An Artist's Sketchbook

Nature & Wildlife show

The Nature & Wildlife show had a great opening. The atmosphere was energized and a lot of people were coming and going through out the evening. They had a good band playing popular rock songs a live barn owl and donkey. There was some really great work featured in the show, the most dramatic of which were the iron sculptures by Bill Secunda. My painting simply titled "Falcon" won third place in the oil/acrylic category. Being that this was my first show I am pretty excited that I placed!
It was a good moral boost to see my work featured among other artists. For years I have been staring at my work without any real comparison to help gauge the quality of the paintings I was producing. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my paintings ranked up there with the better works featured. Even the plein air paintings I had in the "Carnegie Painted" show surprised me. The quality of work at that show was fantastic with some really beautiful paintings. My work wasn't as good as the other artists, but they could definitely hang (literally) with the rest. It gave me great encouragement to see I am on the right track.

Below are some picts from the Wildlife opening reception.