Art at Fernwood Botanical Garden

As I recently mentioned, my two paintings from the Sky Pads Series made it into the 6th Annual Landscape exhibit at Fernwood. As predicted, I didn’t win any awards. However, I picked out my personal winner choices before the awards were announced, and two of them matched the judge’s choices. That never happens!

These are my two entries.

Here’s a short (47 seconds) video of all 51 paintings. It starts with mine and ends with mine. If you play the video, see if anything stands out to you as possible winners. I wish the video was not so jumpy and didn’t have as many”hot” spots in it. All I can say is, iPhone videos are recorded in a weird proprietary codex invented by Apple and in many cases they have to be converted to a different format for editing and/or posting on different sites. That’s what happened here. It looks great on my phone though (sigh)…

I got to the reception early so I could get a good look at everything before it got crowded. That’s one of the downsides of art receptions–so many people standing around looking at art that you can’t see it without butting in or waiting forever for a vantage point to open up. In addition to my two personal choices that were also the judge’s choices I had two other favorites, so let’s take a look at all of them, shall we?

This lovely painting, “The Last Day of Autumn”, is by Katrina Jones. I was familiar with her work already because last winter she was one of the artists who had work at the Cass County Regional Gallery. In case I forgot to mention this a zillion blog posts ago, I am the exhibit coordinator for that gallery. So I was pleased to see this watercolor painting on Yupo. Yupo is somewhat of a trendy thing in watercolor nowadays. It’s a synthetic paper which is extruded from polypropylene pellets and is 100% recyclable, waterproof and tree-free. According to the promotional statements, “This extraordinary surface also resists tearing and buckling and it remains perfectly flat. Yupo provides visual artists with an amazingly beautiful canvas offering smooth, bright white opaques and wonderful translucents”. I think these two photos will prove the point, especially the close-up on the right.

The next piece is something I have never seen the likes of before. It’s by Ben Roseland, entitled “Autumn Forest”. What makes this acrylic on wood painting so amazing is that it is three-dimensional. I have no idea how he painted the sections so that looking at it head-on you get one smooth flat surface, but looking at it from either side it’s more like looking at columns of square tiles. Yet it all works! Here are the three views- right, left, and center.

Linda Fritschner used acrylic to turn what could have been an ordinary country lane into a coalition of shapes and colors that beckon you to step right into the painting. Its simple title, “Country Lane”, belies its well-executed perspective, use of light, and subtle colors. This one was a prize winner.

The last painting in my personal choice collection is this oil painting by Kim DeNolf titled “Sunset on Angela”. I have no idea where this is, but at least here in the stormy Midwest it could be any road shining brightly in the aftermath of a thunderstorm. I can certainly identify with the intense sky which despite its luminescence still requires headlights if you’re moving in the opposite direction! This one snatched up the “Best in Show” award.