Winners for
Nature Reconsidered 2022 Judged Art Competition and Exhibit and
Trail Photography Competition and Exhibit 2022
Nature Reconsidered
First Place – $250
Lori McAdams, Belmont Skies, scratchboard
The amount of energy contained in this 5” x 7” is intense. The movement of the clouds create a dramatic contrast to the ominous tree line. This is movement the viewer can sense and feel. The story seems to linger in the darkness that lies horizontally within the composition. Adams pushes the visual depth deep into this small landscape and into the viewer’s mind, yet the landscape orientation pushes us into a calm beyond the picture frame. This small work is worthy of sharing a wall with a Rembrandt pen and ink and even reminded this artist of the wood engravings of Rockwell Kent. One of the most compelling components behind this work is being surprised by the medium.
Second Place – $150
Ron Shepard , Rankin Lake Outlet, pastel
The golden ratio, the divine proportion, the golden rectangle, completely at work here, seducing the eye. This place to lose oneself, a drawing that could take the viewer out of their own life and transport them instantly off into memories of calm flat water. The use of well blended background color fields layered with detailed mark making creates such depth and texture of both picture and color. The horizontal shoreline moves the eye from left to right and back left through the reflection in the water, back to shore in the foreground and finally to the pop of color to the left. The viewer is so divided, as to which area is a favorite spot, the grasses in the foreground, the watery reflection or those tiny highlights of the tree trunks that create such mystical depth beyond the shore.
Third Place – $75
Timmy Hord, Burt’s View – Grandfather Mountain, oil
The luminosity of this large format landscape is quietly captivating. The viewer slips along the edge of the sky in the slightly abstracted depiction of the golden hour. The depth of the color and the dim light provide a rich visual information for the truest sense of objects at dusk, that colorful foggy feeling of forms melting into each other, giving the viewer a sense of being present and at arms-length simultaneously. The orientation, size and repeating diagonals create a dynamic composition that calmly leads the eye back and forth across the canvas.
Merit Award – $50
Jean Wilder Smith, Raindrops In My Mind, Pottery
Merit Award – $50
Shelby Sabelli , Tidal Marsh, mixed media
Merit Award – $50
Mary Bartrop, Autumn Path, fiber
Trail 2022
First Place – $100
Alex Pietersen, Counterbalanced, photography
The landscape orientation of this photo makes the pod seem as if it is almost resting on the bottom edge of the composition. The viewer comes in for closer inspection and realizes that it’s suspended in space. The bleak almost forceful nature of black and white photography highlights the texture on the seed pod as opposed to the background. In the softness, in the darkness, is good and evil, dark and light dangerous and calm. The dark negative space around the object leads to its esoteric feeling. The pod at that bottom edge, closer proximity to the boundary of the photograph, gives it a resting area or a place for the eye to rest until our glace is zoomed back over the top surface of the pod seeing the fuzziness but knowing it’s not soft but prickly.
Second Place – $75
Chris Parker, Una Foglia, photography
Lost in the darkness, this almost mystical leaf reaches out towards the viewer to offer a glimpse of moisture collected along the veins. One tiny leaf so powerful, reaching out to the viewer, begging for closer inspection. The green diagonal that crosses the dark background of the composition almost cutting it in half accentuates the drama. The curvilinear edges of the leaves in such contrast to the background keeps the viewer tiptoeing on the edge, just on the verge of falling into the dark abyss.
Third Place – $50
Ellen Devenny, Bees Love Milkweed Too!, photography
The brightness of the color and the positive and negative space draws the viewer in for a closer inspection. The velvety softness of the detailed foreground just slips back and forth into the hazy background. Absorbed by the tiny flowers and the bee, the level of detail offered and yet the softness and subtleness of both color and texture. The eye moves away from the flower into the green by the tiny tendrils at the back of the bloom. The gaze falls upon the waviness of the leaves from the plant and then back up into the flower again constantly moving, but never out of the picture plane. This cropped view of nature has a perfect placement of positive and negative space.
Honorable Mention
Lynne Parker, Monster of the Woods, photography