Useful Experience

I collected my competition piece on Thursday afternoon. As I got there so early I was able to have a sneaky peek at the works of the other unsuccessful entrants, and some of them were absolutely amazing! The lady who organised the competition was there and she explained to me that not only were there more entrants than usual, but this particular year they had less space to use than usual, meaning they had room for about 20 fewer pieces than they would normally have. After seeing some of the other pieces that were rejected, I wouldn't have expected my piece to be accepted even if they did have room for another 20 pieces! But that's ok. Hey, I've only been painting since January, and I recognised some of the pieces as being works of those who I know have been painting for many years, and work professionally, painting book illustrations for example. I wouldn't say "How can I compete with that?" as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it's very early days for me yet, and I was in good company with those that had been rejected!

Also, I rushed to put my piece together in one week, and if I'm truthful I still wasn't entirely happy with it when I entered it. At least now that it's home again I can touch it up at my leisure. What an experience it was though! Working on Footprints at that pace was exhausting, but so exciting!

Of course, all this means that come the 3rd of July the theatre should be holding an exceptional exhibition of amazing works by artists from across the county - Anita being one of them! Yay! Congratulations Anita! I shall try to get some photographs of the best pieces.