It has been my pleasure and honour to serve as a juror for this PAC show. It is also a great responsibility as I know, as your fellow artist, you put your best foot forward and submit good work, only to be subjected to someone else’s judgment. I have done my best to remain as unbiased as possible and apply solid criteria when making my selection.

I look for drawing skills, good and interesting composition, great values, a focus, interesting negative space and an emotional connection. The images I have chosen have most of the attributes and even when they did not, they had qualities that made them worthwhile. On the other hand, the images I did not select lacked in one or several of these areas. What I found most prevalent were value issues, meaning that light, medium and dark passages were not in the right place or absent.

There were many images deserving an award and I struggled which ones to single out. They all have great design qualities. The image “Blue Jeans and Steel Beams” that I selected for the top award is a perfect example of what a good painting is about. It is all about shapes, great drawing and rendering skills on the figures, one figure being the focus and a great juxtaposition of organic versus man-made elements, well done! I awarded “Urban Colours” the second place as it has the most interesting shapes, dynamic brushstrokes and negative spaces. My 3^rd choice for awards goes to “Tendresse”, a beautifully rendered piece with great negative shapes, focus and emotion. There were 5 honourable mentions but there were many more I could have picked. Again, they are all well done, display great drawing skills, wonderful application of the medium and in case of “Miles”, the dog, a “realness” to it that just jumps off the page.