Seventh Annual Bath County Plein Air Festival 2019
Monday, September 30 – Sunday, October 6, 2019

Warm Springs Gallery presents the Seventh Annual Bath County Plein Air Festival.  For one week, thirty of the mid-Atlantic’s finest plein air painters will set up their easels along pristine rivers and country roads capturing the warm autumn light of Bath County, Virginia.  Nestled in the Alleghany Mountains and home to the historic Homestead Resort, Bath County is a painter’s paradise, offering panoramic vistas, meandering streams and open meadows, family farms, and charming village scenes.  This year the festival will focus on the figure in the landscape. Models will be available throughout the week.

Event Information

• The event will take place from Monday, September 30 – Sunday, October 6, 2019.
• Check-in and Canvas Stamping will take place on Monday, September 30th from 9am-12pm at Warm Springs Gallery, 12 Katydid Trail, Warm Springs, VA  24484.
• Artists will paint Monday, September 30 through Saturday, October 5, 2019.
• Artists must turn in one painting marked to be judged and up to 5 additional paintings (completed, framed, and wired) to Warm Springs Gallery between 12 - 2 pm on Saturday, October 5.
• Maximum canvas size permitted is 24” wide, no restriction on height.  All work turned in for exhibition, judging, and sale must be painted during the event en plein air and without the use of photographs. These works must bear the event stamp.

Required Events:

• Thursday, October 3, 7-10 pm, Farm to Table Dinner, Exhibition and Sale
• Saturday, October 5, 5-9 pm, Preview Party, Awards Presentation, and Sale of Paintings
• Sunday, October 6, 9 am -12 pm, Small Painting Sunday Sale 
• The commission split will be 50-50 at all events.

Entry Instructions
Entries are to be processed through Online Juried Shows.  Application, application fee, and three images are due by June 30, 2019.  No entries will be accepted after this date.  The Application fee is $40.  Payment can be made either through PayPal or a valid credit card.  Entry fees must be made by the entry deadline.

Each artist must submit three (3) professional quality images of artwork in JPEG format, a short bio, a CV or resume.

Entering Your Images:
Entry form must be filled out in its entirety.  List sizes up to the nearest inch.  Submitted images must not include matting or frame.  Crop the photos to include only the artwork.  Be sure your images are right-side-up.

Before uploading your images, make sure they are smaller than 4MB.  The OnlineJuriedShows system will automatically resize them to 1920 pixels on the longest side @72 dpi.  Images should be in JPEG format, sRGB color space.  Help in photographing your work and properly sizing your images can be found at:  www.OnlineJuriedShows.com/help.aspx.  If you need help entering your images or are unable to, please email Help@OnlineJuriedShows.com.

Entering Your Resume:
To enter your resume, log into your account, click "Your Artist Profile," click "Edit Your Profile," and follow the directions in the "Bio Upload" section.

Juror of Submissions
The Bath County Plein Air Festival is a juried event with applications reviewed by a panel of five professional artists and/or curators.  The panel will review all submitted applications and select 20 artists for a total of 30 artists to participate (award winners and top artists in 2018 will be invited back to the 2019 festival).  Notification of selected artists will be sent to each applicant via email no later than July 15, 2019.

2019 Judge     Angela Cunningham
Angela Cunningham is a portrait painter, genre painter, and sculptor in a naturalistic and realistic style whose inspiration arises from the character and individuality of her models and subjects. She enjoys working from life, because she believes it’s the best way to see the intricacies of the subject’s form; it’s also an excellent way to interact with and be inspired by the personality of the life in front of her. For Cunningham, painting means reading the world and getting lost in observing it; it’s also an interaction, an understanding, and a relationship. Every individual possesses something unique, and Cunningham’s fascination is to learn about each person's character, traits, thoughts, and quirks. No matter how different we are as individuals, she believes, there’s an underlying commonality; we can all relate to art that reveals someone's contained emotions and inner thoughts and triggers a glimpse of humanity.
Cunningham draws artistic inspiration from many artists, especially the Naturalists of the late 19th century (Emile Fraint and William Bliss Baker), the late 19th century Russian Realists (Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi), the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, and contemporary artists Bruno Walpoth, Sally Mann, and Nicola Hicks. She finds Gustave Fraipont’s words particularly apt: “However clever you may be, Nature is your superior; however great your talent, she is greater; and if you only obey her you are sure to not be beside the mark. Great artists are truthful, and it is Nature who has taught them truth.”

Judging & Awards
Bath County Plein Air Festival awards over $8000 in cash prizes plus merchandise awards.  The festival judge will select the three top paintings in the exhibit ($1000, $750, 500) and the Best in Show for the Gordon F. Ferguson Memorial Award ($1000).  In addition, the public votes for one painting for the People’s Choice Award ($1000) and the artists select another artist for the Best in Show Peer Review ($1000).  There are also a few special awards given:  The Donald S. Lewis, Sr. Memorial Award ($500) and Best Architectural, Figurative, Nocturne, and Vista ($500 each).

Lodging
We have a number of generous supporters of the arts who have indicated that they will open their homes to visiting artists.  All juried artists will be placed in private homes.  If you select to find your own housing, you must let us know by August 1, 2019.

ARTIST’S AGREEMENT
I have read the foregoing Prospectus and by entering and paying for this Entry Application, I agree to be bound by all terms set forth therein, including participation in the week-long Competition, the Farm to Table Dinner, Exhibition & Sale, the Awards Ceremony & Sale, and the Small Painting Sunday Sale.

From September 30 through October 6, 2019, I agree to sell no paintings while the event, Bath County Plein Air Festival, is going on unless 50% of the selling price is paid to the Warm Springs Gallery.  I understand that the Warm Springs Gallery will conduct all sales.  I hereby give Warm Springs Gallery permission to use images of work that I enter into the Bath County Plein Air Festival competition for publicity purposes. I understand that I will receive credit for any such reproduction(s) of my work.