2025 Plein Air Festival Reception and Awards Ceremony
Please join us on Saturday, September 13th, for the closing reception, awards ceremony, and wet paint sale for the annual Chautauqua en Plein Air Festival. Attendees will have the chance to meet the artists, as well as view and/or purchase artworks painted at various locations throughout the county. Hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar will be offered.
The public “wet paint” art show and sale starts at 12 pm the same day, if guests wish to view the artwork beforehand. Winners of the festival, judged by Pittsburgh artist Ron Donoughe, will be announced during the closing reception. Artworks purchased during the wet paint sale will be marked and may be picked up during the following week.
Our guest judge for this year is Ron Donoughe. Ron is a full-time professional artist and has been painting the Western Pennsylvania landscape for nearly 35 years. He has taught outdoor painting workshops throughout the United States and France. Donoughe’s paintings can be found in many corporate and private collections, the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, and the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art. His collection of 90 Pittsburgh Neighborhoods has been acquired by the Heinz History Center as a permanent exhibition, and can be found next to the Mr. Rogers exhibition on the 4th floor. Donoughe recently completed an Artist-in-Residence at Fallingwater, where he stayed and offered plein air workshops. His work can be viewed at his website, www.donoughe.com
About Chautauqua en Plein Air
Over the course of a few days in mid-September, the Roger Tory Peterson Institute will be hosting its fourth annual Chautauqua County en Plein Air Festival. Artists from across the United States scour Chautauqua County’s hills and dales, preserves and ponds—everywhere from the dappled crevices of Panama Rocks to the picturesque brick alleyways of Jamestown, in order to capture the beauty of the outdoors.
En plein air or plein-air painting was developed in the 1800s as a way of removing the artist from the studio and placing them within the physical landscape they were painting. Landscape portraitists could now more easily capture the natural light and translate the minute changes in weather onto the canvas, in ways that simply weren’t possible when painting from inside a studio. Artists who famously created works en plein air were Claude Monet (1840-1926), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), and Georges Seurat (1859-1891). Following in their footsteps, today’s artists created works that reflect careful observation, artistic interpretation, and a sensitivity to the beauty that the natural world has to offer.
Artist Credit: Judson Brown. Painting Companion on the Rocks. Oil on linen panel, 2024.