Approximately 55 painters from San Angelo and other cities joined 30 professional artists downtown on Saturday morning to compete in a two-hour “Quick Draw Paint-Out” hosted by the group that brought En Plein Air Texas to the community last week.
Restricted to areas in historical downtown and near the fort, the artists submitted works reflecting local architecture and landscape for judging at Fort Concho’s Quartermaster Gallery Saturday afternoon by PleinAir Magazine Editor Dtephen Doherty.
Doherty, a painter himself, said he was impressed with the execution of the local event, and spent Saturday morning walking the streets downtown and photographing artists at work as their pieces developed.
By 1 p.m., he’d selected 12 paintings to receive awards hung on various easels on the fort’s grounds.
“I have two general criteria when I judge a plein air event,” Dohert said. “One is, I feel—and it’s a personal opinion—that the paintings should be of the place. If you’ve come here to paint San Angelo…I think in some ways your painting ought to reflect that location…that if somebody from that town looked at it, they would get a sense that this is San Angelo…”
As example, Doherty explained that still-life painters may attend an event and place apples and oranges on a table and complete a wonderful painting, but that type of work is not what he looks for when judging a plein air event.
“Since I’m a painter myself, it’s very important to me that I award paintings that are well composed and well executed on a technical level,” he said of his second set of criteria. “If I think it’s not a strong composition, if the artist hasn’t handled the materials well, if it seems like the colors are muddy, the composition is static, I’m not apt to want to recognize those paintings.”
Taking the top three spots in Saturday’s quick draw were artists Maren Phillips, Mary Margaret Pipkin and Tim Oliver, all of who were sponsored by Downtown San Angelo, Inc.
An additional six non-competition artists—painters who were not chosen among the 30 to participate in the weeklong event—were awarded prizes for their work, broken down into first, second and third places in two categories: best painting and best use of light and color.
Amanda Murray, a full-time oil painter from Dallas, took first prize in the best painting field with her submission, “Pink Laundry”. The image centered on a former laundromat on Oakes St., and Murray said she selected the location based on the contrast in color between the pink building and blue sign, as well as the “vintage look” of the location.
“It’s pretty gnarly,” Murray said about her win. “I admire so many artists here. Some of my favorites are here…there’s some heavy hitters in the whole nation here and I was just excited that we had an opportunity to come in and chime in for the last day of this weeklong competition for 10 bucks.”
Murray drove five hours to participate on Saturday, and said she was thoroughly impressed with the organization of the event and the quality of work submitted.
“I’ve gone to a couple of plein air competitions and you just get the gambit of new, beginners and really, really professional people,” she said. “You’re just used to a certain quality of work and I was actually shocked. This was a huge array of—just as many as there were, I thought there was amazing work across the board. Usually, you see plein air quick paints—because they’re only two hours—people just throw something up as fast as they possibly can and you don’t get to finish it out…I was shocked with how finished work was, how many amazing ones there were and I did not think I had a chance.”
Murray’s painting sold almost immediately after the competition, and she said she was proud to know her work was appreciated. Had it not sold, she said, she would have taken it home and hung it up because she was so fond of it.
Local artist Joan Mertz was among the 30 that painted all week, and by Saturday afternoon she’d completed 11 plein air paintings and sold all but four. Of those, a landscape titled “Come to Me and You Will be Happy”, depicting a background of dark green hills topped with windmills and a sprawling green and brown valley, won Best West Texas Landscape.
“This has been awesome,” Mertz said post-event. “This was a big undertaking by one woman who found a lot of volunteers. I started out just being a volunteer; I was going to hang the show. She called me up two days before the deadline and said, ‘Joan, you have to enter’. I thought, ‘Ok, what the heck’.”
Mertz said she was nervous for about a month leading up to the competition, and on the first day kind of “hid” herself as she painted.
“By today’s paint-out I was brave and bold and that’s what this thing did,” she said enthusiastically. “That’s part of the awesomeness. We were with kindred spirits: people who talk art, think art, live art, and to watch them shovel paint—not just scrub like I do…”
Throughout the week, Mertz said, her confidence grew as camaraderie built among the painters, each showing their works to one another and sharing their tactics as they progressed.
An overall feeling of accomplishment and pride was sensed among the painters at the fort on Saturday, many expressing how impressed they were with the organization and hospitality shown throughout the weeklong event.
“I go to these shows, you know, a dozen of these every year and I’ve never seen a first-time event that has been as well run or successful on every level as this one,” Doherty said. “In this case, they started out on a very high note.”
Below is a list of Saturday’s winners in various categories:
Overall Quick Draw Prizes
1st: Maren Phillips, “Mesquite Shadows”
2nd: Mary Margaret Pipkin, “Coydia River”
3rd: Tim Oliver, “Post Hospital”
Best Painting by Non-Competition Artists
1st: Amanda Murray, “Pink Laundry”
2nd: Jack Price
3rd: Liz Bonham
Best Use of Light and Color by Non-Competition Artists
1st: Jonathon Harris
2nd: Doris Jones
3rd: Daniel J. Sorensen
Honorable Mentions
1st: Russell Cushman
2nd Fran Ellisor
3rd: Jimmy Longacre
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