There are a few coincidences among the bimonthly PleinAir Magazine Salon competition winners, including the fact that one husband-and-wife team worked on the plein air painting that won second place, and two artists who are married to one another won separate awards.

We finally received the list of award winners in the Paint the Town Plein Air Event & Sale, held in Cranford, New Jersey, from June 5-10, 2012. Find out who received awards from Joseph McGurl, this year's judge.

One of the most adventurous and influential plein air painters today is James Gurney, the artist who wrote and illustrated the wildly popular Dinotopia series of books, television programs, and video games. He recently sent us news of his plein air adventures and the sketches he created of artist Everett Raymond Kinstler during a presentation at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA.

In 2006, the original PleinAir magazine transitioned to become Fine Art Connoisseur (FAC), an informative and authoritative publication for artists, curators, art historians, dealers, and collectors. Peter Trippi, who is the distinguished editor of FAC, often supports arts organizations by judging entries to their contests. He recently helped select work for competition organized by the America China Oil Painting Artists League (ACOPAL).

The opportunity to paint on Jamie Wyeth’s farm, on the King Ranch, and near the Dupont/Hagley Museum along the border of Pennsylvania and Delaware would have been enough to please New York artist Garen Baker, but to make his participation in the recent Brandywine River Valley Paint-Out even better, he received the Best of Show award for his oil painting “Afternoon Clearing at King Ranch.”

Seventeen artists came from great distances to participate in James Gurney’s three-day workshop on Painting in Colored Light that was held in Garin Baker’s Carriage House Art Studios in Newburgh, New York. Gurney will judge the next two-months segment of the 1st Annual PleinAir Salon Competition, and Baker was featured in the Summer, 2011 issue of PleinAir^TM Magazine.