Shelby Keefe Demonstration

We are so fortunate to have this lovely portion of our year, located up here in northern Wisconsin on a peninsula known as Door County. It is WI's thumb and we are surrounded by Lake Michigan on the quiet side and the bay of Green Bay on the west. It makes a land mass surrounded by 300 miles of shoreline, populated with lovers of cherries, nature and the Arts. My thrill is to get to see artwork unfold before my very eyes.

I've hardly spent any time at all this summer sharing with you about my season of inspiration up here -- so I want to play catch up a bit. These photos were taken during a painting demonstration by Shelby Keefe hosted by Edgewood Art Gallery, and open to the public. This took place back in July as the launch to the county-wide Plein Air painting celebration and extravaganza week.

The weather on this day was a tad on the nasty side, so we were all packed into the garden gallery, with walls covered in framed Shelby works. So that was a pretty neat background for her demonstration.

She created a complete 'under-painting' right before our eyes in acrylic paint in a matter of a few minutes time, talking all the while about her strategy for doing so. She then spent about 5 minutes of her allotted two hours 'flapping' the canvas at us to get it to dry. LOL Her question answering skills were fantastic beyond amazing!!

Here's the painted drawing-sketch which will inform her painting as it unfolds. Yes. She is using a gathered up floral arrangement in a glass vase as her subject matter -- due to the weather. Stay tuned. I'll get the links up in a bit.