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Mainsail Art Festival

If you remember last year's Mainsail Art Festival at the Vinoy, I became a patron of the arts.  I bought three paintings from Maria Pascuta and vowed I wouldn't do such a foolish and expensive thing again.   Twelve months later I returned to the scene of the crime and dang if I didn't do it again.



It was a deceptively warm day.  In fact there was an elderly woman who had collapsed at a tree and was visibly ill with the heat.  Her daughter was rather and rightly frantic looking for help.  Thankfully it came and I assume she was OK.   The above pic isn't much, it just shows the layout and some folks who attended.  


Mainsail is an invitational show with many repeat artists bringing their work for sale.


This guy brought his bird out.  Why, I don't know.  Just like the guy at the gas station who had his bird perched on his shoulder while gassing up, why do these people bring their birds?   Attention?  Hmmm.  Questions, questions.  


It is a great show with talented artists.  Besides the paintings below, I also got some ceramic vase-like thing that the guy embeds leaves in before getting it fired.  When it is done the imprint of the leaves is in the piece.  Very nice.  



Kate Carney, artist of this work posed with her painting.  It is an acrylic piece, rather impressionistic of wild flowers on a black background.  It appealed to me. 


Here you can see her use of Bravura (bold and highly visible) strokes to get the paint onto the canvas.  Her formal education was completed at the University of London and Queen's College and presently teaches and paints in a large studio in a haunted house in Eustice, Florida.



Now this piece was very cool.  Artist Peggy Furlin paints watercolors onto canvas.  She is the only person I have heard does this.  It is time consuming and the works are colorful and different.  As multiple layers of watercolor are applied,  they are worked and reworked, scratched, scraped and splattered.  Then they are sealed with a spray varnish and this is the result.  Pretty neat, huh?



Mainsail 2013 is over and it gives my bank account a chance to heal, perchance to dream of next year's.

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