The Wichita Falls Museum of Art at MSU Texas hosted an outdoor painting workshop May 11 to celebrate Mother’s Day. The main goals of the event were to promote family unity, creativity and a passion for art.

The event consisted of painting a fragment of the landscape around Sikes Lake. Each participant could choose the view they wanted to capture, so that around the lake several people and families could be seen. Each painted different perspectives of the same lake with watercolors, thus achieving a great diversity in paintings and settings.

Although this time the event celebrated Mother’s Day, usually these outdoor painting workshops are held every Thursday and Saturday. Sarah Griego, education coordinator, said Thursday groups are usually smaller but this time there were about 15 people, making this one of the largest of the weekday groups so far.

“It’s a really good group for Thursday. We had a variety of ages, the youngest 7 years old, while the oldest was around 60. We always have a variety of ages which is really good for this type of workshops” Griego said.

Likewise, former MSU student Christopher Astudillo mentioned that the event was very successful, suitable for the family environment and fun for those who are not artists.

“I am enjoying it a lot. It really gets you out there painting because I’m not an artist at all, but this event has helped me to become more creative and it’s also a possibility to learn more things about art, and anything about the museum,” Astudillo said.

In the same way, Astudillo highlighted the work of MSU promoting this kind of event, since it not only benefits its students, faculty and staff, but also the museum.

“I like that MSU plays a big part and creating this event gives the museum more opportunities to do this workshops and engage with the community not only of the university but of the town itself,” Astudillo said.

Additionally, Sarah Griego mentioned an art exhibition that will be held in conjunction with MSU Texas and the regional museum network, where once a year several of the works produced in different workshops of the year are exhibited. 

“We are gonna take some of the kits that we’ve made, some people art work and pictures of the events and we are going to have that as an exhibit,” Griego said.

This exhibition will take place from June 2 to Aug. 27 at the Museum of North Texas History in downtown Wichita Falls.