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This is - I believe - is my final posting about Winter Park Paint Out in the suburbs of Orlando, Florida.

All last week I was visiting, painting the

“jungle-esque” beauty of parks and gardens and cypress groves and lily pad ponds of this city within a park...that I longed for the expanse, vistas and viewscapes of Florida’s beautiful panoramas. Oh for the open air…the range…

So - I took a drive from Orlando up I-4. An exit or two up, I saw this wide open field of trees and grass and flora. I pulled over right off the exit ramp in Eatonville, Florida…set up my easel, supplies and started to paint the open air of Florida.

Turns out…Eatonville is the first incorporated all-black city in the nation - trying to hold off gentrification - which will displace the folks of this working class town. I hope not. The field is an open space where a Vo-tech “black” trade school was located.

It’s amazing what we learn in this great land of ours if we just drive up the road, open our eyes and listen.

(I added the cows. Florida has lots of cows. This painting needed cows. Cows should live here…just sayin…)

Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens   Painted in April, 2023

“Under Florida Skies”. 14 x 18 oil/canvas

I’ve been driving by this farm on the highway all my life and have always wondered what was back there…down that lane, off the highway. (I’m from here). So, I turned down the lane, knocked on the door…asked permission to wander the farm with my easel and supply knapsack. Permission granted. There were aged chicken coops, weirdly shaped barns, tool sheds, old covered car ports, grain silos, housing units, free range chickens, lambs and goats, feral cats, friendly barnyard dogs. Inside these sheds, barns and ports were antique cars, trucks, tractors, old tillers, Sowers and feed wagons - all rusting away in there aged dwellings.

I usually do not paint “things” per se - I paint impressionist vistas and expansive views… usually - but this farm was a veritable gold mine of “things”. So - this being Easton Plein Air festival - I chose to paint things.

Painted during Plein Air Easton in July, 2023

“Farmer’s Free Range and Flat Tires”. 18x24 oil/canvas.                 

This Week I’m taking part in the Floyd Virginia Biennial Plein Air Festival. Floyd is nestled in the Blue Ridge mountain range of south western Virginia right off the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Blue Ridge Parkway is America’s longest linear Park – the highway is the park, and the park is the highway! This park presents beautiful vistas where you can see for miles - or you can just look into the forest. You can watch the haze and mist burn off in the valleys as the sun rises. My host this week has a guest cabin in the mountains, in the woods.  My lodgings and studio this past week was that cabin. I was told to watch out for the Bears. The town is called “Meadows of Dan”. Nobody seems to know who “Dan” is. (I asked). The homesteads, the farms, even single dwellings, all have cows. Cows everywhere! Some people have hundreds, some people have just one. Perhaps they use the cow as a lawnmower.

Most of my painting efforts this week took part right off (on) the parkway.

3rd Floyd Plein Air Biennial Gala Celebration & Art Sale. (painted at festival. September 2022)

Enjoy!

“Meadows of Dan”. 18 x 24. Oil/canvas