By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
The Art Gallery Osoyoos hosted the Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA), South Okanagan Similkameen Chapter annual juried art show titled “Beauty is In” featuring 21 artists who submitted 46 paintings for the competition which has strict requirements for acceptance of artwork.
Happy with the number of artists and submissions, Show Manager Mike Jordan said “this is always a pretty strong show.”
First place went to Nancy Gray for her painting “Rinsed and Ready”. Don Urquhart photos
Nancy Gray (left) with Mike Jordan.
This year’s first place finish went to Nancy Gray with Mike Jordan taking second and Claudia Punter third place. Three honourable mentions went to Diane Bennett-Way, Maureen Potter, and Carollyne Sinclaire.
Jordan noted the process which involved three FCA jurors from a pool of several hundred senior signature members involves a blind judging process.
The jurors get the digital images and the sizes of paintings, but no other information.
“They don’t know who the artist is, unless they take the time to try to discern the signature on the bottom of the painting, Jordan says. “So it’s a very dispassionate and objective process – as much as judging art can never really be objective.”
Mike Jordan’s “The Back Pasture” took second place.
Each of the three jurors grades the paintings out of a score of seven and then they take the median score and then rank them on an interval. “There’s always ties,” he says, “so then you have to work out the ties.
That’s always been a difficult thing. We used to have to work that out ourselves and that’s actually not part of the Federation guidelines,” which makes it all the more difficult.
And as far as the judging of his second place painting titled “The Back Pasture” Jordan says: “I don’t know why they liked it.” The painting itself is of a pastoral scene, that was his back pasture when he lived in Langley. “That’s our back pasture. Those are our cows,” he says.
“I did it as a plein air sketch out in the field and it just sat around in my basement for a very long time. I took it out one day and I thought ‘this could be a picture.’”
So I just went back and reworked a little bit, I added the pond on the right hand side and bunched up some of the trees until I thought it was reading about the right.
“There’s a kind of path that leads you in.” It’s an old trick that fixes the eye on the way into a painting, he notes.
“So, I think in that respect, it is probably a fair compositional sketch. And like I said, to me it’s not a really strong painting.” Clearly the judges felt otherwise.
“Daily Life in Wintertime” by Claudia Punter took third place.
Claudia Punter (left) with Mike Jordan.
For Claudia Punter, the natural world in which her house and yard up on Anarchist Mountain sits, is a constant artistic source of natural beauty.
For her work titled “Daily Life in Wintertime” Punter says she combined several images of deer which she had taken, into one painting.
Some of the deer are looking upwards, but at what, we don’t know. “It might be a crow or an eagle, but we don’t know what, and this I think makes it more lively,” she adds.
Earlier when there was more snow she said she would often see the deer digging to get down to some grass to eat. “Just to show nature, to show how nature works,” she said of her painting.
And for first place winner Nancy Gray, life is not about a box of chocolates, it’s about a bowl of cherries – cherries that in fact look good enough to eat.
When asked what her inspiration was for her painting titled “Rinsed and ready”, the answer is simple: Cherries are her favorite fruit. “I just bought a bunch of cherries and put them in the sink in a colander and decided that could be a good painting,” she laughs.
Painted with acrylic the cherries positively invoke some uncontrollable mouth watering, as they glisten and tease from their framed canvas.
Gray normally does acrylic and watercolor in all kinds of styles including still life, landscapes and a bit of abstract as well.
The “Beauty is In” juried show by the Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA), South Okanagan Similkameen Chapter is on at The Osoyoos Art Gallery at 8713 Main St, Osoyoos until March 23.
For more information visit their website (osoyoosartscouncil.com/the-art-gallery-osoyoos) or call (250) 495-2800.
