The premise is simple: anyone can submit up to two pieces of art, upon submission of an entry fee of $25. But every piece must be 12" by 12", framed or unframed. All pieces would have the same selling price: $200, with the Gallery getting its percentage. This was to be a fundraiser for the Gallery.
A total of 96 pieces were submitted by 57 artists; 27 were from Grand Manan, and 30 were from elsewhere. There were different media used in the creations and a lot of imagination and creativity was evident on the walls of the gallery.
I haven't done as much painting recently as I should, but I really wanted to be part of this show, so I picked up a couple of 12" x 12" canvases. I decided that the subjects needed to be simple for this format So I painted a "Gull Soaring" for one of my pieces:
For the other, I painted a simple subject: a colourful "Lobster Buoy" on the open sea:
A large crowd came in for the opening night, and everyone had a grand time walking around looking at all the pieces on the walls. To add interest, each person there was given a ballot and asked to chose their three favorite pieces and write them down in order of preference and put the ballot in the box.
I know it was a difficult decision trying to figure out which ones to choose. (I didn't think it would be right to choose my own, so I avoided them and pondered my choices).
Anyway, Last evening I was pleasantly surprised to receive a call from David Ogilvie (the organizer of the show) to tell me that the "Lobster Buoy" was voted #2 for the show.
I told David, that one of his submissions had actually been my first choice for its brilliant colours and textures. All in all, this was a great idea, and kudos to David for organizing it.
