Going National – Hoorah!

At the encouragement of fellow watercolor artists, I decided to broaden my horizons and entered my artwork into a national exhibition – and I got accepted! My watercolor “Sorghum Maker” has been selected by juror Linda Baker as one of 77 from among 302 entries for the 41st National Exhibition of the Georgia Watercolor Society (GWS). Entry was open to all watercolor artists across the United States using watermedia to create original artwork.

The exhibition will take place in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, from March 14 until April 26, 2020, with an opening reception on March 28th.

Sorghum Maker is a painting in which I used a variety of traditional watercolor techniques. I featured the creation of this painting in a presentation I created and showed to a group of artists last May titled “Anatomy of a Watercolor.”

I am very proud to have a painting in this show, particularly since the list of those accepted includes names of artists I know from their DVDs, national awards, teaching workshops and fabulous paintings. It’s an impressive list so it should be an outstanding exhibition.

As with many of the watercolor competitions I have entered, an artist could enter up to three paintings but no more than one can be accepted. I actually entered two for this show, and I would have been delighted if the second one were accepted for a couple of reasons. For one, this is the only watercolor exhibition I’ve entered (other than an online show) which accepted watercolor on scratchboard; most only accept paper or watercolor boards as the surface. I’ve learned to handle – and enjoy – the unique characteristics of painting on white scratchboard and especially love working on the slightly textured clay surface of Ampersand Aquabord®. I’ve done many blog posts, classes, and presentations about my scratchboard art to introduce it and encourage its use. So having one of my scratchboard paintings featured in a major watercolor exhibition would have been personally fulfilling. Also, for a scratchboard painting to enter, I chose to paint my young great-niece Emma, a Georgia native. Her parents, my nephew Russ and his wife Lisa, both work in Atlanta and Lisa’s family lives nearby, so it would have been fun to have my Emma painting exhibited there. Oh well, I won’t complain – there will be other shows! By the way, watch for my upcoming blog post on my painting of Emma, which I titled “Little Georgia Peach.”