Judging art is very subjective. You canât take the results personally, or the process will chew you up.
 |
Tom Sawyer’s Fence, by Carol L. Douglas |
This weekend, a reader asked for help in choosing slides to apply to her first plein air event. She recognizes that her favorites might not be a jurorâs favorites. Every artist feels like he or she could be better at this, including me. Iâll share what Iâve observed, but Iâd welcome your input.
Apply for shows that match your level of experience. Think of these events like applying to college: there are dream, target and safety schools. Later on, you can throw money away applying to dream schools, but for your first event, a safety or target school is a smarter choice. How can you tell what level the event is geared to? Look at the prize money. The bigger the prize money, the fiercer the competition to get in.
Look at last yearâs participants. Are they painting at a level you feel comfortable challenging? If not, find a different event to start with. There are many of them out there, and youâll have a much better experience if youâre not thrown at the first hurdle.
 |
Parrsboro Sunrise won a prize but I can’t seem to make it photograph well. |
Take good photos of your work. One of my best paintings from 2018 wonât be in my submissions because I donât have a decent photo of itâit was gone before I got a color-balanced picture. Itâs very difficult to take a good photo of a very wet oil painting in the back of your car, but try your best. The photo should meet the minimum pixel requirements of the application. If all you have is a low-res cell phone photo, send something else.
I did a few paintings in 2018 on very smooth boards, just to experiment. One of them won a prize at
PIPAF, so the board has nothing to apologize for, but it has no tooth. That meant that my paintings have little impasto, and that in turn makes them look out-of-focus in photos. Itâs maddening, because theyâre beautiful in life, just not so nice in the digital world.
 |
Jonathan Submarining apparently made me happier than it made anyone else (except Jonathan’s grandmother, who bought the painting). |
Ask a trusted friend to look over your submissions. I have a painting from a few years ago that I adore, Jonathan Submarining. It was of a bunch of kids in a sailing lesson on a riotous day, and it was painted very fast, standing in the tide, with a fierce wind threatening to knock over my easel. But nobody scanning hundreds of photos will ever know what was involved in getting that painting right.
It took a disinterested friend to point that out to me. Sometimes, weâre the worst judges of our own work. We see the struggle instead of the finished product.
 |
Santa Fe Sunset, by Carol L. Douglas. |
Look at your work as thumbnails first. If a juror has a hundred applicants and has to look at five slides each, that may be all they ever see of your workâunless something about it really stands out to them.
Familiarize yourself with the entry juror, if that information is public. Iâm not saying you should paint like him, but you ought to understand whatâs important in his work. If every painting he does is carefully drafted and includes buildings and canyon walls, donât send three structure-free marsh paintings and expect to be his favorite. If heâs a luminist, heâll respond to light, and if heâs a brilliant compositor, heâll respond to design.
Even so, I think itâs a mistake to pitch too closely to the entry juror. A lot of shows donât identify the entry juror at all. Some use a committee. In any case, try to mix it up. If you can handle radically different subjects well, you demonstrate your versatility and your drawing chops.
 |
Best Buds is a favorite from my 2018 season. While it was within the parameters of the show it was done in, it wasn’t actually done outdoors, so I won’t be using it for my slides. |
Consider the order of your images. Online jurying systems allow you to define the order in which slides are viewed. If the entry juror is looking at your slides in sets, heâs going to read them left to right, just as he reads text. Make the first and last images particularly compellingâthe first one to catch his interest and the last one so youâre remembered.
For heavenâs sake, donât cheat. There are all kinds of carefully formulated ârulesâ about what constitutes plein air, and most of them are hot air. But if you didnât do the painting outdoors, on location, donât include it among your slides.
Donât feel bad if you donât get in, even if youâre a much better painter than some of the people who did. There are often factors involved in jurying that you donât know about, such as a need to have more watercolorists, or geographical representation. Or, the juror just woke up hating sunsets that morning. Judging art is a very subjective experience and you canât take the results personally, or the process will chew you up.