FIRST PLACE !

"One Down, Two to Go"  16x20 oil

This is one of my favorite paintings, so I was really pleased when it took First Place at Arts Clayton's new show, "Here and Now".  Asked about the format, I told the story of this 'slice of life' painting:
I received permission to use a photo reference taken by a four-year-old of the preparations her family goes through for a 4-H lamb show.  Whether she meant to crop her dad's head out of the picture or not, she achieved a focus on the activity instead of a face, which I found compelling to paint.  You can feel the warm, humid spring in Georgia as her dad wipes the sweat from his brow and says "Whew...one down, two to go", referring to the two unshorn sheep in the pasture.
The judge, Will Fenn, said that he considered it "a stand-out".  Will is a visiting professor at Ernest G. Welch School of Design at Georgia State University.  He is Arts Clayton's 2010 Juried Photography Judge and currently has a solo show in their second gallery called "Pearls", a collection of photographic images using the tin-type process.

Tin-type photographic images by Will Fenn

We got into a discussion about the time processes of tin-type and traditional representational painting.  In this era of instant gratification, he at first gets resistance from his students, who can take 100 reproducible digital shots to one original non-reproducible tin-type, which requires even further processing to complete.  I get the same reaction when teaching layers of painting to my students.  But as his students settle into the process, they get a certain satisfaction that has many putting in extra hours on their own, he says.  As the world moves faster and faster, we both expressed hope that there will be a resurgence in the appreciation of the traditional and historical arts and crafts, even though there may be fewer of us producing them.