Museum Residences Quick Draw 1st Place

 

 

Daniel Sprick makes a surprise appearance

 

Stephanie Hartshorn at work

 

Clyde Steadman

 

Jennifer Bobola

 

Terri Lombardi

 

Cheryl St.John

 

Chris Serr

 

Tim Deibler working on his first painting

 

Scott Ruthven completing his second painting  

 

Ken Valastro at work

 

 

award for my painting "Looking West" what a great honor! The paint-out was held on September 5th, at the Daniel Libeskind designed DAM rooftop terrace garden. This quick draw paint out was an invite to award winners and ribbon winners only, making the competition a high level showcase of some of the best plein air painters in the west.

The event was scheduled from 4-7pm allowing only a small window to setup, decide on subject matter and get to painting. I chose a west facing vantage point, one that included both cityscape elements and atmospheric ones. I utilized a simplified palette of Cad Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, and Ultramarine Blue. I use this palette because it forces me to make decisions and value adjustments quickly, without the excess tube color around to distract. With all the paintings complete and the time limit closing, we all placed our paintings on display for the silent auction and waited for the judging to commence. Ron Hicks was present, and for those that know of his work, it was a real pleasure to have Ron lay eyes on the paintings and do the dirty work of determining the winners. For those that don't know of his work he has a solo exhibition coming up at 1261 gallery, and it will be a colossal display, don't miss it!

As all artists talked and shared our shock of having Daniel Sprick in attendance and watching him work en plein air, the judging was handed out. To my amazement, I was awarded 1st Place in the competition! Coming in 2nd Place was Scott Ruthven, and in 3rd was my good friend and amazing abstract painter Jennifer Bobola!

Overall a humbling and inspirational paint out and competition, I am still reeling from this decision and honored to have been amongst such amazing painters and to have such a prestigious award bestowed upon me, thanks Ron!

I received award money and a number of prizes for this 1st Place award, including an ad in Southwest Art which I will be putting into production in 2014! I will be in attendance for the Abend Miniature show demonstrations throughout the month of December, and am looking forward to large scale works in oil that are on the easel for the end of 2013, and into 2014. Look for more on these paintings and where they will be shown in coming weeks.

A special thanks to GTMD, Christine Serr, Javier Flores, Ron and Judy Proctor for the great photos!

A final thank you to all the folks that view the blog posts, comment, share, and support freelance and gallery artists! Look for more posts soon, and to leave you here is

an excerpt from OutdoorPainter.com with a short interview from Clyde Steadman about the Museum Residences paint out:

Life is unpredictable for a plein air painter. Sometimes you paint in a windy mountain meadow, and sometimes you paint on top of a David Libeskind building in downtown Denver.

Clyde Steadman can attest to this firsthand, as the photo below shows. The artist and teacher was invited by the building's management to paint from the grassy rooftop of Museum Residences during the recent Colorado Plein Air Festival. The structure, which Libeskind designed to mesh with the addition he designed for the Denver Art Museum across the street, houses condominiums.

Steadman was joined at the Museum Residences Paint Out by other area artists, including the acclaimed (mostly still life) painter Daniel Sprick. "Dan came to paint with us, though he is just enjoying the camaraderie, I think," says Steadman. "He is remarkably generous and modest. Sprick moved to Denver a couple of years ago, I think, and paints with some of us in local figure painting groups, and joins us more rarely when we paint outdoors."

It was a short painting session, from 4 to 7 p.m., and Steadman reports that Sprick paints the same way en plein air as you would expect him to paint in the studio, and that Sprick's effort looked essentially "like a small vignette of a Dan Sprick painting." Plein air isn't Steadman's usual approach, either, although he enjoys it. "I'm a longtime painter," he says, "more of a figure and still life painter than a plein air guy, though I do like to get out regularly, especially in the winter, when snow pulls the shapes and values together and lets me suffer for my art. So much of my art involves looking at beautiful naked people, and I owe some sort of karmic debt for that -- standing in the cold snow for three or four hours restores my sense of artistic balance!"