Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival

08/12/2026

Just a friendly reminder that today is our kids workshops from 12pm to 6:30pm! Check out paintdexter.com/youth-workshops/ for more information. Walk-ups are allowed, so don't hesitate coming down to Monument Park!

We want to shout out the Rotary Club of Dexter for sponsoring this year's kids workshops!!

08/10/2026

Calling all artists and patrons!

The Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival is kicks off tomorrow, August 10th! We are incredibly excited for the 14th year of the festival, and have some new things in store for all to enjoy, such as additional performances on Friday and Saturday!

Check out our schedule of events at the end of this email and mark your calendars for this year's Paint Dexter!

Workshops for Children and Young Adults

The Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival will host the Children’s Painting Workshops on Wednesday, August 12th. The sessions are separated by age bracket and include: elementary school age, middle school age, and high school age and above.

For more information, or to register for one or more of these sessions, please visit https://paintdexter.com/youth-workshops/.

All art supplies provided.
Workshops held rain or shine.
Cost to participate is $10 per child/young adult. We kindly request prepaying to assist in estimating participation, but can take payment day-of.

Volunteers

The Dexter Arts, Culture, and Heritage Committee is looking for volunteers to assist with Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival operations. We welcome any interested individuals, groups, and artists to sign-up for one of the many volunteer opportunities that the festival has to offer. The Festival runs from Monday, August 10th through Saturday, August 16th. For additional information, please visit: https://paintdexter.com/volunteers/

Events and Performances

Included below is a schedule of Paint Dexter events, and a list of the incredible performances planned throughout the festival!

07/31/2026

With the festival just over a week away, please check out our schedule of awesome events and workshops! Make sure to swing by the Tent Gallery in Monument Park Friday (Aug. 14th) and Saturday (Aug. 15th) and snag a stunning piece of Dexter Art!!!

07/10/2026

Save the Date - Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival is only a month away!

Between August 10th to 15th, artists will once again converge on Dexter to render their artistic interpretation of our charming City and lush surrounding landscapes.

Volunteers

The Dexter Arts, Culture, and Heritage Committee is looking for volunteers to assist with Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival operations. We welcome any interested individuals, groups, and artists to sign up for one of the many volunteer opportunities that the festival has to offer. The Festival runs from Monday, August 10th through Saturday, August 15th. To sign up and help make this year's festival a success, please visit: https://paintdexter.com/volunteers/

Host an Artist

Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival artists come to Dexter from all over the Country (and Canada) to participate. A week of hotel rooms can get very expensive, so we are reaching out to Dexter-area residents on behalf of the artists to find people that may be interested in hosting one of the artists from Monday, August 10th through Saturday, August 15th. If you are one of those interested individuals, please let us know by filling out the Host an Artist form available at: https://paintdexter.com/volunteers/.

Workshops for Children and Young Adults

The Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival will host the Children’s Painting Workshops on Wednesday, August 12th. The sessions are separated by age bracket and include: elementary school age, middle school age, and high school age and above.

For more information, or to register for one or more of these sessions, please visit https://paintdexter.com/youth-workshops/.

All art supplies provided.
Workshops held rain or shine.
Cost to participate is $10 per child/young adult.

Have A Painting Made of Your Property!

Do you have an interesting house, field, stream, or barn on your property? Are you interested in having a painting of your property created by an amazing artist? For this year’s Festival, we are creating a list of properties in and around Dexter where our participating artists can go to paint *with the permission of the property owner*. If you are interested in having your property added to this list, please visit our online registration page at: https://paintdexter.com/volunteers/.

Please only register your own property. Properties must be in the Dexter School District (Dexter-area). We cannot guarantee that any of the artists will choose to create a painting of your property, but the list will be provided to all of the artists. Finished paintings will likely be on sale in the Monument Park Tent Gallery from Friday, August 14th through Saturday, August 15th.

06/01/2026

🎨 Featured Artist: Tina Hotchkiss

Tina Hotchkiss grew up on a horse farm in central Ohio, where an early closeness to the natural world planted the seeds of an artistic life. After earning a Bachelor's degree in Arts and Sciences from The Ohio State University, she spent 15 years working as a commercial and residential designer-a career that deepened her appreciation for drawing, rendering, and the skilled hands of the designers she worked alongside.

That love of the creative process eventually led her beyond the drafting table and into the studio. Wanting to share what she had learned, Tina began teaching drawing, and the experience proved so rewarding that she expanded her practice to include watercolor, colored pencils, and pastels-always with an eye toward exploring new forms of artistic expression.

Her work begins in nature. Photographs she takes in the field become the starting point for compositions built around shape, value, and color. Working on watercolor paper, she draws with a masked, scribbled line that suggests movement and individuality, then layers vibrant watercolor washes that flow organically across the surface. Black gesso and colored pencils are added where detail and definition are called for-each element working together to bring her vision of the natural world to life.

Tina currently teaches from her own studio and serves as a resident artist on the Etchr platform. She is a member of the Chelsea Painters, the National Watercolor Society (and its Michigan chapter), the Ann Arbor Art Guild, and the Brighton Art Guild, and has participated in numerous juried and non-juried exhibitions sponsored by these organizations.

You can find Tina and her work at Paint Dexter this year-we're glad to have her!

05/29/2026

Calling all professional artist!

This will be the last call for artists to apply for the Paint Dexter Professional category. Registration will be closing Monday, June 1st, with jurying beginning shortly after. To register, please visit: www.paintdexter.com/artist-registration/

Upon registration, please email [email protected] the following items:

-Three (3) samples of your artwork
-An artist biography (can be anywhere from a few sentences to a few paragraphs)

The deadline to submit artist samples and bios will be Wednesday, June 3rd, at 5:00pm.

Emerging category artists: Your registration deadline is July1st.

“I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”                                                                                              Claude Monet Use this page to register for: Main ...

05/04/2026

Did you know your home could be the subject of a Paint Dexter Festival painting?

We're curating a list of distinctive Dexter School District properties to help Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival artists find inspiring locations to paint. Featured here is local residents Courtney & Mike and their home on Baker Road which has been used as a subject not once, but twice for Paint Dexter!

Register your property below for a chance to be part of the art!: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScuUN1jkyxuBQLTnTQn-htFSErmlO4TJj7LQoRAfLS_nTDiKw/viewform

05/01/2026

🎨 Featured Artist of the Month: Cornelis VanSpronsen

Born in the Netherlands, Cornelis spent his formative years across Holland, Indonesia, and France before calling the United States home. A painter since the age of 12, he built a distinguished career as an art director, graphic artist, and designer, operating his own design studio for 25 years before devoting himself fully to painting.

His deep love of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements shapes everything he puts to canvas, revealing itself in loose, gestural, and immediate brushwork that feels alive in the moment. Cornelis participates in juried en plein air events and national competitions, while also taking on studio commission work. His ongoing travels both at home and abroad continue to fuel the rich variety of subject matter that defines his work.


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Cornelius is one of many talented artists we've had the privilege of featuring. Our Featured Artist of the Month highlights past Paint Dexter participants-so if you're wondering how to get involved, we'd love to have you! Professional Artists can register through June 1st by emailing sample images and a bio (in a Word doc) to [email protected] before signing-up. Emerging Artists have until July 1st to register. Click here to learn more and sign up: https://paintdexter.com/artist-registration/

04/24/2026

We are so grateful to announce three wonderful Award Sponsors for this year's plein air festival! 🎨Uart, Golden Artist Colors & Silver Brush Ltd.

They are each generously contributing prizes that will be awarded to our talented artists. Details on the specific award are coming soon-stay tuned!

Thank you to these incredible businesses for supporting the arts and our community. We couldn't do this without you! 🙏

04/02/2026

🎨Featured Artist of the Month: JIll Stefani Wagner

Whatever she paints, Jill Wagner's focus is always "the light"-and how it transforms every scene she captures. Working in pastel and oil, she approaches her paintings as a sculptor would, carving out nuances of light and shadow to bring her subjects to life.
A devoted plein air artist, Wagner paints at festivals across the U.S. and Europe, bringing an immediacy and authenticity to her work that can only come from painting in the open air. She holds the distinguished title of Master Pastelist with the Pastel Society of America and Master Circle with the International Association of Pastel Societies-among the highest honors in her field.

Her work has been featured in Pastel Journal, Fine Art Connoisseur, and Plein Air Magazine, which selected one of her paintings for its cover. A sought-after instructor, Wagner teaches workshops throughout the U.S. and Europe and has served on the faculty of the Plein Air Convention multiple times.

Jill's paintings are held in corporate and private collections across the United States and Europe, and she is represented by four fine art galleries in the Midwest. A University of Michigan School of Art graduate, she once owned an award-winning advertising agency in Ann Arbor-before "seeing the light" and dedicating herself fully to her art.
🌐 Website: https://www.jillwagnerart.com/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jill.s.wagner


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Jill is one of many talented artists we've had the privilege of featuring. Our Featured Artist of the Month highlights past Paint Dexter participants-so if you're wondering how to get involved, we'd love to have you! Professional Artists can register through June 1st by emailing sample images and a bio (in a Word doc) to [email protected] before signing-up. Emerging Artists have until July 1st to register. Click here to learn more and sign up: https://paintdexter.com/artist-registration/