Second Place - Desert Blooms by Sharyn Richey

Dana mentioned that I seemed to have known exactly when to stop. I wish I knew that every time! I did it rather quickly and so felt that, surely, I had not worked on it enough. And yet it felt right. So I had to keep hiding it away from myself to keep from adding "just another touch." And each time I took it out again I felt again that it was complete as is and finally called it done.

For me it is filled with spiritual meaning. The "desert" is a kind of archetypal setting for any blank canvas or paper I face and painting is the way to "make the desert bloom." I do not feel that I am creating something but unveiling something. It is life itself that springs forth. One of my favorite lines from Scripture is Isaiah 35:1 "The desert will rejoice and flowers bloom in the wilderness. The desert will sing and shout for joy."

Honorable Mention: Dream a Little Dream of Me by Helen Stanley

This abstract-like or surreal painting almost describes my "stream of conscious" during the pandemic: no rhyme or reason, few consistent thoughts. I applied gesso, to an old painting, using a palette knife to make sure lots of the under-color showed through. The shapes that emerged guided my thought process and with charcoal I drew objects that appealed to me at the time. I painted the "abstract landscape" with watercolor and gouache and applied my own hand-painted papers to add more texture and interest.

Honorable Mention: HARVEY by Larry Spitzberg

HARVEY is really two paintings. I first made an abstract cityscape which seemed muted and boring so i put it away. A few weeks later I pulled it out and wrote HARVEY with the dark foreboding clouds and the drip of the watercolor paint as the heavy rain. That seemed to give the painting pizzazz and a heart and soul that I wanted.

Honorable Mention: 4th of July Meadow by Andie Helen

4th of July Meadow was a new way of painting for me. In a class given by Susan Giannantonio, she had introduced the term “mark making.” This was a new way of thinking about how to deal with the surface of a painting.

Susan always stresses being adventurous in our work and trying new things. Fascinated with the new term “mark making,” the effort to create an old, fond memory began. I played John Philip Sousa’s music and tried to experiment with abstract placement of marks to recreate my memory of a warm and sunny meadow where a 4th of July picnic took place long ago.

May everyone have a wonderful 4th of July this year!!

Honorable Mention: Complicated by Reva Power

What a privilege to have my painting, “Complicated” selected for honorable mention. When creating my watercolor art, I often begin with a medium to light under painting in a particular color pallet. I frequently use “lacy paper” in compositions, essentially stenciling it on a piece of watercolor paper. That sheet then begins a journey to becoming a possible candidate as an underpainting for a given image. Like many I was taught to make a simple line drawing of my motif prior to drawing it on the watercolor paper. It helps you to see possible weaknesses. Looking at my line drawing of the guitar players face, I thought back to the time in Curacao where I talked with this street musician, and he let me snap his picture. I felt that underpainting created by the stenciled effect of painting of the lacy paper would support the vibrancy needed to hear the music. It was a fun painting to create.