Juried Shows

 

 

If you entered an art exhibit and were rejected, it hurts. "Guess I'm not good enough...." you think. But that's the kind of faulty reasoning that makes artists stumble.

Here are the truths I've discovered about juried exhibits that may help you pick yourself up and get back on track. First, most of the top artists in the nation have gotten lots of rejections. So, give up on the idea that if you were 'good', you wouldn't be rejected. Everybody gets rejected sometimes. A painting that wins an award at one show might be rejected from the next. Reality Check - You'll never paint so well that you'll 'have it made' because Art is not a destination, it's a lifestyle. So, paint what you love and look for the exhibit where it fits best.

I also paint what I know will sell, to bring in income. (Exhibition images are not often highly sellable.) Try to find a balance. (I'm including images in this post that are award winning or popular and sellable. I think you can tell which pretty easily.)

Juried watercolor shows are swinging back from an abstract period - realism, in some forms, is making a comeback. (Yeah!) Photorealism still gets rejected a lot, unless you use an unusual composition.(Boo) Recently, AWS's top prize went to a photorealistic face together with an almost abstract pattern. The face by itself might have gotten in and might not. These exhibits don't often accept standard portraits. (Not 'arty' enough?) They don't want wildlife or art that leans toward designer type images, either.

What do they want? Fire escapes with shadows, boats from an unusual angle, tangled machinery - with color or shadows - these are commonly accepted themes. Accepted portraits are usually loosely painted, girls or women, people with hats or minorities, or cropped in an unusual way to make an interesting composition. If you have a common subject, still life or landscape, you need to make it stand out in some way, not just really well painted - there will be lots of really well painted entries. Paul Jackson entered a night city scene and put a white heron flying through. It caught the judge's interest. Some subjects rarely get accepted and almost never win awards (like florals and snowscenes) unless they play the trump card of dramatic contrast......

When I choose something to paint, I convert my photo to black and white and play with its contrast in photoshop. You can make anything more dramatic just by increasing the contrast. Whatever your center of interest is, spotlight it in some way. If the other detail is drawing attention away from your center of interest, downplay it. And creating a sense of distance in any painting increases it's interest, whether realistic or abstract.

Multi media juried art exhibits - An exhibit worth entering will have a knowledgable judge for watermedia. College or museum judges who have never done watercolor or are not even aware of the watercolor movement, tend to pick horrible paintings that somehow fit their idea of what watercolor should be. Avoid these exhibits. (The exceptions are the big exhibits with a more experienced museum type judge. They usually choose very modern work, like Watercolor U.S.A.) Some older national art groups sponsor exhibits that will award the well rendered realism which most watercolor shows reject - check out Allied Artists, Hilton Head, C.L.Wolfe, etc.

Finding yourself by finding your recurrent themes. Look back over all your paintings for the last two years and look for themes -in subject matter, design, or color. Often, artists are not conciously aware of their own themes until someone else points them out. Figuring what you love best and focusing on that is absolutely what you should do, reguardless of whether it's the popular thing right now. That's the path to your best paintings, not trying to paint for the judges of one particular type of exhibit.

Now that you no longer expect to 'make it', relax and have some fun. (Art really can be fun.) Paint what you love and find an exhibit where it will be appreciated, because it'll keep you painting and improving. Don't take rejections to be a judgement of your quality, but that the time wasn't right just now. Keep entering. You may get in when you least expect it, or you may just go on to someplace better.......