A cannabis shop, motel and McDonald’s in a row on Heber City Main Street. Cows grazing in the North Fields. Mount Timpanogos obscured by the wildfire-induced haze and ash that swept through the Wasatch Back last Friday.  These are but a few of the paintings that can be found in Midway Town Ha ll during the Midway Art Association’s 19th annual Plein Air Paradise festival, which continues through Saturday. Plein air is a French art form that involves painting outdoors.  The Midway Art Association’s festival included four plein air events over the past two weeks: the main competition, in which artists must paint Wasatch and Summit counties, competitions restricted to Heber City and Midway, and a nocturne or sunrise painting competition. The festival also has several auctions, including an auction of work artists will paint around Midway’s town square on Saturday morning. Plein air artists combine the skill sets of visionary Vincent van Gogh and survivalist Bear Grylls. There’s a lot of preparation involved, according to Midway Art Association copresident Marge Bowen. “A lot of artists will have wagons, but then you have to be able to roll it to where you’re going. There are easels that you can use as backpacks, so some artists are pretty compact,” she said. “Plein air artists have to be prepped to be outside in anything.” Still, excursions sometimes turn into disasters. “Bugs can fly into the wet paint. … If the wind kicks up, I’m telling you, a whole easel can go down. … When you’re standing outside in the North Fields, you’ll have trucks go by, and there’s a lot of dust, so you’ve got to be ready for that,” she said. “There’s lots of fun things that can go on out there.” The festival has attracted 135 brave artists to the Wasatch Back this year. They hope to earn awards as large as $2,200 and sell their artwork along the way. They hail from nine states, some coming from as far as Florida and Hawaii.  But many of these artists are locals, such as Heber City resident M. Scott Woodruff, who has participated in the competition for about four years.  Woodruff has been obsessed with art ever since he was a kid. “Sitting on my dad’s lap at church, he would draw on the back of the sacrament program to keep me quiet, because I had a lot of energy. He was a graphics designer, so art was his natural language. I became transfixed on that,” he said. When it came time to pick a career, Woodruff wanted to become an artist. “My dad’s like, ‘I’ll break your fingers if you become an artist,’” he said. “I didn’t know that’s an in-joke among artists. I took it seriously.” So he pursued architecture instead, which gave him opportunities to sketch buildings for clients. M. Scott Woodruff shares a painting of the original Heber Valley Railroad depot, left, and a sketch of its current station, right. Woodruff retired three years ago and discovered plein air painting at a competition in Ogden. He thought of himself as an amateur, but his painting of the Hill Aerospace Museum placed second in the professional category. He’s been hooked ever since. He typically begins with a pencil sketch before outlining it with a fine tip pen and painting it with watercolors.  In a competition full of paintings of natural landscapes and wildlife, Woodruff’s depictions of buildings around Heber City stand out. Every brick and wooden slat is intricately detailed, and the buildings have a sense of texture viewers can almost touch. Woodruff is drawn to painting buildings related to the Heber Valley Railroad in no small part because he worked there as a conductor about two decades ago. His grandfather was also a conductor on the tourist railroad.  Woodruff completed his nocturne painting, the train station under the light of the full moon, on Tuesday evening. Another of his plein air works, which he painted during last year’s competition, depicts the Heber Valley Railroad’s original depot, broken windows and all. “It’s just sad watching it decay. But it gets a lot of interesting texture and detail, and there’s history here,” Woodruff said.  The artist’s passion for historic buildings is evident from his attention to detail and relentless enthusiasm. “This is the real heart and soul of the community, because you go south of the city park, and it could be Main Street, Anywhere U.S.A., because you’ve got all your chain stores,” he said. “But then, north of that, up to the city building, which was the old Wasatch Stake Tabernacle, that’s the real texture, that’s the real nature of Heber.” For two of Woodruff’s plein air pieces this year, he scouted out historic homes and painted them from the comfort of his camping chair. He ended up talking to the owners of one of the homes, who happened to be in their yard when he was setting up. “They’d been in the house for 20 years. They love it,” he said. “It’s got an original sandstone foundation. It’s this typical 1890s, 1900s form on it, especially with all the beautiful woodwork.” Painting in public often leads to conversations and compliments, which Woodruff joked give him hope for the human race in a time that often feels chaotic and negative. Plein air painting is an excellent way to gain a greater appreciation for one’s surroundings, he said. “You can live in an area and not really see it until you have to slow down and paint it,” he said. “You can snap a pic … and it’s one of the hundreds or thousands of pictures on your phone that (makes you think), ‘Why did I take that pic?’ But when you sit down and do a painting, it’s an investment.” Artwork from the Midway Art Association’s Plein Air Paradise festival will be available to browse and purchase at Midway Town Hall until 6 p.m. on Friday and from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. The quick draw will also take place Saturday morning for those interested in watching artists paint around Midway’s town square. At 11 a.m., that work will be auctioned off. Learn more at midwayartassociation.com. The post Artists from across America flock to Midway, a plein air paradise appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less