Winners for
Small Wonders 2025 Art Competition and Exhibit

About the Judge

Isaac Payne grew up in Tacoma, WA. He studied painting at CUNY Queens College (MFA ’05) and the Cleveland Institute of Art (BFA ’03). Isaac was an 11 month Affiliate Artist in Residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art (2011-2012), and a winner of New American Paintings 2010 Southern Competition. Exhibitions include the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of Art, Greenhill Center for NC Art, The New Gallery of Modern Art, Mason Fine Art, and Blue Spiral 1. Isaac lives and works in Charlotte, NC, and teaches painting at Central Piedmont Community College.

Judges comments are included below:

AWARDS

First Place

artist Sabrina Setaro with her gouache painting Dawn Over Veneta

Sabrina Setaro, Dawn Over Veneta, gouache

“I find the visual choices at this 2×3 scale very thoughtful and beautifully executed. The range and specificity of marks, color, and opacity, shape, edge quality, layering and composition. The way the light of the hill rises and falls, offset by a shadow that both sits behind it and moves through it; the non-literal sense of landscape and time; the punctuation and cropping of the pale ultramarine lunar form weighted by the subtle warmth around it; and overall compositional balance and movement, how it feels lifts the work tall.”

Second Place

drawing of feet propped on a footstool with cats sitting above and below.

Lori McAdams, Footnotes, scratchboard

“I chose this not because I love cats and the weirdness of our shared existence (weird and wonderful), but because this piece is wonderful. The composition, mood, light and mark making (especially in the top 2/7ths)! If these are not family portraits or friends of the artist, then I will have been fooled.”

Third Place

2 pastel drawings ov a pastoral scene with large clouds, and a pine tree on a tall mountain top.

Pat Edwards, In The Valley” and “Mountain Top, pastel

“Both are very well done. Especially considering the size of In the Valley, the composition, detail and mark making come through exceptionally well.”

Merit Award

ARtist Lizz Grimsley with her linocut print of a cat head on a tea cup.

Lizz Grimsley, Catpuccino, linocut

“…nice design and skillful line work”

Merit Award

Artist Emma Kay Lewis with her watercolor of a black and white feather on a gold background.

Emma Kay Lewis, Lost… and Found,  watercolor.

“…context of background and technical execution.”

Merit Award

Artist Susan Arrowood with her pastel drawing of a gnarled tree stump.

Susan Arrowood, Garden Sculpture, pastel.

“This is a great study for what I think could be worthy of revisiting larger than 6×8. Also the Macarons are lovely!”