RRWS National Exhibit Bronze Medal

 

June has been full of nice surprises. The latest was the Bronze Medal at the RRWS National Exhibit in Moorhead, MN. I was not able to attend the opening ceremony last Tuesday, but did have a chance to see the show before it opened and the worker in charge of setting up the lights was kind enough to take this snapshot of me by my painting "No Left."

This piece retires from exhibits with a nice history. Initially, it was not successful and collected several rejections at shows, until I revised it by darkening the building and shadow on the right, and created a lead into the painting with the spatter on the foreground. After the adjustments, it was accepted into a local, a State and two national shows, and won an Honorable Mention and a Third Place Award.

It is a painting I love, not only because it shows one of my favorite places, San Francisco, but because its overall realism is undermined by the abstraction in the shadows and details, and I find the interplay of the two very intriguing.

Shadows of History at the LAG Exhibit

Shadows of History, watercolor on paper, 9x12

Finally back home from a long trip... I was unable to attend the Longmont Artists' Guild 2015 show, but heard it was very successful and learned my painting Shadows of History won the second place award for watercolors. It was great to have a chance to display some of these smaller paintings, as a lot of other shows have size restrictions.

This was one of the first paintings I did without the use of a pencil drawing. I was really pleased a how well the straight lines ended up, and at the positive/negative design of the fence, which prevented it from being too conspicuous and restrictive. I am very glad juror James Whartman saw merit in it as well.

The subject here is a view of a farm setting at the Littleton History Museum during a paint-out. I did a different scene en plein air and captured this view with my camera. Years later, I did this painting from that photo but could still remember a lot of the light and atmosphere of that bright summer day.