I answered a call on my kitchen phone on Saturday morning. A woman’s voice said “Judy, this is Pat Dews, the juror for the Georgia Watercolor Society member exhibition.” Knowing that my painting “Honeysuckle” had been accepted into the show and that the awards were being announced later that day by the juror (streaming online) my ears perked up. Was she calling to tell me I won an award?!?!? “I’m calling to tell you why I didn’t give your painting an award,” she said, as my bubble burst. “I didn’t know if I should call you, but I felt like you might expect that painting to get an award and would be left wondering why it didn’t,” she continued. “It is a gorgeous painting and I kept trying to figure out how you painted it.” Ok, so what was wrong, I wondered? “I just felt like the painting was split in half too much on the diagonal…. did you think so?” she asked. In all honesty (not just in defense) I answered: “No, I thought it worked fine that way.” But her criticism was honest and I was happy to hear it from such an accomplished artist.
Our conversation went on and I could sense that she was still not sure about whether she should have phoned and how I was reacting. So I told her I truly appreciated her call and that for many years I’ve entered shows and won big awards and entered shows and not even been accepted. I figure sometimes it’s someone else’s turn to win, and the judging is always subjective. Pat shared some of her experiences with shows too, and, all in all, it was a very good conversation. I could tell she had mixed emotions about not selecting my painting for an award, and a personal phone call from a renowned watercolor artist/juror was very meaningful to me.
But wait, there’s more. At 2:30 I tuned into the live awards ceremony. Pat opened it by explaining how she takes the jury process very seriously and spends hours agonizing over the accepted works and the awards. Much to my surprise, before she announced any award winners she said “There was one painting, “Honeysuckle,” which was gorgeous, gorgeous. I really wanted to know how the artist created those textures, bursting with colors…. but instead of it I chose other flower paintings.” Wow, she still singled out my work – pretty cool.
You win some, you lose some. I think I won something this time!
