This August Remmie and I went to Europe to visit family, friends, and to street paint! 21 days to visit, tour, and paint in 2 festivals and for 2 events. We had a great time!
The first, was the original street painting festival, and my favorite, Incontro Nazionale Madonnari in Grazie di Curtatone. I can't tell you how much I love this event. The people, location, everything. Part of the beauty of this event is that it is 24 hours from start to finish. 6pm to 6pm the following day. So, there is a constant stream of people strolling through the event at all hours of the night to see the beautiful paintings the 200, or so, artists are creating. Unfortunately, the first day was rained out. Heavy rain all day! So, the festival was postponed till 8am next morning, if the rain stopped. It stopped all right! It turned into very sunny, hot weather. But 200 artists finished 200 paintings in 12 hours, and it was lovely. The painting I chose to do was a Madonna and Child by Scottish artist Marianne Stokes. It's a stunning painting with a gorgeous dandelion pattern behind the two figures.
Madonna con Bambino... Gold Medal winner in the Maestro Category. The highest street painting honor. I was so happy! Because I won the Gold, I will be designing the festivals 2011 poster. This is something I've wanted to do since I first attended the festival in 2002 and won my first Gold in Semplici category.
We had a fantastic drive from Italy back to Holland to visit with Remmie's family and friend for a few days. But then we were off to The Colors of Valkenburg, a festival in the southern most tip of Holland. The festival is a competition with two categories, Copy Art and Free Art. I chose the Copy Art route since I wanted to paint one of my favorite images. I can't paint it, as is, in the US because it has some nude figures. It's Herbert Draper's, Lament for Icarus. It's stunning! The original is cropped so that you do not see all of Icarus' wings. So I extended them in the street painting so they grew outside the frame of the painting. Remmie helped by painting in the wings with black pigment before I painted the individual feathers on top. He did a great job.
Lament for Icarus... First Place winner in Copy Art! And Third Place Peoples Choice.
By this time in the trip I was totally exhausted but had two more events to do in Holland. Both were for Dutch clients via my friends at PlanetSteetPainting. Thanks Peter!
Here is my favorite of the two which I painted for the Brabant Cultural Festival.
Remmie and I had a wonderful time visiting friends and family and making new street painting friends from all over the world. Miss you all and hope to see you next year!!!