Saturday, November 18, 2006

San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival

Last weekend's San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival was a blast for me as "official" festival artist, beginning when we attended the Friday night wine tasting event and found every exhibitor wearing the image I created for the festival on their ID tags. Every attendee carried the image around on the cover of the festival program as well. It was great fun to chat with everyone while catching a pleasant buzz from fantastic wines and enjoying terrfic food.
Ken and Michelle also printed gorgeous posters of the painting they commissioned me to do, and when I arrived on Saturday to set up my display for the outdoor Grand Event, I got a stack to sign and give away. Its very gratifying to see an image of your own creation everywhere around you-- thank you Ken and Michelle for choosing me to create this painting for the festival this year, and thanks to everyone who stopped to chat about the art and take a poster home. Check out the festival "swag":

I showed a few new fine art pieces for the first time in my booth, but spent most of the afternoon chatting with people about my custom art contracting services, from murals and architectural finishes to commissioned paintings like the one I did for the festival. Most people are familiar with the idea of commissioning a portrait, but not as many realize you can commission a landscape or abstract painting as well. I talked with several people about doing paintings of favorite places, working from travel photos, etc. and also customizing colors and textures in my abstracts to coordinate with existing decor, furniture, flooring, etc. The festival was a greatr venue for these discussions, with wine flowing on a gorgeous afternoon by the water's edge. Here's one shot of my booth:

It was a fabulous afternoon, but my favorite moments of the day came as we were taking down the booth at the end:

I'll be posting some more info and pics on the new fine art paintings soon, along with some pics of my current contracting project in a historic home in Point Loma and an update on my first class of students at the San Diego Finishing School.

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