As Plein Air Easton turned the corner on its 15th year, we felt the need to express our gratitude for the hundreds of competition artists whose hard work has led to our success over the years.  Each year, we reflect on our events, listen to feedback and give careful consideration to how we can improve the festival and grow. As a result of this process and in celebration of our 15th year, we reached out to PAE alumni artists to help us create an even better experience for artists and collectors.

Plein Air Easton has grown to a point where its events span 11 full days with much of its public-facing programming concentrated on the weekends.  The challenge for organizers has always been creating content for its collectors, the community and those who travel to Talbot County during that week solely for the opportunity to watch artists actively painting outdoors. The competition officially began on Friday, July 12th when the 58 competition artists being unleashed onto the entirety of the Delmarva Peninsula. After 3 days, the geographic area narrowed down to Talbot County for two days and then finally, the town limits of Easton before the competition pieces were handed in for judging on Thursday, July 18th. By this time, many of the competition artists are spent and ready to take a break. In order to reconcile this recurring dilemma, this year we created an event entitled, “Coffee and Conversation” wherein a number of invited alumni participated in a new way in an attempt to create new and compelling content intended to serve our patrons and celebrate PAE’s history. For this project, alumni artists painted in a designated area each day beginning Sunday, July 14 through Wednesday, July 17. The following day, three alumni artists presented a panel discussion of the prior days' artwork, their process and other topics from 10-11am in the Avalon Theatre.

Additional live-streamed events included:

• Robert Barber, PAE Alumnus, and grand prize winner, talking about his exploration into plein air projects in which he's investing an extended amount of time.
• Competition artists Charlie Hunter and Aimee Erickson recounting their recent train journey traveling from Chicago to Santa Fe with a group of Plein Air artists. 
• The awards presentation at the Collector's Preview Party, July 19
• The judge's talk where the 2019 judge, David Levy discusses his choices for the top prized awarded during PAE2019

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