I'm happy to announce that juror Kathleen Conover has selected my painting Tropical Urban to be in the Spring New Mexico Watercolor Society exhibit to be held virtually.  The exhibit will run from May 2 - June 27 and I'll post the link for it when it's up. I could not fit her concurrent four day virtual workshop into my schedule, but I'm sure it'll be wonderful.  

I submitted both nonrepresentational pieces that I finished recently and blogged about in the last post, and I was thrilled to have this one accepted. It is so hard to predict which pieces will catch the juror's eye and fit their vision of what the show will be based on the strength of other entries.  To try and understand, I've attended several presentations on entering shows and hearing about the process from the juror's point of view. 

Some of the takeaways are:  enter similar styled pieces to show consistency in your work, don't try to guess what the juror likes or imitate their style, and only enter what you are proud to stand by.  

In the Frank Spino presentation, he mentioned a great quote often attributed to Sir Winston Churchill or President Abraham Lincoln -- the jury is out on that one!  It applies to painters as well as life in general:   Success is moving from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.  I love that!  By the way, his citrus series is amazing.

I'm at work on another abstract piece, just playing with values and color to see what happens, as well as a fall scene with pumpkins and interesting shadows.  Stay tuned...