An exhibit of the work of the eight finalists in the annual Bethesda Painting Awards competition is on display at the Fraser Gallery in Bethesda through July 4. The winners of the liberal awards, funded by the Trawick Foundation, were announced at the opening earlier this month.
As in the past, the competition was open to artists of all levels from Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Of the record 240-plus submissions received, 38 were selected as semi-finalists. The jurors included John Winslow, painter and Catholic University emeritus professor, whose proclivities are fairly evident in the assortment of finalists. The extra two jurors, also painting professors, were Patrice Kehoe, University of Maryland, and Ruth Bolduan, Virginia Commonwealth University.
Perhaps most interesting about the consequences of the judging is the relative homogeneity of the selections, with one glaring exception. On one hand is a group of abstract works, all of them connecting linear patterning and layering of forms. The rest are realists, apart from for the top prize winner, Camilo Sanin, who works in a style that might be called Neo-Color Field. Sanin's striped paintings are evocative of the work of 1960s Washington Color Field painters Gene Davis and Howard Mehring, but on a much smaller scale.
No comments:
Post a Comment