Paint the truth and be honest about your subject matter. While not the best technical advice for an aspiring artists let me tell you how this lesson brought about an award winning painting. Sit back, grab some tea and enjoy.

Darkening skies and looming clouds where not the only obstacle to the 2021 Jefferson Quick Paint. (a three hour challenge to paint historic downtown Jefferson) I stumbled about aimlessly looking for a scene to paint for far too long. Usually I gather ideas before a quick paint to eliminate wasting time during the three hours working window. The few things I did scout out looked far less appealing without the sun, everything turned a muted muted grey thanks to the building rainclouds. Struggling to find the subject for my masterpiece I decided it was best to use the restroom before I set up since the coffee from the morning was now running its course. Now that said task was complete I was focused and ready to go....or so I thought. Heading back down the hall I ran into the event coordinator who had on the phone the local radio station. Soon I was giving a brief interview with the radio personality, advertising the event. After a short interview I was now ready to get this painting started. 

Checking my watch heading outside I was down to an hour and a half to get this painting done. While this could sound tragic doing a small 9x12 in that amount of time isn't impossible, plus it forces you to not worry about detail and get the big important things correct. (which is always were a painting fails or succeeds) Hunkered down in a breezy parking lot I found this dingy punk looking dead-end back ally. Plenty of big simple shapes and juicy texture to play with to contend create a moody painting. Away I go blasting in beautiful darks and carving out doorways, AC units and power lines. This would be a good time for some sage advice for those of you looking to execute a competition level painting in an hour. STICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW. While their are a multitude of lessons to learn in challenging yourself, if you want to paint a successful landscape in a high pressure situation, experimentation isn't the way to go. Frustration with the architecture soon sank deep and out came the paper-towel and turpentine. Now I had a blank canvas and 20 mins before turn in. 

Franticly spinning around looking for anything now at this point I defaulted to what I love to paint. Trees and God. Rising out of a clump of trees a bell tower from a local church became my saving grace per se. My previous painting had a nice tone that fit the building, a quick sketch of the tower and it was on to the trees. They sat perfectly in a triangular manner composing the tower nicely no work needed by me there. Knowing this was going to be a vignetted view a bit of sky went in and the rest would be left for the viewer to imagine. Time was up. 

I sat their with this scrappy study of this church and wrestled with the idea of even submitting it. Not even half the canvas had paint on it, it was done in twenty minutes, it isn't my best work, these where some of the thoughts that raced in my head. However something in the deep recesses of my mind told me to submit it. In all honesty I gave it my best and I was here to compete and dropping out of the quick paint was worse than submitting somethings sub par. In the show it went.

The following day as the awards rolled around the first announcement were the results of the quick paint. Seeing such amazing work done by others is typically accompanied with the feeling of inadequacy. As they announced the honorable mention I was astonished to hear my name called. Slightly confused, I was also a bit embarrassed that my 20 min painting was worthy of any mention at all. Hearing the comments from the judges I was pleased that they saw something in a painting that I hadn't even quite seen myself.  Many of my fellow painters agreed that there was something in it that even I had not realized. It received many compliments and in all actuality it took me a while to process and understand them. 

The moral of the story? Be honest and tell the truth. Looking back and pondering why that painting was received as it was brought me to that phrase. Their was a ton of truth to that painting. Nothing was filtered and it was an honest reaction and expression to what was in front of me. I had no time to manufacture some philosophical insight or invent some narrative about the work. I only responded to the beauty that was so graciously gifted to me.