and Gerald Fritzler, both pursuing their life passions.

A few of us decided to hike up to Lake Winnemucca one day a do some snow scenes in the middle of summer!

Here's a couple of photos of Ralph Oberg doing some masterpieces. 

     Despite all the snow everywhere it was actually incredibly hot that day. The lake itself was covered in ice when we got there, but almost all of it had melted by the time I left in the evening.

"Winnemucca Snow" oil, 12" by 9"
Here's the painting I did while out with Ralph and Shirley.      

A couple of the days Charles Muench, Ray Roberts, and I hired Una, a fantastic local model, to pose for us by Lili Lake. 

"Una of Markleville" oil, 16" by 12"
Here's one of the three paintings I did of Una.

When hiking through the woods, it's amazing the wildlife you will see if you're quiet and keep your eyes peeled. Here is the rare Blue-jeaned Matt Smithicus of the genus, Painterous Extraordinarius. It is rarely seen outside its natural Arizona desert habitat, so I was lucky, indeed!

Here's a few photos from our trip the week following the Tahoe show at the Denver Salon d'Arts show, which raises money for the Denver Ballet. Here, you can see Quang Ho giving one of his philosophical lectures on Art. He is someone who always makes me think and see a new aspect of art as well as life every time I talk to him.

Here's Kristin Thies, who runs West Wind Fine Art Gallery in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, with Susan and our friends, Nancy Guzik and her husband, Richard Schmid. Surely I don't have to tell you who those two are! 

Here's Susan, Nancy, and our good friend, Mary Linda Strotkamp, hanging out in the lobby. Nancy and I were classmates at the American Academy of Art and, even years before we met Richard, Nancy was was one of the best artists I'd ever seen. When I started Mr. Parks' life drawing class, Nancy had already been there for a few years, so all of us beginners marveled at her work even back then. Mary Linda used to travel to Chicago when we all painted at the Palette and Chisel and actually bought five paintings from my first show there (they were around a couple hundred dollars apiece then). 

Here's Richard talking a bit before starting his slide show. After an hour of seeing one masterpiece after another, we all left the auditorium in an "altered state of consciousness" -- who needs anti-depressants when you have Richard Schmid paintings! Seriously, though, whenever I find myself getting depressed about painting, I love to look at great art, be it Richard's, Sargent, Zorn, etc. and it never fails to cheer me up and spur me on. Even though I'm not there yet, just knowing that such transcendence is achievable is heartening.

Here I am doing a demo of one the dancers from the Ballet. I don't know how I drew such a big crowd, I think someone had said something about free ice cream being available -- boy were there some disappointed people in that crowd, let me tell you!

Here's Gerald Fritzler demoing along with me -- did he ever catch the feeling of the pose!

Then we visited one of the local artists in the show, Kevin Weckbach, one of several rising young stars of Denver artists. His studio is what one would expect from an artist in a movie. First you enter this huge and beautiful church -- in the photo above, you can see the open doorway to Kevin's studio in the lower left hand corner just beneath the giant organ pipes.

Here's Kevin, Quang, me, Kevin's wife and new baby in his tiny studio.

Here's the subject for the painting currently on his easel. Obviously Kevin pays his models much less than we do.

Here's an example of one of Kevin's amazingly bold and lively street scenes.

I just love all the interesting little slices of people's studio.

Kevin with another dynamically designed street scene.

Next we stopped by Mark Daily's studio. Man, did he have some awesomely bold paintings! You can see his work on his webpage http://www.markdaily.net/

I think that what people surround themselves with is far more of a window into their souls than anything else. I'll let you judge from this photo just what's inside Mark!

And, speaking of surroundings, here's one of the rooms in the vast Quang Ho http://quangho.com/ and Nancy Switzer household -- these two really have some serious style!

Here's Susan and Nancy in a small corner of Nancy's chapel-like studio.

Mark Daily, Scott Burdick, Susan Lyon, Nancy Switzer, and Quang Ho!