An art party

Yesterday I attended the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society annual party. What a great time. The plein air folks were asked to display a few pieces and sketchbooks. My first piece is Villa Montalvo, an historic public venue for arts and performances in Saratoga. The day we painted in November it was pretty cold and we even had some rain, but we persevered. The second picture was done on a warm and sunny day in November at the preserved Jose Higuera adobe in a small park in Fremont. That day truly was the ultimate plein air experience. I also brought along my watercolor sketch book from my bicycle tour of the US, my tiny watercolor set, the newspaper feature, and a picture of the finish with explanation at the request of one of the organizers. Excuse the blurry photo.

The party was awesome with an appearance by Paul Cezanne, aka Ken Young doing living art history. What a delight to learn about his life, work, and contemporaries. We enjoyed a delicious potluck luncheon. There was a painting exchange, but I ended up deciding to hold off until next year after I have had a chance to see one in action. This society has an amazing group of accomplished artists and people went home with some wonderful art. Another year I will bring a painting.

We also created two group paintings by everyone adding some paint to the paper and two people assigned to pull the creations together. The results were raffled off and the winners went home with a matted and framed masterpiece. I wanted to reproduce them here but am afraid of violating the copyrights of others. I really loved the first one, which makes me think of a vibrant city reflected in water. Myrna Wacknov had done a quick pen sketch of me on the top portion. After much painting over by the group, it’s a rather faint impression. My friend from plein air, Wendy, was the lucky winner.

If you want to link to Myrna’s blog from the list on the right, you can view her description of the event and see a nice slideshow of pictures. The buffet line picture includes Bob in the middle, between Paul Cezanne and another attendee.