2017 T. C. Steele Spring Festival of Flowers Plein Air Paint Out

A Gathering of Painters Celebrating the Past

Painting Guest Cottage

This year I decided to paint in the 18th annual festival of flowers Plein Air Paint Out that took place on May 20th. It has been a while since I painted in a T. C. Steele paint out but always enjoyed participating. I believe the forecast of rain put a damper on the number of artists participating and visitors that attended. Checking in about 8:30, I was anxious to find a subject to paint since there was rain in the forecast. I decided to paint the cottage used by guest artists throughout the year. I set up and was able to get in about 1 1/12 hours of painting time before it started raining. I picked up my easel and went to the car and sat for about 30 minutes. The rain slowed, so I decided to get out of the car and paint under the liftgate doing this several times as the rained came down in varying degrees of intensity until it was time to turn in the painting for judging at 2:00.

Guest Cottage

Of course, once the 2:00 deadline arrived, the rain stopped, and the sun shined for the rest of the afternoon. While the judges reviewed everyone's artwork, there was a ceremony to dedicate the new historic site marker. Cathy Ferree spoke about the marker dedication program, Dr. James Capshew provided a brief history of T. C. Steele's years at Indiana University. As always, the oil category had the most significant number of artists participating. First place went to Mary Ann Davis for her painting depicting water and trees. Watercolorist Kay Fox won both first place and people's choice for her painting of a pond with lilypads and a frog.

T. C. Steele House

T. C. Steele Studio

Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926) built a home in Brown County, Indiana, in 1907 that eventually became known as The House of the Singing Winds. They added a west wing to the house in 1908, which served as Steele's studio until a smaller studio was built around 1915. The large studio barn you see today was built in 1916 to welcome guests and display paintings. The 211-acre site was dedicated to the State of Indiana by Selma Steele in 1945 just before her death. If you have not visited the T. C. Steele State Historic Site, it is worth the trip to see Indiana's most famous impressionist painter.