Painting Clayton NY 3 Way Back to 2008

Artist House, Dial Gardens (watercolor and pastel)

Well, the busy plein air painting season is over for the year for me, so I have time once again to blog.
When I blog about Clayton NY I include the Town boundaries which extend to Grindstone island and T.I. Park on Wellesley Island, and a distance to the west and south of the Village of Clayton. Way back in 2008 before I formed Plein Air Painters Thousand Islands Region (PAPTIR) in 2009, the Thousand Islands Arts Center in Clayton and Mary Dial conducted a day of opening the Dial Gardens to plein air painters. It was a chance to meet other painters interested in painting from life outdoors and visit the Dial Gardens, which are included in the Garden Club of America's Collection in the Smithsonian Institute.
A video documenting the celebration of Mary Dial's contributions to the 1000 Islands Region which depicts the gardens in detail can be found in  the Sept 13th, 2014 monthly issue of  www.thousandislandslife.com if the link below does not work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tO-qGPqUTeQ
There is a tab to go to back issues easily. A link is below. In the article "A special Thanks To Mary Dial" there is a video of the gardens and showing a few artists.  I appear about 1 minute into the video in a dark shirt, baseball cap, and khaki pants, painting "Garden Respite", shown below. The gardens are extremely beautiful and now under different private ownership.

Last Light (watercolor)

Garden Respite (watercolor and ink, sold)

 I painted all three of these from one spot by the rotating my easel. "Last Light" captures the  late light illuminating  a gold colored sculpture atop a pole.