Christine Camilleri MPAC-EP, IAPS M/C, AFCA
I was honoured to be invited to jury Pastel Artist of Canada’s 30th Purely Pastel show and I wish to heartily commend all the artists who entered.
Jurying is never an easy task and it was made more challenging by the great variety of subjects, techniques and styles that make the pastel medium so versatile. With such astonishing breadth it was difficult to decide the inevitable.
Certainly, there were paintings that showed “small hints of beauty” and my eye was delighted to see them. I would have liked to have had the artist there to say why the painting didn’t capture my whole attention. For me, this is vital information to an artist who wants to get into shows and to continue learning. Please continue painting as I saw promise of greater things to come in many of them.
Accepted paintings, on the other hand, were saturated with “areas of outstanding artistic beauty”: a strong center or area of interest, solid composition, values that cohesively hung together, colour that was controlled and exciting, or controlled and elegantly understated, balance, technical mastery, simplicity with complexity, complexity with simplicity, rhythm and movement, creativity and imagineering.
Several exceeded my, and our, expectations and these are the award winners…they had that certain indescribable magic infused into them…the artist and the medium became one.
My hope is that when you see the paintings hanging at Federation Gallery in Vancouver it will be apparent why they rose to the top to be included in this incredible show.
Congratulations to those who were juried in and extra applause to the award winners who truly excelled at their art.