2019 Pacific Northwest Plein Air - Maryhill Museum of Art

Congratulations to all of the juried artists at Maryhill Museum of Art's 2019 Pacific Northwest Plein Air event for your beautiful work, and congratulations as well to the award winners. I find judging art to be very challenging because there are always many more works deserving of awards than there are prizes to hand out. My thanks as well to the museum - it's an honor to be asked to judge a plein air event.

This was my first visit to the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, and it was a pleasant surprise to find so many of my first impressions of the landscape captured in paint at #pnwpleinair2019. 

The work created by these artists goes beyond the rendering of the scenes and evokes subtle emotions usually only experienced by visiting an area first hand. The best of these paintings give me a sense of not just the visual beauty, but often the heat of the sun, the coolness of a shadow, blinding light reflecting off of water, or even that sense of awe artists feel at standing in the presence of something greater than ourselves.

Photo Credit: Maryhill Museum of Art

© Patrick and Kimberly Saunders, Patrick Saunders Fine Arts, 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s authors/owners is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Patrick Saunders for painted works, or to Kimberly Saunders for photographs and/or videos, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.