This past weekend we were in Lakeland just at the right time to see
Mayfaire By The Lake, an annual event which celebrated it's 50th year. We hadn't purposely gone to Lakeland for that event, but just got lucky that it was happening during the same weekend that we were in the area.
On Sunday morning we began our walk around Lake Morton, spotting many swans, storks and ducks while checking out all of the artist exhibits. There were some amazing paintings and some really cool sculptures. Some examples can be seen at
https://www.mayfairebythelake.org/2022-artists-gallery.
I was surprised to find a booth for The Highwaymen. In college, one of my writing assignments was about this famous group of landscape painters.
Ray McLendon (second-generation painter after his father, one of the original Highwaymen, Roy McLendon) was there painting a beautiful scene at the event.
Grace picked out a painting to buy from the Kids Collection, which was a cool painting of some multi-colored zebras.
There were also some neat pieces of metalwork made out of railroad spikes. I saw a few that made me laugh, including one called Karate and another called Colonoscopy, but unfortunately, no photos were allowed in that area. The cheapest ones were about $40. Nothing that I wanted to buy, but fun just the same. Take a look at
https://shortlinespikes.com/.
My favorite artist overall was Nick Ringelstetter, not only for his style of art, but also because his booth encouraged visitors to take photos of his art. I've uploaded a few photos that I snapped quickly, but my photos don't do his work justice, so be sure to check out
https://atomic7studio.com/shop/the-nothing/ for more amazing examples of what he paints.
