Going in to the Miller Annual Juried Exhibition-2011

On Being Accepted and learning to paint the night

At the beginning of summer I entered a juried show at The Hardy art gallery in Ephraim WI and the painting did not make the cut. It was a big painting of my plymouth barred rocks and leghorns chickens in a cluster of chattering feeding. Now, several months later I entered 2 new paintings in the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay WI, Annual juried fall show which includes artists from surrounding counties. Entrants are not aware of the identity of the jurors prior to entering the Miller exhibit but I found out later that one of the jurors at the Miller had also been a juror at the Hardy when I was rejected. I received notice late in August that both of my entries were accepted in the Miller show, leaving me a bit surprised. Once again this illustrates how subjective things can be when it comes to jurors' choices, one panel of experts will never see the same thing the same way twice anyway. Context is considered, what other work was I up against? How many entries were there? So many things influence the outcome when the words Juried Exhibition are applied to an exhibition of diverse media, ability and subject. Still I was happy to have another opportunity at a little exposure. Painting new things is a challenge and a reward, regardless of the outcome or if someone deems it important enough to make the cut. I was tackling an alla prima landscape, start to finish in two hours, and the other painting, also a landscape, was the opposite, a laborious execution of greens, and a silver loaf of bread in the middle, our Airstream trailer planted firmly in the Wisconsin landscape. My next challenge is interior depth, I am painting the space where I now sit, french doors and striped floors, and the painting is at a stand still for moment while I go take a night time class painting en plein air in the setting sun with Bonnie Paruch next week, turns out she was one of the jurors also.