Dear Friends,
I write this having returned one week ago today from Plein Air Easton, the nation’s largest, most prestigious, and highest grossing plein air painting event.
The fact that plein air painting events are entirely off the radar of the mainstream American fine-art world is irrelevant to Plein Air Easton.
Canadian singer songwriter Fred Eaglesmith put it well when he explained how he built a strong touring career while remaining unknown by the larger entertainment world: “I figured out that I wasn’t in the music business,” Fred said. “I realized I was in the Fred business.” By which he means that the goings on of a larger industry are fundamentally irrelevant to the success or failure of ones individual pursuit.
There is a lot of money sloshing around the vacation and retirement homes on the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay, and The Avalon Foundation, whose mission includes Plein Air Easton, the Easton Farmers Market, and the downtown Avalon Theater, are well aware of it. They are not in the American fine-art business - they are in the Plein Air Easton business.
What Plein Air Easton does superbly is sell a lot of paintings while making everyone involved feel very special. The Avalon Foundation solicits judges with distinguished titles (this year’s judge was the head of French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, for instance). They film lead-up participatory videos involving the staff and volunteers, making them feel special; they aggressively solicit applications from painters around the globe, they host zoom meetings for the juried artists several weeks before the event, and once the artists arrive, they are well taken care of - housing is provided, and food and snacks are never far away. There are substantial prizes in a score of categories, so that even if sales lag, there are dollars to salve the wounds. There are ancillary feeder events with land conservancy and local-artist organizations; there is a large street festival during “Quick Draw",” a timed two-hour paint-out with open and invited-artist divisions.
And as the capstone, the Avalon Foundation takes very, very very good care of their collectors. There are catered Meet-the-Artists events at swanky estates, there are cocktail parties, snack nibblings, lead-up events, special previews, ticketed galas: those who are potential purchasers are made to feel like they are on the inside of a very exclusive event.
And it pays off. This year, organizers announced that their preliminary figures showed over $670,000 in sales, with two-thirds of the juried artist’s paintings finding homes.
Ten times I have dipped my toe in the pellucid waters of the Chesapeake: I first participated in Plein Air Easton in 2012, again in 2013, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2021, to a lesser degree in 2022 and 2023, 2024, and 2026 (and I have won my share of those afore-mentioned awards: Best New Artist, The Vanishing Landscape Award, the Life on the Farm award, Best Architecture, the Quick Paint -twice, I think-, and the David Dils Grand Prize).
On the nine hour drive back from Maryland to Vermont, I started wondering about just how many paintings I have created while at Plein Air Easton. Around a decade ago, I began using Artwork Archive, a fairly comprehensive and intuitive cloud-based system for maintaining and tracking painting inventory. Today it is second nature for me to enter the data about each painting as it is completed, but this was not the case early on, and certainly during the first decade of my serious painting career efforts at keeping track of work were spotty at best.
The Avalon Foundation team, however, has good records which they were kind enough to supply, and so, for the last three days, I have gone down the rabbit hole of attempting to track - and find an image of - every single painting that I have done there.
Here is the gallery of every piece I have created for Plein Air Easton.
A couple of caveats - I do not have any data about several pieces, let alone photographs. Several others exist only in blurry in situ shots. One or two may be missing; one or two may be misassigned. There are a couple of gray areas, such as during Covid some paintings were done at home, yet were sold at Easton. And recently, Nanny Trippe of Trippe Gallery does an annual show called Variations, where artists her gallery represents create paintings based on a provided image; this pop-up show is unveiled during Plein Air with the twist that artist names are not provided and viewers fill out ballots guessing which artist painted what image. I threw those painting in there; altogether that brings us to 139 pieces.
That means that 139 times I have stood in front of a blank surface with a familiar mix of excitement and dread, that hope to create the sublime, to touch the golden fleece. And about 120 times, more or less, I have emerged banged up and defeated to one degree or another, feeling that there are clumsy passages, or things not-quite-captured, or perspective that is just a little off.
But that means that there are around 20 pieces that I think are really pretty good. They may or may not be the prizewinning ones; they may or may not have ever sold. They may or may not ever bring me fame or big money, but, gosh, it has been fun, this process, this striving.
I thank the good folks at Plein Air Easton, my hosts who have become dear friends, the myriad collectors who have found yet a bit more wall space to hang yet another dreary Charlie-painting on their walls.
And I thank you for reading. Take good care, and we will see you soon. It is fun, this being in the Charlie business.
~ Charlie
PS: If you happen to have, or know of the whereabouts of, one of the missing pieces - please let me know, or send a photo along. I can’t put the names of individual collectors out there in the gallery (not due to any concerns about privacy - the Artwork Archive template won’t let me!).
This missive is always free and freely given, but at least once each month I offer paid subscribers one Absurdly Discounted Original Painting for $450 plus tax and shipping; (as opposed to at least three or four times that) of my choice from inventory to paid subscribers. All proceeds from this largesse goes to charities of various stripes. I’ll be sending out that email in the next few days, so if you are interested in owning a Charlie original, you might consider becoming a paid subscriber. The next painting offered will be one from previous years’ Easton inventory. And, for my Top Tier (“Big Fan, Love Your Work” at $150/year), I will be offering one of my large (12x24) Easton pieces for the same amount.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.