- There are a lot of paintings of cats and dogs in this show
- The show has a lot of red dots and was packed the rainy, miserable, sleety day that I visited
- This is the best art show that I've seen in 2018
More than 700 mini-masterpieces travel from across the globe to be included in this prodigious juried exhibition. You’ll marvel at the ability of the artist to create a portrait, still life, or landscape the size of a postage stamp.Creating miniature artwork is a genre of art which has always earned a lot of respect from me, and one in which I have dabbled myself. In fact, two or three decades ago I was part of one of these annual exhibitions organized by the venerable MPSGS!
As my family was with me, and as there are over 700 works of art to examine, I asked both my wife, who is not only a highly trained artist herself, but also a researcher in the field of arts integration into the classroom, and a published author in this seminal field, and my 9-year-old son, already a seasoned visitor of hundreds of art shows and dozens and dozens of art fairs, to help me. Over the years I have also learned how children's eyes often see art in ways in which adults do not.
This spectacular show was juried by the very skilled painter Chris Krupinski, one of the most talented watercolor painters alive on the planet, and one who's gonna forget more about watercolor than the rest of us will ever learn.
Krupinski is a magician with a brush and her selection of award-winners for this show, for the first time that I can recall in any show that I've reviewed in the last 30 years, closely matched a lot of my top picks, although we differed in the Best in Show award, and a few others, as anyone would expect. Over the last 2-3 decades I have juried, curated or organized over 200+ art shows around the DMV and the nation, so I feel pretty secure in going toe-to-toe with Chris, although I will admit that she's a much better painter that I could ever dream of being!
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| Oil Country by Dean Mitchell |
Chris awarded the Edith Trifiletti Memorial Award - Judge's Choice - Best in Show to this watermedia painting by Florida artist Dean Mitchell.
The painting is brilliantly executed, with all the freshness and looseness that all painters are told to strive and aim for, and which seldom few truly achieve! One recommendation for Dean Mitchell: Lose the copyright symbol before the year - that symbol is not needed for visual arts copyrighting any longer.
Chris awarded the First Place John Thompson Memorial Awards for Portraiture to the below piece by British painter Michael Coe. It is this spectacular work that I would have (with some struggles to be highlighted later) awarded the Best in Show.
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| Girl With Gold Earrings Michael Coe |
Back to cats - as I noted earlier, there were an
And yet, this gorgeous painting by Akiko Watanabe stood out, in spite of its sucralose subject (I wonder how many ways to say sugary I can think of...), because it is an intelligent, well-composed... ah... magnificent painting.
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| Curious Rusty Akiko Watanabe |
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| Bernese Mountain Dog Vivian Matsick |
Since I'm allergic to both, I'm neutral on the subject.
The award which is titled the Diane L. Templar Memorial Award for Best in Dogs went to Vivian Matsick of her impressive portrait of a Bernese mountain dog. Ms. Matsick is also a very good painter and a very well-executed painting.
I must mention that this painting was also in my son's list of his top selections, and Anderson really, really liked it!
With over 700 pieces in the show, there are a lot of awards, all well-earned and highly deserved, and there is a Richard J. Palco Memorial Award for Best in Animals, where Krupinski and I agreed on the winner again.
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| Racing the Waves Judy Lalingo |
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| There's One in Every Family Judy Schrader |
But I think that my top award would go to There's One in Every Family by Judy Schrader... or was it Old House in Rome by Lena Leitzke?
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| Old House in Rome Lena Leitzke |
Krupinski gave the first award to Denise Horne-Kaplan's exquisite painting of three popping zebras titled Three's Company, and that little gem was also in my short list for Best in Show. It is a very striking painting.
And yet Elaine Nunnally's King Street, 9 p.m., also tugged at me mightily.
In fact all three of Nunnally's paintings in this show could have won awards as far as my highly educated and opinionated eye could discern.
There were also five drawing awards, and they were all excellent choices.
I once read that I am the best drawing artist alive on the Earth (I wrote it, then I read it). And as such, this is my category to huff and puff about, and these artists are all masters of this most essential of foundational skills. Not included in this set of awards, but a drawing nonetheless, was the winner of the Margaret Hicks Memorial Award for Best New Artist, which went to Sue deLearie Adair.
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| The Sunbathers Sue deLearie Adair |
On to the five pastel awards: we concurred on three of the five awards, and the awarded pieces by Helen Mathyssen-Dobbins (First Place), Leland Williams (Second Place), and Jan Vermilya (Honorable Mention) all could have been first prize winners, and I suspect that the judge also struggled with these great pastels.
I was pleasantly surprised to find small sculptures in this miniature show, although nowhere near in the numbers for two-dimensional work - of course. The Col. Archibald King Memorial Awards for Sculpture's top prize went to Joy Kroeger Beckner's playful sculpture of a dog... cough, cough.
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| A Good Life (Wire 12/50) Joy Kroeger Beckner |
I am not really sure what the next media was, but there are also five awards for Ivory/Ivorine, and the winners of the Levantia White Boardman Memorial Awards for Ivory/Ivorine were all exceptional choices.
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| Gray Tree Frog Linda Lawler |
My choice for first prize in this category would have been Gray Tree Frog by Linda Lawler. Since this was Anderson's choice as well, we win 2-1!
I must admit that Grandpa's Paints by Jeanie Gordon, and No Fly Zone by Lynn Wade also tugged at me and are outstanding paintings.
In fact, between all these wizards of this media, I had to research it, and quickly discovered that it's just the substrate for the painting - basically a painting executed on ivory or its man-made replacement, Ivorine.
The John Thompson Memorial Awards for Portraiture were easily won by Girl With Gold Earrings by Michael Coe, who I thought should have won Best in Show. This was a tough competition, as there were a lot of portraits (not as many as cats and dogs). Innocence by June Holloway is a brilliant portrait of an adorable little girl, and was in both my wife and my list.
There were also a lot of still life paintings and the genre had its own category, and my top choice was Apples for Sale by Elaine Hahn. I've followed and admired this artist's works for over three decades and she just keeps on getting better and better!
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| Apples for Sale Elaine Hahn |
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| The Picnic at the Show Joyce Rowsell |
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| Late Afternoon of Long Shadows Gini Harris |
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| Ginger's Ginger Jar Hanna Woodring |
Since this was a team effort, let me document that my wife's favorites also included Meditation Pond by New Jersey artist Linda Rossin and Assateague Island by Pennsylvania's Judy Schrader - both excellent picks! She also quite admired June Holloway's Innocence, which was also a prizewinner (Second Place in Portraiture).
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| Fox in Profile Carol McClees |
In addition to the mentions discussed earlier, the littlest Campello selected I'm "Nut" Fat by Celyne Brassard as his Best in Show winner (aligning with the judge's selection of this work as Best in Realism awardee) - but split that top prize with Carol McClees' previously discussed Fox in Profile! The first choice is indeed a wonderful painting, but I quite liked her Influenced by Mary Pratt a little better.
Jennifer Rutherford's Field with Trees After Storm was selected by Anderson as his First Place winner, and Still Waters by Barbara Stanton as his Second Place choice and Stonehenge by Elizabeth Stechter as his Third Place award winner.
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| Marshes and Clouds Leland Williams |
I had a lot of other faves in this show: I quite liked Leland Williams' Marshes and Clouds, a pastel which won the Second Prize in that category, Bringing Spring Indoors by Hanna Woodring (who is a remarkable trompe l'oeil painter), all of Lynn Wade's entries, also Karin E. Snoots works, Rachelle Siegrist's watermedias, Melissa Miller Nece colored pencils, Brenda Morgan's oils, Helen Mathyssen-Dobbins' pastels, and Luann Houser (whose A Lady and Her Gentleman won second prize in oils).
Also standing out above the masses were the three entries by Oklahoma artist Eric Matthew Gonzalez, and Ohio's Jeanie Gordon's Homegrown was the most painterly of all the entries - I cannot even imagine the skill required to be "painterly" and "brushy" at this size! Her Homegrown oil on Ivorine was all of that and more! Add to my list New Jersey artist Eva Marie Fitzsimmons - all three of her Acrylic on panel paintings were excellent and the best deal in the show as far as price was concerned.
Of interest (to me anyway) my son and I agreed on a dozen artists or so, including Celyne Brassard, John Brennan and Lauren Carlo.
To close this review and discussion, let me circle back to the beginning: this is the best art show that I've seen in the region this year, and a gigantic bow of thanks is owed to the juror, Chris Krupinski for a most admirable job in what most have been a really, really... really hard jury task!
You can see all the award winners here.
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