Plein Air Vermont, July 28 - August 1, 2025
We’ll be based at The Wilmington Inn in historic Wilmington, a quintessential New England village midway between Bennington and Brattleboro in southern Vermont. This will be the second year of Plein Air Vermont! I’ve selected sites for painting: locations where we will be surrounded by ridgelines of the Green Mountains, the shoreline and waters of gorgeous Lake Whitingham, and open fields, woods, and barns at a private farm nestled in the hills above the village.
The Wilmington Inn
Innkeepers Megan and Charlie Foster will provide us with every comfort. We’ll start each day with breakfast that features eggs from their flock of chickens. They will deliver lunch to us at our painting sites and provide us with an evening reception as we gather to talk about the day’s painting. Three dinners will be on our own with lots to choose from Wilmington’s many farm-to-table restaurants, all within walking distance. On our final evening we will enjoy a catered dinner together at the Inn.
We won't be the usual tourist in Wilmington, as artists we will be taking the time to observe and record where we are and what we see. Our time will be richer than that of most tourists who simply pass through. We will celebrate the Vermont landscape through an artist’s eye, our drawings and paintings becoming visual records of our experience.
Planning for this workshop has presented an opportunity to look at paintings of Vermont, including the one in the banner above, a detail of an oil be Robert Duffy 1928-2015. Duffy reportedly painted outdoors in all types of weather- snow, sleet, freezing rain. Our plein air experience in July will be much more comfortable!
Working outdoors on-site allows us to immerse ourselves into the land with all our senses - looking, listening, and smelling the unique character of the location. I will be working with soft pastel, a medium I prefer for its immediacy, brilliant color, and portability. I will give technical instruction in pastel for those who wish. For those opting to use other media (watercolor, gouache, acrylic, oil, pen and ink, mixed media), I will offer individual feedback on technique as well as the universal elements of picture making: compositional design, determining value and color, rendering space, and creating form. I will offer feedback and assistance in developing a personal style. My goal is to create an environment where we will share ideas, exchange information, and offer one another support, a place where we all will grow as artists.
All levels are welcome. A materials list will be provided.
“The way that you organized our workshop in collaboration with Charlie and Megan was outstanding. Everything flowed from one moment to the next and each painting experience and discussion felt like we were moving through a warm and safe current. The locations and views that you selected were perfect and each one offered an opportunity to learn something new. You always had a ‘plan B’ for the weather so that even the unpredictable New England clouds didn’t get in our way. The organized and planned meals and transportation enhanced our experience so that we weren’t distracted by logistical details. I would like to emphasize that your teaching and guidance regarding Plein Air painting along with discussions at the Inn were valued, insightful, greatly appreciated and tied the experience together. Overall, this workshop was inspiring and reinforcing and offered me an opportunity to meet and get to know other artists from different places with a range of experience, perspectives and styles as well as to work on and improve my own skills. I hope that you will repeat this next summer as I would love to repeat this experience and benefit again from your teaching style and perspectives.
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