Current Exhibitions

Best in Show: Blue Serenity, by Melissa Imossi “Congratulations on a beautiful presentation. Congratulations on a sense of motion and movement and sparkle and radiance. You also give the viewer, the beholder, a chance to really enter into the picture with that dark threshold wandering up to the top, always through the stream of light. Delightful. Excellent.” DD

Henry H. Pierce Jr. Memorial Prize for Landscape Painting: Deep Freeze, by Deb Greco “You’ve got an incredible sense of unified tone. There are wonderful textures that are so suggestive and evocative of the environment. The feel of winter is dead on. And the marvelous composition that follows the frozen stream from left to right and then back again into that little patch of light in the very back. So we progress through the painting really successfully. Well done.”DD

Joan T. Hammeal Memorial Prize for Excellence in Oil Painting: I Have Wings, by Pamela V. Gibson. “This painting offers a sense of personality as well as delightful movement. And we have this sense of… joy and jubilation, in an expressive context. So we’ve got movement, dance, joy, jubilation and sunlight. Very Nice.”DD

Stephen F. Fitch StART Award for Excellence in Oil Painting: Arctic Sunbathing by Lorraine Yurkowitz. “We have a meditation in nature in winter, which is expanded by the idea of an animal. And the textures of the wolf and its coat are quite beguiling and visceral. And if I’m looking at the trees, behind the bows laden with snow, it is completely credible. As is the snow patch where the wolf is sitting. Good job.”DD

Gould Prize for Excellence in Pastel: Evening Sanctuary by Beverly Schirmeier. “The wandering meander that takes us back with those pale transitions of color through a subtle landscape. It’s luminous and it meanders in a way that pulls the mind’s eye into an infinite distance. It is also then animated by the egret. Well done.”DD

Bermel Family Prize for Excellence in Printmaking: In the Shadow by Liz Egan. “Congratulations on a wonderfully coherent design. We’ve got shapes that interlock and move forward and backward -that push and pull. And the contrast of the values is beautiful too. Wonderful example of printmaking and abstraction. Well done.” DD

Louise D. Welch Memorial Prize: The Little Leaf Queen by Jeanette Wimmer. “Soft hands. Exquisitely handled. Beautiful drawing. With luminosity coming from their oculus in the center with the figure. Just seems to breathe out of the painting. It’s a painting that tracks us through the mystery of the darkness in the surround. But moves forward with the beautiful face. Well done.” DD

Charles F. Shea Memorial Prize for Watercolor Landscape: Nature Speaks by Jeannette Delmore.”Wonderfully layered watercolor. Beautiful atmosphere. It’s an atmosphere of great softness, delicacy and tenderness. While at the same time, it evokes a sense of wonder and pleasure through its luminosity. The image has a transitional effect of being abstraction and landscape. On that tightrope between the two subjects is a wonderful experience. Love that kind of ambiguity. Good Job.”DD

DM Interiors Award for Best Watercolor Flora: Sunflower Gathering by Elizabeth Hundt Scott. “I particularly enjoyed the sunflowers being sort of personified, because we can feel kind of an image quite subtly – not too overt. It’s the eyes of the sunflowers, which they always have, coming towards us, and then the spreading of the figure across. The design reaches to the left, to the right, and up. So we’ve got a multi-directional design. And. The color complements, the simultaneous contrast with those wonderful blues against those rich yellows help vivify the painting. Very nice piece.”DD

Honorable Mention: Open Oyster by Alison Brush.A real prize winner. This offers organic nature, in an abstract form. There is a beautiful quality of movement. And it moves in a way that draws the viewer in toward the heart of the image. With counterpoint design elements. So …excellent abstraction. Excellent sense of natural and organic material. Well done.

Honorable Mention: Dusk by Robert Dietz. “Robert, I really enjoy that subtle light on the horizon reflecting itself in the lagoon. Beautiful work.”DD

Honorable Mention: Finding Her Voice by Sharon Morgio. “Congratulations, your intensity of the artist focusing their energies and feelings on the surface of a painting on an easel, which we cannot see from the profile view here, is so marvelous because we feel all of the emotional and intellectual activity of the artist. Good job.” DD

Honorable Mention: Dos Crows by Ceal Swift. “This, again, has this quality of abstraction and representation commingled. While the birds are clearly objects of nature, they have a nice conversation going between them. The patterning in the background with its horizontal banding offers a sense of abstraction. Excellent.” DD

Honorable Mention: Coneflowers by Andrea McLaughlin. “I enjoyed the quality of unity that you achieved in a collage. So here are these disparate components all working together in one emotional experience in your collage. Good work.”DD