Welcome!

Last October, The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts and the San Angelo & area communities welcomed 35 Competition Artists from 18 states who painted the town and surrounding countryside.  Artists were selected by juror (and 2017 Judge of Awards) Roger Dale Brown out of a talented field of applicants from 27 states and Canada.  Many are winning awards regularly on the national plein air competition circuit.

Generous community support has helped make each year's event an even greater TEXAS-sized success!  In 2015, local arts patron Elta Joyce McAfee started an endowment to ensure the future of EnPleinAirTEXAS.  To honor her parents and family name, the Grand Prize is now named "The Elta Joyce Murphey Award".  This very generous donation, and continued community & sponsor support have helped us each year to have record-breaking sales and contributions supporting the museum. Artists' sales in 2016 topped $220,000 for the week, and the artists generously donated a portion of all sales back to the museum.  

Each year the artists are wowed by the painting sites, and in the past three years have created over 750 fabulous paintings of the area's ranchlands, rivers, parks and iconic buildings all over San Angelo.  Many of these paintings are now in private homes and businesses.  The artists interpret a moment in time, captured on canvas or paper in their own artistic style, and these will be treasured for years to come.  

The fantastic sales ensure artists all over the country are talking about this event, plus, the net proceeds help support future art and plein air-related events for all ages through the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts educational programming.

EnPleinAirTEXAS aspires to change and enhance the culture of San Angelo,  giving us a prominent spot in the international plein air movement and showcasing us as an arts destination.  It will certainly emerge as a signature annual event for San Angelo and TEXAS in years to come.

 A BIT ABOUT US...

San Angelo is a vibrant oasis on the edge of the Chihuahuan Dessert, in the heart of sheep & goat country. The North Concho River runs through our city, separating the historic Fort Concho from a downtown full of eclectic western charm mixed with a blossoming music and arts scene.  

The dream of introducing San Angelo, Texas to the national plein air art stage was born while planning a plein air workshop in 2013 with nationally-known Pittsburgh plein air artist David Csont.  It became very obvious to us that we have all the ingredients in San Angelo: great sunshine, incredible unexpected ‘Paint Me!’ sites around every corner and down every country road, breath-taking West Texas sunsets, and our famous West Texas hospitality.

The award-winning San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts believed in this vision, and as the perfect partner, brought this dream to reality. Our visitors and our invited artists are entertained with a full week of mostly FREE events: exciting paintouts all over San Angelo, free talks & demos, opportunities to watch the artists painting along the banks of the South Concho River in Christoval made famous by the Artist Camps of the 1920’s, and so much more.   

To the lucky and talented Competition Artists who will be chosen for our 2017 event, we are ready to welcome you! There are still so many sites to be painted; and we cannot wait to see your artistic interpretations and know that one of you will take home the Grand Prize of our 2017 EnPleinAirTEXAS event! Our Texas-size prize amounts now total more than $16,000!

Our local artists and the San Angelo community are ready to welcome you all!

Howard Taylor, Director, SAN ANGELO MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS
Barbara Rallo, Coordinator/Co-Chair  EnPleinAirTEXAS
Treva Boyd, Co-Chair  EnPleinAirTEXAS