Category: art competition

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Friends helping friends

We’ve all done our best. Now we sit back and wait.

Not what you like to see an hour before you’re handing in.
I opened my box of frames when I arrived last weekend, but I didn’t take out the items and unpack them; they were still in the manufacturer’s packaging. Anyway, I like the US post office as a shipper, so I wasn’t worried.
That meant I was blindsided on Thursday morning when all three frames turned out to have cracked corners. I called Jane Chapin to ask her if there was a Michaels in Santa Fe. Instead, she directed me to a shelf to the left of the door in her own studio. It was such a smooth solution that I barely had time to worry. It will save me money on the return shipping, since she can just pop out any unsold work and mail it back to me in a padded envelope.
Occasionally someone will challenge my characterization of these events as ‘competitions.’ They prefer to think of them as sales events. But whenever there are prizes, there is competition. Unlike ice-skating, however, there’s very little knee-capping in the plein air world. For one thing, it’s a small community. Even if we’re not friends yet, we have friends in common.
Apple tree swing, by Carol L. Douglas, courtesy Kelpie Gallery. I’m gonna try the Pecos apple tree again today.
One of the painters at this event has Parkinson’s. (How she paints as beautifully as she does is beyond me.) She is a tiny thing, and she has been helping me up and down steps all week. She’s appointed herself my keeper. We were at a party in town Wednesday when she realized that she’d forgotten her meds. If you know Parkinson’s, you know that missing a dose is like falling off a cliff. Now I’ve appointed myself to remind her about her meds. We just met on Friday night, but now we’re friends helping friends.
Yesterday I intended to spend my spare time painting an apple tree down the road. However, I spent it unsuccessfully trying to file the claim for my damaged frames. This morning my husband, back in Rockport, managed to file it online.
This view from my studio window has gone to live in New Mexico.
As for which paintings I submitted, it ended up being El camino hacia el pueblo, La casa de los abuelitos,and Castigando del caballo muerto. I probably received twenty messages about the choices after my post, with a heavy contingent favoring Dry Wash, but I’d already filled out the paperwork.
Every one of these messages were from professional painters and gallerists. The takeaway message is that even at a high level of expertise, ‘good,’ ‘great,’ etc. are subjective. That’s true for the juror as well as for anyone else. We’ve all done our best. Now we sit back and wait.
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Rejection

Queensboro Bridge construction, 10X8, Carol L. Douglas

A friend got a rejection letter from an agent on whom she had pinned hopes. This is where her life as an artist begins, where she begins to look inside herself for approval and develops a strong sense of the value of her own voice.

Rejection either makes you or breaks you. Some of us walk away from the encounter so badly bruised that we stop putting our work in the public marketplace. Others get up and paint again.

The Dugs in Autumn, 12X9, Carol L. Douglas
Rejection is part of the artistic process. Last year, I encouraged my pal Tarryl to apply for a show that I thought was a slam-dunk. She was rejected. This year she encouraged me to apply for a show that she thought I would get in. I was rejected. This has nothing to do with either of our abilities or worth as people or inherent talent. It’s about the taste and style of the judges.
It’s paradoxically true that we can be rejected for being either too good or too bad; it’s easiest for critics to see and understand what has already been done, what is in the safe middle ground.
“When they organized their first exhibition [the Impressionists] all already mature artists who had been working for fifteen years or more… Dissatisfied they may have been, but they did not consider that they were as yet beyond the pale. Manet, in fact, still endeavored to show in the Salon, and was bitterly disappointed when he was rejected.” (Richard J. Boyle, American Impressionism)

Indiana sketchbook #1, 12X6, Carol L. Douglas
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.
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When the Olympics included artists

The Charioteer at Delphi was erected in 478 or 474 BC, to commemorate the victory of a chariot team in the Pythian Games (a forerunner of the modern Olympic Games).
The arts were part of the modern Olympic Games during its formative years. From 1912 to 1948, medals were awarded sporadically in architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture. The problem wasn’t so much in the attitude of the Olympic Committee but that of artists, who are not nearly as inclined as athletes to embrace amateurism. Artists may not make much money in their lifetimes, but they jealously protect the right to do so.
The International Olympic Committee was founded in 1894 under the aegis of Pierre de FrĂ©dy, Baron de Coubertin. An educator and historian, Coubertin was himself the son of a LĂ©gion d’honneur-winning painter. He himself went on to win a gold medal at the 1912 Summer Olympics for a poem entitled Ode to Sport.
Rugby, by Jean Jacoby was an award winning drawing in the 1928 Olympic art competitions.
In 1906, the Olympic Committee decided to add art competitions; the primary mandate was that the work had to be inspired by sport.
A series of snafus delayed implementation until the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. Only 35 artists sent work, but they managed to award gold medals in all five categories.
The 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris were the first games in which a respectable number of artists participated; 193 artists submitted works. There were 1,100 visual works submitted to the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928. Participation in the arts competitions remained stable until after WWII, when the conflict over professional vs. amateur status again reared its ugly head. The art competitions were a dead letter after 1948.
Alfred Reginald Thomson’s The London Amateur Boxing Championship Held at the Royal Albert Hall won the last gold medal for painting, in 1948.
The essential incompatibility between the Olympics and the fine arts is apparent in retrospect: no major art figure from the period ever won a medal at the Olympic Games. Perhaps the closest were the British painter Alfred Thomson and the Czech violinist Josef Suk, whose category was made more difficult because judges had to content themselves with reading written scores. (In fact, nobody cared enough to even publicly perform the award-winners at the Games.)

George Bellows (arguably the best painter of boxing ever) painted Dempsey and Firpo in 1924. It was not an Olympic committee contender; Bellows was a professional, not an amateur.

The guy who gets to the end first wins the race; that’s a purely objective thing. Performances, like ice dancing or gymnastics, are somewhat more subjective but still conform to stated rules. Art does nothing of the kind.


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!