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Creating and showing original fine art since 1952
COLOUR and FORM SOCIETY’S 70th Anniversary Members’ Exhibition
AWARD WINNERS selected by Juror Flavio Belli
FIRST PRIZE - Diana Hillman - THE BORDER #3 (FLIGHT SERIES)
There is much to be admired here. This is a painting of a photograph taken from inside a plane through a thick piece of glass. We have become very familiar with this scene because we have all taken this photo at some point or have seen our friends’ photos from a plane. And this photograph has lots of tilt and a curved horizon with a great view of landscape features both natural and man-made. Hillman has elevated this rather dull photo into a spectacular 48 x 60-inch oil, chalk and pencil on panel. She has placed us right there. Both inside and outside the plane. You have to remind yourself you are not teetering on the edge of the plane’s wing freezing to death. And you do that by catching sight of the transparently dull and scratchy window reflection that the artist has most subtly placed across the painting.
SECOND PRIZE - Douglas Stratford -
A PLACE FOR ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN
The painting stands out from the other 15 forest scenes in the exhibition and from any other landscape paintings I’ve seen recently. We’re in a micro-macro environment. The crowns of cushiony trees are melon coloured and cotton-ball soft. They seem to be caught in the wind and some are detaching and floating away. The bottom 5th of the painting is a calm and reflective lake of rich blue. Is it releasing little blue petals that float upward? This is something out of a dream. But the artist has anchored the fantasy with a pointy bit of realism in the manner of a half-submerged driftwood tree. Who is Archibald Lampman and how is this his place? Oil on canvas.
THIRD PRIZE - Micheal Zarowsky - MORNING LIGHT CATCHING A SNOW-COVERED PINE
Like the other two prize winners this is also a landscape. And like the other two it has a strong sense of realism coupled with unreality. Are we really alone in this crackling cold forest? How did the artist capture such undisturbed detail? Watercolour and acrylic on panel would be a technical marvel and a feat of dogged determination in this environment. But this scene has none of that struggle. We are facing a gloriously lit riot of undisturbed forest in a rolling sea of snow. And we are right on top of a tiny snow-covered Pine. Zarowsky masterfully brings all this alive through multiple short strokes of warm and cool colours. He makes us believe we are both observer and creator alone in nature.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
selected by Juror Flavio Belli
HONOURABLE MENTION - Lisa Graziotto - INTERMISSION
What a wonderfully humorous, calmly quiet moment of surreal purity. We stand looking at a chap-wearing cowboy tipping his USA striped bag of popcorn to his lips while in the background two roadies struggle with a monumental canvass of a butte from Monument Valley. Flat planes of dusty grey surround the painting within the painting. Its tilted towering realism frames and mirrors the central figure’s determined concentration of tilting the bag to get every last sweet caramel covered kernel of popped corn. Graziotto asks us to stop and fill in the blanks. It’s intermission after all.
HONOURABLE MENTION - Margaret Horvat - SKYLINE
In her oil on canvas, Horvat presents us with a tour-de-force of transparency and colour. It might be something a child sees on a windowsill in the garage. Seen from slightly below, her grandfather’s collection of coloured bottles and jars, lined up three deep against a softly clouded blue sky, reflect and reflect and reflect. We’re mesmerized by the artist’s ability to wobble each glass object and depict the influence it has on its neighbour. The composition is full of impressive height, substance and dignity. Each bottle neck a tower of (de)light.
