On Thursday June 17, 2021, the Medway Cultural Council hosted a Plein Air event, Art in the Park at Choate Park it was a beautiful day for a few locals to find a spot on the grass to make art. Spectators and artists were both delighted at the outcome.

Plein air painting is about leaving the four walls of your studio behind and experiencing painting and drawing in the landscape. The practice goes back for centuries but was truly made into an art form by the French Impressionists. Their desire to paint light and its changing, ephemeral qualities, coupled with the creation of transportable paint tubes and the box easel—the precursor to the plein air easels of today—allowed artists the freedom to paint “en plein air,” which is the French expression for “in the open air.”