Artist Richard Laurent paints the Dearborn Observatory at Evanston’s first Plein Air Festival. Laurent is one of about 50 artists who created impressionist landscapes of the city in the outdoor, plein-air tradition this week. Their work will be displayed, put on sale and judged at noon Sunday in Fountain Square. Laurent also painted Custard’s Last Stand, Bennison’s Bakery, the Shakespeare Garden and the lakefront. “I think there is a sense of real that you get by being in front of the subject,” he said. “You can’t get this from a photograph in a studio.” (Photo by Richard Cahan)
