I’ve got twenty paintings up at Counter Coffee, at 7324 W. Madison Street, Forest Park, until the end of June. It’s a great independent coffee shop with a very inviting atmosphere and locally sourced food and dairy. They are right in the middle of downtown Forest Park right next to good shopping and/or walking around town.
Next Sunday from 12:00-4:00 pm I will be out and about near the entrance of Cheney Mansion in Oak Park painting the beautiful gardens for the 25th Annual Oak Park River Forest Garden Walk. Fingers crossed it’s a nice day for painting outside. I’ll be out there with at least three other local artists working en plein air. Cheney Mansion is located at 220 N. Euclid in the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District, not far from Wright’s home and studio on Chicago Avenue.
Meanwhile I am about to wrap up three weeks of visiting my parents in Pennsylvania – it’s been a great time of hanging out with my dad (while mom was away visiting her family in Scotland for most of that time) painting and generally hitting the reset & rejuvenate buttons for the second half of 2018. It’s always so good to go home again.
PS – My classes at the Oak Park Art League start up again for their Summer II Session, July 23 – August 25. I’ll be teaching Mixed Media on Saturday mornings from 10:00-Noon, and then Farmers Market Watercolor from 1:00-3:00 pm. Register here : )
**Addendum: The Garden Walk day was so lovely outside, and Cheney Mansion was a beautiful place to paint for four hours. It only took me about ten minutes of walking around to scout out the perfect place to paint, under a shady tree next to a park bench. I’ll probably turn the painting into something else entirely, but that’s how these things go often for me. The four hours of painting was a fun exercise but not necessarily a finished piece, just practice. Here’s what I worked on that day:
