10th Annual FMP Member Show 2009

Ann Kullberg runs a couple of online exhibitions on her website every year for people who are for subscribers to From My Perspective, her online colored pencil magazine.

This is the link to the 10th Annual FMP Member Show 2009. You can click on any of the works in the exhibition to see a larger image.

The juror's criteria and comments

This year the juror was CPSA award-winning artist Ester Roi who was featured on this blog last year when in this post about her Icarus Drawing Board™

What I particularly like about Ann's competition each year is that her jurors always provide feedback explaining their choices of awards to different entries. This year Ester decided that she was going to award points as follows

In an effort to be as objective as possible, I decided to score each individual piece in four different categories of equal value:

• elements of art (color, value, line, shape, form, texture)
• composition(organization of these elements)
• content(mood, meaning, originality, statement)
• craftsmanship (mastery of the medium and technique)

I really like that way of scoring. This is a competition run by a website which is focused on educating people about coloured pencil art. So it's really great to see a juror who is placing an emphasis on the whole process of creating art. Ester's criteria emphasise the basics related to the principles and elements of design and composition, and have a focus as much on content and originality as as on mastery of the medium and technique - which is very much the way it should be.

The awards

I've included links to the awards below. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you can see all the reasons given for the awards and Honourable Mentions. I've highlighted Ester's comment on Nicole's work as an example of the type of comment being made.

Zen - in progress and complete
40" x 27"
by Nicole Caulfield (Nicole Caulfield Art Journal)

Best of Show: “Zen” by Nicole Caulfield

When I look at Nicole’s piece, time stands still. As I take a long, deep breath I inhale the classical beauty of its composition permeated with contemporary, symbolic meaning. The strong triangular shapes of the figure are balanced by the large rectangular foreground. The stark contrast in values is harmonized by the delicate changes in color temperature and the limited palette. Nothing is out of place and everything is artistically and symbolically significant. This is an example where art has transcended its medium, technique and material. Congratulations, Nicole, for your outstanding and timeless work of art.

Wouldn't it be great if more art competitions and jurors provided feedback like this?

Readers of this blog may recall that Zen won the MAMA Prize for The Best Portrait by a Female Artist on a Blog at the end of 2008. It's also won 3rd Place in the Portrait Society of America's 2008 Members Showcase Competition

The Place Prizes - which are all worth taking a close look at.

• First Place: “Opulence” by Juno Kughler
• Second Place: “Eric’s Legacy” by Helen Bailey
• Third Place: “Luminescence” by Cindy Dooley

All the Honorable Mention winners received a high score in at least one of the above categories:

• “Jonathan” by Tess Miller
• “Summer Feast”by Kathee Nelson
• “Hanging Out” by Bonnie Haversat
• “Day Dreaming Pixie”by Jade Erin Scarlett
• Scentsation”by Cynthia Knox
• “Yellow Blues”by Ranjini Venkatachari
• “Yunnan Ethnic Minorities”by Anne Cha

See if you can apply the criteria to the works on show. Do you come up with the same view or maybe a different opinion?

Links:

• Ann Kullberg
• Ann Kullberg - 10th Annual FMP Member Show 2009
  
• Ester Roi Fine Art