A Southern accent sweetly lingers in his
voice as we heard our juror artist from Missouri, Paul Jackson, begin his
critique on Saturday morning of 16 artist’s creations. There was a moment of silence and then he
proclaims the first piece as energy in motion.
As for myself, I was excited by his expressiveness from the get go. The
main points of interest from his continuously informative critique were about
the focal point:
• A focal point is the story line of your
painting and it is where there is greater intensity, detail, and contrast
• Vary brush strokes to show off the focal point
• Don’t put your focal point in the center of
your painting
• Pop highlights around your focal point;
include high contrast and incorporate lots of mid value comments
He also made
several other very valuable statements and words of wisdom; a winning painting
has high contrast, while painting talk to yourself for decision making, and
color takes all the credit and value does all the work.
His thoughts
on things we often forget and are always glad to hear again were; always make
your darks/blacks with several colors and not out of the tube, don’t chop off a
corner of your painting with a diagonal line, and you don’t want the onlookers
eye to stop on your signature in your painting; think of placement before
signing.
Paul’s final
comment was, “The best part of being an artist is the observable gift in the
garden of our mind, be sure to use it”.
By Hazel
Reeves
