It was hard to have missed the artists as they lined streets and overlooks with views for the past week. Setting up easels on Broadway, by Lake Flower and facing the High Peaks, the 49 artists who contributed to the ninth annual festival used oils, pastels and watercolors to bring the beauty of the Adirondacks to canvas.

“I’d like people to appreciate the environment,” festival organizer Sandra Hildreth said. “I care about the Adirondack Park where I live.”

“It is really the freshness of the untouched nature,” said Vlad Yeliseyev, who traveled from Florida. “It is very natural. It is a godsend to the artist.”

This year was Dave Munn’s first time attending the art show in the Harrietstown Town Hall. He has seen the artists scattered throughout the area year after year and found their work shed new light on Saranac Lake.

Laura Martinez-Bianco worked in groups of painters, all depicting the same scene with their own personal flair at the Adirondack Plein Air Festival. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

“It’s a different perspective of the town I live in,” Mann said.

“There are a lot of shows you can go to and you don’t see your town and your area represented so clearly and so beautifully,” Faith Lundgren added.

For the artists, the Plein Air Festival is a chance to gather with other right-brained friends and strangers, finding the differences and similarities in everything from their choice of locations to paint to the colors they use.

“You can do a painting of anything; it’s just how you look at it,” Laura Martinez-Bianco said. “We could all look at the same scene, and we could all come up with a portion or part of that.”

Several pieces depict the same landscape, and many artists focused on the same staples of the Adirondacks: mountains, lakes and plants. Despite this, each artist brought his or her original angle on the work.

Vlad Yeliseyev said he came from Florida to paint in the Adirondack Plein Air Festival because he heard the landscape views are “unprecedented.” (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

“[I like] seeing how each one is unique,” said Jackson Tucker, who attended the showing with his parents.

With so many scenic areas to depict and only four days to do it in, the artists quickly had to choose locations for their pieces.

“You have to work fast,” Katherine Galbraith said. “You are trying to find something that just really punches you in the face and says, ‘Paint me. Paint me.'”

Once they find the perfect locations, they start in on their work, studying the landscape and learning from it.

“After you spend a couple of hours at a location, you come to know it very well,” said Susan Whiteman, a five-year artist at the festival. “It becomes a matter of expressing what you feel there.”

Susan Whiteman uses pastels to depict Adirondack scenes, a technique she says is getting more popular year after year at the Plein Air Festival. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

A free showing and sale of the paintings will take place today from noon to 5 p.m. at the Harrietstown Town Hall, 39 Main St., Saranac Lake.

People look at paintings made during this week's Adirondack Plein Air Festival on Friday in the auditorium of the Harrietstown Town Hall in Saranac Lake. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

People look at paintings made during this week's Adirondack Plein Air Festival on Friday in the auditorium of the Harrietstown Town Hall in Saranac Lake. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)