Bronze Medal Winner!

It was a pretty big weekend for me with two art openings. I had still life paintings selected for two shows, and both were very nice shows.

We stopped in to see a great show at Manifest gallery. My work was hanging in a new room they have just added to their gallery. The highlight was winning third prize at the 41st ViewPoint show at the Cincinnati Art Club. Not to mention that it was one of the best Viewpoint shows I have been to, so it was even sweeter to win with such good competition.


This is me accepting the award.
I was very disappointed that it was not a gigantic check like you see in some awards ceremonies. I am not talking about the amount of money, I mean the physical size of the check. I have always wanted to walk into the bank to cash one of those huge over-sized checks, but I will just have to keep dreaming.

I entered a diptych which is my best work yet. The two pictures were painted as a pair, and I have not yet had the chance to show them together. Strangely only the Son version was accepted into the Butler Institute show this summer, so was happy to finally show them side by side.
The paintings hang in a nice spot in the gallery, on a corner wall all by themselves, and it really features them well.
Here I am on the medal stand with my bronze medal.
As you can see in the photo, the first and second place winners seem a bit too pleased with themselves. They did look better than me despite the odd choice of attire. I really should have studied a mirror a bit better before leaving the house- I'm looking a bit frumpy by comparison. I will say that most of my outfits are going to look a lot better with a big medal on my chest. I am not sure if I am required by the Art Club to wear it at all times, but I may have to plan my wardrobe around such a possibility.

Both shows are up for a few weeks, so stop in if you are interested. If you would like to purchase these paintings I will give a small discount to anyone that pays me with an giant over-sized check.

On top of all that good news, we had gorgeous weather this weekend. Saturday I went out to paint with some friends (Clem Robins and Sue Gutzwiller).
They had scouted out a great spot on the river where a guy was working on an old sail boat. It was a lovely scene and we had a great time. Everyone was doing some good painting. My wife and I went back today to continue work on the paintings. 70 degrees in November is something you have to take advantage of- and if you can come up with a good reason to get out of raking leaves you have to take it.
Here is my wife and reluctant student doing one of the best landscape paintings she has ever done. She claimed it was because I left her alone.
Here is the study I did. I may work on it a bit more and post a better photo at a later date. As you can see there were these ugly blue boxes along the boat for him to stand on while working. I had initially had them in, but when I got there today I figured it would look a lot better without them, so I painted them out. That is the kind of expert decision making you expect from a 3rd place medal winner.