"SPLASH! Mystery of the Studio - The Intrigue of the Brush," will be the cornerstone exhibit for the 2006 Festival. From the more classical figurative and landscape painting techniques, to the surreal, photo realistic and whimsical, this year's exhibition features concept work from the Pacific Northwest artist organization known as Splash. Twenty regional and internationally published Splash members representing the National Watercolor Society, the Northwest Watercolor Society, the Watercolor Society of Oregon, the Colored Pencil Society of America, as well as the Portland Art Museum's Rental Sales Gallery, will lead you through an interactive studio tour of sky-reaching creativity-introducing you to their world - where limits are set only by the imagination. Workshops, critiques, storyboard displays, technique-play and product demonstrations are scheduled throughout the three-day Festival.

Events:

• Twenty "SPLASH-themed" paintings will be accompanied by storyboards showing step-by-step processes of a painting from "concept to completion." Because each artist works with varied mediums, with a variety of styles on different supports,
  the individual storyboards will ducate the public on the essentials of painting.
• Invitational Critiques will be provided. We will inform the public as to how to "see" artwork from the artist's perspective.
• Eight demonstrations will offer instructional insight on various techniques. These formal presentations will give each visitor a classroom style instruction in an artist's studio setting.
• SPLASH artists Portraying the Same Photographed Subject: A unique expression showing different points of view, enabling others to see and experience one subject twenty different ways.
• Painting in Progress: Watch a painting develop with washes of color by a watercolor painter, or the rapid brush strokes of a more impressionistic acrylics artist.
• The "SPLASH" Gallery: Up to 100 additional paintings displaying exceptional versatility in diverse painting styles.

SPLASH! Exhibit Curators: Dyanne Locati, L. Marie Miller

SPLASH! Membership:
Ruth Armitage, Tualatin  - Sally B. Bailey, Mt. Hood  - Lee Baughman, Vancouver  - Kathy Bethurum, Olympia  - Susan Cowan, Tacoma  - Mitchell Freifeld, Portland  - Janet Louvau Holt, Portland  - Lois Larson, Portland  - Dyanne Locati, Gladstone  - L. Marie Miller, West Linn  - Anna Mastellos Morris, Portland  - Mary Ellen Otten, Beaverton  - Nathan Pendleton, Dayton  - Kara Pilcher, Boring  - Jan Rimerman, Lake Oswego  - Linda Rothchild Ollis, Scappoose  - Patricia Schmidt, Portland  - Kim E. Smith, Prineville  -  Lynne Taylor, Gaston  -  Hank Weber, Vancouver.