Review - Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Photography Competition

I love the flower photographs selected for the brand new annual Georgia O'Keeffe Photography Competition.  Click the link to see a page devoted to works selected for the competition that have been awarded prizes or honourable mentions.

Georgia O'Keeffe Photography Competition - Flowers - Place Winners

The competition was inaugurated to celebrate the 125th year of Georgia O'Keeffe's birth. (see my earlier posts Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Photography Competition and Georgia O'Keeffe - 125th Birthday)

The theme for the 2012 competition paid homage to one of Georgia O'Keeffe's favourite subjects "Flowers" (see Georgia O'Keeffe's Flower Paintings)

Entry

• 3,830 images of flowers were submitted by 930 photographers, from 47 states and 17 countries.  

Prizewinners

You can see the prizewinners at the top of the page. It appears that not all prizewinners have a practice or portfolios which involve shooting flowers on a regular basis

Adult 1st Place Winner: Joanna Stoga, Dancing Tulips.  I've seen this Polish artist's x-ray photography work before - in the Nash Conservatory at Kew Gardens last April when she was displaying her work in the International Garden Photographer of the Year 2012 Exhibition (see won the Portfolio Award - see Kew Prints).

See my post International Garden Photographer of the Year 2011 at Kew Gardens

She also has had her work displayed in Vogue Magazine.

Joanne Stoga - 1st Place Portfolio Category
International Garden Photographer of the Year 2012 Exhibition
Kew Gardens
photograph by Katherine Tyrrell

Having seen her work before. I immediately recognised the winning work for this competition as an X-ray photograph - although I'm still not entirely clear about she takes these

Part of a 3 year long X-ray project named Qi, which express my fascination with plants and is dedicated to my favorite photographer Karl Blosfeld.Title refers to the energy Qi, that in traditional Chinese culture is an active principle forming part of any living thing. Qi is frequently translated as life energy. X-ray technique reveals not only a remarkable form and structure of plants, but also gives the possibility to feel this incredible energy. This picture is from the series

On this page she explains more about how she creates her work for her QI Portfolio - the winning image is #21 in her Qi portfolio on her website.

Adult 2nd Place Winner: Janet O'Neal, Datura 5 (I'm not entirely clear which website relates to this lady)

Adult 3rd Place Winner: Lisa Gamble, Dancing Garlic Flowers

Student (18-21) Winner: Zara Applestein, Yellow, Black, & White Flower

Student (Under 18) Winner: Hannah Mark, Tie-Dye

Honourable Mentions ( in alphabetical order).  links in the names are to the photographer's websites where you can see more of their work,

• Polly Chandle, Garlic Flower
• Audrey Derell, Spiral 
• Barbara DuBois, Awareness
• Lisa Gamble, Dancing Calla Lilies
• Meredith Hebden, Datura 
• Nancy McClure, Serpentesque
• Janet O'Neal, Datura 2 
• Janet O'Neal, Datura 4 
• Sandi Pfeifer, Alone
• Dan Shepherd, Floral Past Tense #3 
• Priscilla Smith, Night Blooming Cereus Blossom
• Carol Stanley, Intricate Beauty 
• Joanna Stoga, Zet Tulipsy 
• Stephen Strom, Datura Flower II 
• Stephen Strom, Primrose I
• Janice Tieken, Ephemeral Vision 
• Kimber Wallwork-Heineman, Petals

Selectors

The selection panel of judges were:

• Jennifer Schlesinger-Hanson, Director, VERVE Gallery of Photography; 
• Jackie M, Director of Education and Public Programs, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; 
• Mary Anne Redding, Chair, Photography Department, Santa Fe University of Art and Design; 
• Joyce Tenneson, photographer; (do check out her photographs - they're wonderful ) and 
• Norman Vanamee, Editor-in-Chief, Garden Design Magazine

I'm unclear as to whether there is to be an exhibition or whether this is online only.

Link: About Georgia O'Keeffe - American Painter

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POLL: What's your best time of day for painting?

Do you have a best time of day (or night) for painting?  That's the topic for the Making A Mark Opinion Poll for February.  There is of course no 'right' answer!

I've known a few "through the night" painters. I've noted some artists seem to favour particular times. Others like to have distinct and regular sessions during the day when they paint while others just fit it in as and when they can.

Personally, I'm into early starts when on my own - it'a amazing what you can get done before breakfast!

Breakfast sketch from the terrace
11" x 16", pen and ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine
© Katherine Tyrrell

You can find the Making A Mark Poll for February in the side column.  It finishes very early on 28th February and a post will follow later in the day discussing the results.

What's your best time of day for painting?

The options are:

• up with the lark - bright and early
• it's a job - in the studio before 10am
• midday gives me the longest period of static light
• afternoons are for painting
• sunrise and sunset
• late nights are best
• all day long - however long it takes
• when I've got a brush in my hand
• whenever I have free time
• whenever it's quiet and nobody else is around

The sketch is of one the times I like best - and was done in Provence in June 2011 - see Breakfast sketch from the terrace / Morning View from the House

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3 February 2013 - Who's made a mark this week?

Who had an Etch a Sketch when they were little?  André Cassagnes, the Etch A Sketch inventor André Cassagnes (has died) at 86 and memories - and etch a sketches - have been making an appearance.

• Take a look at these very detailed drawings by George Vlosich who mastered the twiddling of the knobs!
• Plus a slideshow of Etch A Sketch art – in pictures

and this is a video of George Vlosich using an Etch a Sketch to do what he does so well.



Artists and Art Blogs

Drawing and Sketching

• Andrea Joseph (Andrea Joseph Sketchblog) was highlighted in London local paper The Metro this week - see Love Me Doodle… Is doodling good for our brains?  You can get a print of the doodle drawing below by clicking the link in the title below it

Ballpoint Illustration Print.
Schooldays Excercise Book revisited - Converse to Rulers via scribbles
©  Andrea Joseph

• Jonathan Jones asks a question - Kelvin Okafor's drawings may look like photographs but are they art? and comments at the end Here is the talent that Damien Hirst can't buy with all his millions.

Landscape Painting

• iPlayer: More British Landscape Painting is a reminder about two programmes on BBC which are still available on iPlayer - This Green and Pleasant Land: The Story of British Landscape Painting and The Mountain That Had to Be Painted.  The latter is 

This site is about landscapes and the arts. It highlights ways in which landscape has been evoked, depicted or transformed in painting, photography, literature, music and film.Some Landscapes

• Plus I found I've discovered a blog which is new to me called Some Landscapes by somebody calling himself Plinius. What's interesting is he's created:
• a timeline of his blog posts on something called Dipity
• and a structured index on Google Sites
• This article in the Guardian is about Framing the view: six artists reveal how they choose landscapes.  Contriibutors include Wolfgang Tillmans, Julian Opie, Fiona Crisp, Tacita Dean, Carol Rhodes and Lisa Milroy

Painting

• This is an interview with Marc Hanson on the blog of the Oil Painters of America.  It's a great interview with some fabulous paintings.  You can see more of Marc's work on his website and blog Painting my way through life.  Marc also announced this week that he has opened a store on Etsy called Small Impressions

Marc Hanson's new Etsy Store - Small Impressions

• Botanical artist Fiona Strickland has been featured in an article in The Herald Scotland - Fiona Strickland on painting the perfect egg.  It highlights how she has adapted her painting methods to tackle food for the first time.  Regular readers will probably recall my interview last year with Fiona in A 'Making A Mark' Profile of Fiona Strickland
• In Egypt, the street graffiti artists include women - see Women in Graffiti: A Tribute to the Women of Egypt in suzeeinthecity

Pastels and Pencils

• The Colored Pencil Society of America have published their online Explore This! 9 Exhibition....
• ...and I've reviewed it in yesterday's blog post Review: CPSA's 9th Explore This! Exhibition in which I'm pretty complimentary about the artwork and the exhibition as a whole.  At last coloured pencil artwork is breaking out from a massive emphasis on straight observational realism!

Plein Air

• The Plein Air Convention is rounding up those who want to attend on its website and on Facebook   However I was very puzzled by the feature images on the website.  Why don't the images related to the artists who are mentors feature their plein air work rather than their studio paintings? "Lost the plot" were the words which sprang to my mind! Authentic advertising which is congruent with the message wins hands down every time for me.  Take a look and see what you think.

Portraiture

There's a strong royal theme this week!

• The Queen of the Netherlands abdicated this week in favour of her son as she reaches her 75th birthday.  A competition has been running for people to produce a portrait of Queen Beatrix - and there's now a YouTube video Beatrix in Beeld of some of the entries.  Including that by Sophie Ploeg
• The furore about the portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge rumbles on - see this article in last week's Washington Post  - In uproar over portrait of Duchess of Cambridge, its artist speaks out.  The same trite comments are being trotted about the same trite people who don't understand the difference between a photograph and a painting. I tried loading the video and it didn't work.   I think maybe the Washington Post needs to make sure all its employees understand about file size and load times!

Who painted this? 

• Who Painted This #14 provides you with a challenge from a different culture and the answer to Who painted this? #13.  
• I've also created a website about the painter of the still life seen in #13 - This is my NEW website About Samuel John Peploe - Scottish Colourist Painter

Art Business & Marketing

• Two posts from me
• First a checklist about the costs involved in entering art competitions How to calculate the cost of entering a juried art exhibition.  You can download a spreadsheet A Making A Mark Guide: Analysing the cost of entering a juried art exhibition for FREE from my website.  There are two versions (.xlsx and .xls)
• 31st January was the deadline for the tax return - and I wrote Ten Tax Tips for Artists.  They may seem basic but they do make a difference.
• The Arts Business Institute has an Artist Checklist for a Successful Show

Copyright

• Judges are now getting involved in whether a photograph has been appropriated appropriately or not. It's getting confusing - see Fresh Copyright Fight Over Artist's Sex Pistols Appropriation Ends in Bad Review

Art Collectors & Economy

Commentary on the art market in:

• the New York Times: As Art Values Rise, So Do Concerns About Market’s Oversight
• Art Info: 10 Former Art Sensations That the Market Has Left Behind - and one of them is Damien Hirst!

Art Competitions

• This is my overview of How to enter the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition 2013

Art Exhibitions

Current Exhibitions

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9834828/Smelly-French-family-ordered-to-leave-Musee-dOrsay.html
• I've been reminded that I need to get over the River to see Ansel Adams: Photography from the Mountains to the Sea at the National Maritime Museum

Upcoming Exhibitions - UK

• Tate Britain has a new exhibition about Looking at the View (12 February – 2 June 2013) which looks at continuities in the way artists have framed our vision of the landscape over the last 300 years.
• The Fitzwilliam Museum has an exhibition about illustrator Quentin Blake: Drawn by Hand12 Feb – 12 May 2013 Quentin Blake is one of the best-known illustrators of his generation.  The exhibition includes a selection of individual works, book illustrations, etchings, lithographs, drawings and works done for hospitals in various and contrasting media. Plus a display of pens, brochures, inks, watercolours, quills and other materials from the artist’s studio.
• The Artists & Illustrators First Annual Exhibition runs from 6 - 19 February 2013 at the Osborne Studio Gallery, 2 Motcomb Street, London SW1X 8JU. www.osg.uk.com.

Upcoming Exhibitions - USA

• The first major survey of the art of the Pre-Raphaelite painters opens this month in the United States. Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848–1900 is opening February 17 at The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.  It continues until May 19.  It's moving next to Russia will be at The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, June–September 2013.

Art History & Art Museums

• 82nd & Fifth is the Met's address in New York City. It is also the intersection of art and ideas. We've invited curators from across the Museum to talk about works of art that changed the way they see the world: one work, one curator, two minutes at a time. This yearlong series of 100 episodes offers a new way to see the Met's collections through the eyes of our curators and an "explore" feature that allows you to make your own discoveries.
• Curator, Tear Down These Walls is an interesting comment on Folk Art in American Museums in the New York Times 
• I came across the website of The Indian Museum for the first time.  It celebrates its bicentenary next year

Art Education

Art Books

• The Making A Mark Poll for January was about whether people read art ebooks.  The results very much indicated that Artists prefer real art books (Poll result) - but also that a goodly proportion already read ebooks.
• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) asked for photos of people's art bookshelves and this is the post it generated Your Art Bookshelves

Online Art Education

• Has anybody had any dealings with the Teaching Art Online website?  On the face of it seems like a good idea - and then I got three "wake-up calls" which suggest it's somewhat dormant and completely unlike, for example, the education set-ups on sites like Alyson Stanfield's Artbizblog
• The blog http://www.teachingartonline.com/blog/ hasn;t had a post since May 2012
• the next course starts - oddly enough - today and lasts for a year.  I suspect if you looked it up tomorrow the same would apply.  Everything is looking very automated to me.
• comments are closed on the tutor's profile and distinctly lacking on the blog

Tips and Techniques

• The Matthew Effect is one of Robert Genn's posts which make you want to sat "Yes!" as you read it - it's about art education
• Controlling M-Faces by Stapleton Kearns (Stapleton Kearns) is about that old truism If everything in a painting is of equal importance, then nothing is important! and he messes abbout with some paintings by famous painters to demonstrate how they too could have made them look amateurish if they hadn't used some good judgement. I liked his signoff

Nature in itself is not art, art is the product of a human decision about how to portray nature.

Art Supplies

• I've been updating my website about UK Art Shops & Online Art Supplies as I realised I'd forgotten to include the website for an art shop dedicated to the needs of the fine art printmaker - see http://intaglioprintmaker.com/  What I hadn't realised was that they also have a blog Intaglio - Printmaker.  Not a lot of posts but the content about printmaking supplies is interesting.
• Jacksons Art blog highlighted Kremer Artists Soft pastels which I'd not heard of before

Techies

Web analytics


This month, I topped 50,000 visitors to the blog in January. According to ClustrMaps 51,057 visitors visited my blog in January - which the first time it's topped 50,000 visits in a month.  What I like about using ClustrMaps is it gives me such visual feedback about where the audience for this blog lives and also whether they like the content!  Plus I can see very easily how it has changed over time.

Making A Mark - ClustrMaps for January - One picture worth 50,000 visits!

and finally......

Those trying to think of a new twist on how to produce a self-portrait might like to take a look at this Guardian article - Ahn Jun's self-portraits are a high art and this slideshow of her photographic self-portraits Ahn Jun: self-portraits of a fearless artist.  Not for the vertically challenged!

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Review: CPSA's 9th Explore This! Exhibition

I'm extremely impressed with the quality of the artwork in this year's Explore This! 9 Exhibition.  It's the best exhibition I've ever seen by CPSA.

Eileen Sorg, CPSA, CPX of Kingston, Washington has won the best of show “EXPY” award of $2,000 (sponsored by Prismacolor) with her intriguing narrative piece in a panoramic format.  

Eileen Sorg, CPSA, CPX (WA) 
“Foiled Again” 
Colored Pencil,Watercolor, Ink 12 x 27 inches
Not for Sale

The Colored Pencil Society of America (CPSA) organises this juried competition of mixed-media artwork which focuses on the main medium of colored pencil - and how it can be combined with other art media and surfaces and supports to create fine art.  It's an online exhibition which is available on the website until January 31, 2014.

This year 298 entries were submitted to the exhibition of which 53 were selected for the exhibition and 13 were awarded prizes.

Overall, I noted more originality, more creativity and more artwork which looked like the type of contemporary art which one might expect to see in an art gallery than I think I've ever seen before in any CPSA show.  All the artwork was interesting and went way beyond technical competence in the laying down of colours.  Very little is 'straight' realism, which to my mind swamps the summer show.

It left me wondering whether this is a sea change or whether in previous years more traditional jurors have picked more traditional pieces.  I'd like to hop it's the former.

One thing which struck me is that since the change in rules, it's also very clear that some artists are very likely to focus on this exhibition as Neocolors are now no longer eligible for the International Open in the summer.

The Awards

I think I'm right in saying there are more awards than ever before.  This show is now for certain rivalling the main International Open show for the quality of awards on offer

I took a look at the artwork before reviewing the award winners and I have to say I wasn't at all surprised by either of the two top awards as these were both pieces which prompted me to stop and look longer.  I think it's also very interesting to see how big an impact can be achieved through the use of understated and almost monochromatic colour - particularly when there is a level of content to the artwork which goes beyond keen observation and impeccable technique.

It's also worth noting that both pieces contained humour - and I'm always keen to applaud those who meet the challenge of including humour in a subtle way.

The juror

The juror was Mana Hewitt, the Director of the McMaster Art Gallery and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Art Department of the University of South Carolina. I note she stated

As juror I view myself as an art patron. I asked myself which of these artworks moves me aesthetically, emotionally, viscerally as well as meets the criteria of the CPSA in terms of colored pencil. In selecting the award winners I found that First place and Best in Show, "Foiled Again" by Eileen Sorg, was exceptional in process and content. Sorg skillfully pushed beyond the expected to create a wonderful visual pun. Second place "Spirit Stones" by Deborah Friedman, manipulated transparency, light, and reflection with exceptional skill and good humor. Could those rocks be smiling?

The award winners

The award winners are as follows - the link in the name and the title of the piece is to the artwork.  The artist's website is listed in italics.

Who Painted This #14

There's a couple of quick and a slow way to work out who painted this and all the rest of the details which I want to know (which are slightly different this week).   It also has a rather good back story which I shall tell you about next week - unless you tell me first!

Who painted this? #14

How to participate in "Who painted this? #14"

What I want to know this week

It's slightly different this week due to age and provenance - as indicated below

• Title of the artwork: not applicable this week
• Name of the artist who created this artwork: who the painting is attributed to (either spelling will do)
• Date it was created: the century it was produced in (the more accurate the better)
• Media used: doesn't count - but take a guess
• Where it lives now: I'll take either of two possible answers
• Which ruler the painter worked for:
• The significance of this painting: 
• and as usual - how you found this out:

ONLY POST ON THIS BLOG what you think is the answer.

PLEASE make sure you read the rules before posting a comment. Click this link to read THE COMPLETE RULES for participating in this challenge (this saves having to copy them out for each post!).

In short:

• use your brains not image software to find the answer (ie do NOT look for similar images using software)
• search using words only on a database of images
• leave your answer as a comment on this blog
• if correct it will not be published until the next post - which provides the answer
• if wrong it will be published
• do NOT leave the answer on Facebook!
• the winner - who gets a mention and a link on/from this blog - is the first person to give me a completely correct answer for ALL the things I want to know

Who Painted This #13 - The Answer