The Redstone Plein Air Festival kicks off the summer season in Redstone in mid-June this year. Redstone Historic District has long been regarded as a community that celebrates the arts, according to the Redstone Art Foundation (RAF) website. This year’s festival, spanning six days, will begin June 18 and conclude June 23. The RAF website states that Redstone has held a reputation for artists since the 1930s, and Cindy Cole, secretary of the RAF board, said the festival is another way RAF is working to continue this legacy.
“Our goal is to make Redstone recognized as an artistic village,” Cole wrote in an email. “We want to continue embracing the arts with the Labor Day Redstone Art Show and classes available.”
Cole said she’s lived in the Crystal Valley since 1976 and got started with Redstone art shows back in 2012 where she would showcase jewelry she made with her husband, Tim. She began watercolor painting in 2019 and said it was around this time that she also learned about plein air painting.
Rather than working on artistic creations indoors or isolated in a studio, PaintOutside.com, a website aptly named for its focus on blending painting with the natural beauty of the world, states that the first documented plein air painters were creating work in the 16th century. However, the act of painting outside is likely as old as painting itself.
“Painters realized that they could more accurately represent the colors and the light by painting in nature,” a page titled “The History of Plein Air Painting” states. “Though painting outdoors took considerably more effort, the results were worth the trouble, as they found paintings done on location came alive.”
Dione Holt, an artist who specializes in oil paint and gouache, also local to the Crystal Valley and a member of the RAF board since 2020, agreed with that sentiment — painting outdoors is a difficult yet rewarding feat.
“Outdoor painting brings so many challenges, with the weather and conditions changing quickly, especially in the mountains,” Holt wrote in an email. “However, plein air paintings often have a freshness and immediacy that comes from painting quickly to capture the moment before the light or weather changes.”
Holt has participated in the past two plein air events in Redstone and plans to return this summer. RAF began to sponsor this specific event in 2021 as an alternative to the Labor Day Art Show because of the pandemic. Becca Trembley, a local artist who partnered with Cole to organize the event, said that the festival’s first year culminated in a “Quick Draw” contest where artists had three hours to complete a piece from start to finish.
The contest has continued each year and will be judged this summer by an artist from Marble, Connie Hendrix, with cash prizes for winning artists ranging from $250 to $1,000. Another twist in this year’s event is that it is now being sponsored by Redstone Gallery, run by Joy and Steve Springfield.
“This will bring it up to the status all respectable plein air exhibitions require,” Trembley wrote in an email, “a commercial space to hang with the potential to sell!”
Amid the art-making, there will be various other elements to look forward to — a wine tasting on Friday, live music including the Magical Moments concert on Saturday, a farmers’ and artists’ market and plenty of networking opportunities.
Mark Mace, a local artist who has yet to miss a Redstone Plein Air Festival since its inception, said he has lived in the Roaring Fork Valley for 51 years and was drawn in by his love of outdoor activities and kept here by the thriving culture. Mace described the excitement of the festival as a race against the clock displayed on a large canvas as onlookers pass by, and encouraged other artists to come out for this year’s event.
“I’m looking forward to meeting new people and artists,” Mace wrote in an email. “I might encourage other artists to think ‘bigger’ and stop doodling with tiny brushes, a suggestion my girlfriend made to me decades ago!”
Registration for the event is open up until 11am on Saturday, June 19. Artists and supporters of the arts are encouraged to come out and join the fun.
Larry Day, Sopris Sun cartoonist and repeat participant of the festival described his thoughts on the event rather poetically: “In the Redstone area in Colorado, the light is strong, steady and long — making colors vibrant and shadows deep, rich and lively. Then there’s the rushing water meandering down the mountainsides over fallen branches, and rocks the size of turtle shells to boulders the size of small countries. These are the things I’ve loved painting in Redstone.”