Article on EPOCH TIMES

The 2014/2015 ARC Salon Live Exhibition and WinnersBy Kara Lysandra Ross | October 1, 2015Last Updated: October 21, 2015 7:01 pm7 of 7

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The Art Renewal Center, a non-profit educational foundation dedicated to the renewal of traditional training technics in the visual arts is pleased to present the winners and finalists of the 2014/2015 International ARC Salon Competition with an approximate 2,500 entries this year by over 1,050 artists. This year they have included 789 finalist works.

These works represent the top 31% of works submitted. For the first time many of the works from the ARC Salon will be exhibited in a live traveling exhibition that will start at the MEAM museum in Barcelona, Spain, where it will be on view from November 17th until December 28th to celebrate an intense collaboration between Europe and America for representational art.

The ARC Salon ‘s works will be mounted at the same time the MEAM mounts its 8th Figurativas Painting and Sculpture Competition. The MEAM competition is organized by the Foundation of the Art and the Artists, which is, along with the ARC Salon, the other most important competition for representational art in the Western world in which more than 2,300 artists from more than 90 countries participate. The 8thFigurativas Painting and Sculpture Competition, Figurativas 2015, will run between November 17th and January 10th.

The Official Awards Ceremony of ARC Salon and Figurativas 2015winners will take place as one tremendous event on November 20th, 2015 at 19:00 hours at the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) in Barcelona and a Forum of American and European representational artists will take place the following day on Saturday the 21st. After December 28th, the ARC Salon portion of the show will then travel to New York City, where it will hang at the Salmagundi Club from January 18th to February 4th.

ARC will be planning several lectures and educational events during the time the show will be in New York including a speech by ARC Chairman Fred Ross, and a collaboration with the Da Vinci Initiative, whose mission is to bring skill-based techniques like those embodied by the works in the ARC Salon into K  12 classrooms.

They are planning on holding a special forum for high-school students and teachers on the atelier training method and its benefits for those interested in pursuing a professional career in the arts.  Tickets for all events are available for sale / RSVP through the ARC website. All proceeds will help fund the ARC, a 5013c non-profit educational foundation. Donations are also welcome and are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

They have also received a number of requests from artists who have been asked to participate in the live exhibition if they will provide an opportunity for them to sell their paintings. Because of this ARC has decided to do so. Many of the works on exhibit are also available for sale, a full list of these works can be found at the web address for the exhibit below or contacting Kara Lysandra Ross.

Regular updates will be given on this exciting upcoming live exhibition including information on the artists and quotes from the artists about their works as they are added to the list of exhibiting pieces. Please visit http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/MEAM_exhibit.php for more details.

This year ARC has given out 10 purchase awards, the value of the paintings totaling over $160,000. This is in addition to the $47,000+ in cash prizes and the production of the Streamline Art Video Award, which went to master artist, Cesar Santos, valued at $25,000. This award is a fully produced and released DVD by Streamline Art Video, an ARC Allied Organization™, and it will showcase the artist’s technique with a demonstration of their work and an interview with the artist. To pre-order this DVD now at the special pre-order price, click here).

This year Best in Show went to Arantzazu Martinez for her painting ofAbsolute Trust – Sleeping Beauty. This ambitious work, measuring 90½ x 51 inches, captures grace and tremendous movement even though the subject is fast asleep. Martinez is not unknown to the ARC Salon, winning the Bouguereau Award just two years ago and First Place Figurative in 2007.

The Bouguereau Award winner, Nicholas O ‘Leary ‘s painting ofDeparting Bodies, was also ranked highly among the judges. This atmospheric painting with hundreds of bodies utilizes a successful compositional complexity similar to Bouguereau ‘s 1902 painting of Les Oreades.

There was one Dual Category award winner, which went to a work, ranked highly in more then one category. This was the case of Forgone Kings by Allen Williams, as it was ranked highly in both the Drawing Category and the Imaginative Realist Category.

Rehs Contemporary Galleries, Inc., New York City, NY selected 15 finalists who submitted additional images for the possibility of being represented in an exhibition and sale at their gallery. Out of the ARC finalists 6 were selected for this exhibition and sale.

Richard Hall, Philippe Attie, Kari Tirrell, Duffy Sheridan, Joseph McGurl, and Walter Rane will have a group show at Rehs Contemporary Galleries in the Fall of 2016. More information will be available on this in the weeks and months to come.

When Hope Comes, by Daniel Gerhartz, won both the American Art Collector Magazine Award of Excellence award as well as First Place in the Imaginative Realist Category. Since the Judges for these two awards were completely separate, it says a lot about the strength of this particular symbolic work.

This year the Plein Air Magazine Award went to Alexandra Tyng for her landscape, Light Pathway. This work won her a featured article done on her work in an upcoming issue of Plein Air Magazine. This award was chosen by the magazine’s editor M. Stephen Doherty.

Peter Trippi, the editor for Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine, gave the The Fine Art Connoisseur Award to Dean Mitchell for his watercolor of The Artist Bob Ragland. Mitchell won an article in an upcoming issue of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine.

ARC had three additional magazines participating in the ARC Salon.Western Art Collector MagazineAmerican Fine Art Magazine, andInternational Artist Magazine. All three of these awards were picked by the magazines’ editor Joshua Rose.

The Western Art Collector Magazine Award of Excellence went to John Buxton for his landscape titled The Uninvited and the International Artist Magazine Award of Excellence went to a figurative entry,Campbell, by Hiroshi Furuyoshi.

Both of these awards are a featured article in the respective magazines as is the American Art Collector Magazine Award of Excellence, mentioned above. The American Fine Art Magazine Award of Excellence was given to Joseph McGurl for his Thunderstorm over the Midwest From a Plane Window.

The Lessons in Classical Painting Publication award was given to five works: Erica ‘s Sky by Qing He, Fujitive by Tadashi Kashiwada, Self Portrait at 62 by Jim McVicker, After the Party by Steven Levin, andMr. John Downs Esquire by Frank Ordaz. All are expected to be published in Juliette Aristides’ latest publication, Lessons in Classical Painting, due out in May 2016.

Aristides is well known for her instructional books on atelier style painting and drawing which all quickly became best sellers. The books are featured in some of the world ‘s best museums such as theMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London and the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam among others.

The $5,000 prize for the Knohl Collection Award for History or Literature Inspired Art was equally divided between two works: Know Not Thy Pending Fate by Christina Grace Mastrangelo and The Ship of Fools by Carl Dobsky. This award was sponsored by Dr. Howard and Linda Knohl who are among the world’s most respected private art collectors and have amassed a stunning assemblage of hundreds of paintings and thousands of decorative art objects.

When asked about the historical or literary content of their work, the artists had insightful answers. Mastrangelo replied that, “It evolved after years of studying humanist literature, and the personal effect of love and loss through death and heartbreak. When I first moved to Florence in 2006, I was struck by the intensity of the history of the city.

It lead me to study the great minds of Florentine history: I read about Michelangelo’s struggles with his work and with God; I read about Leonardo’s ideas and inventions and discovered the great minds of Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and Dante. After living there only a short time, the idea for this work came to me in a dream. The scene was a group of figures stretching up into the sky, away from darkness and pain, and up into the light, towards serenity, harmony and connectedness.

It was only later that I made the connection to Dante’s Divine Comedy, as the vision changed to include the unknown realm of the afterlife and an internal search for an answer.” For The Ship of Fools Dobsky said that “The theme for the work has been around for a long time with some crediting it as beginning in the time of Plato. It kind of comes into it’s own in the 15th century with a book by Sebastian Brant titled The Ship of Fools which became the inspiration for works by the likes of Hieronymous Bosch and others.

It usually depicts a boat without a pilot filled with deranged people who are oblivious to their situation. In some cases, it has been used as social commentary. I wanted to take these elements but give the theme a personal interpretation.”

First, second and third place winners were also awarded in each of seven categories, Figurative, Imaginative Realism, Still Life, Landscape, Drawing, Sculpture, and Animal Art. These winners will be featured in a subsequent article. The ARC Salon continues to grow every year with greater and more diversified publicity and a continual increase in the number of artists entering.

They are approaching the start of their 12th annual ARC Salon Competition, scheduled for 2016. For this upcoming Salon they will be introducing a new, eighth category, dedicated to Portraiture. This is sure to be our largest competition yet with the largest cash awards and the most publicity to date. They will be accepting entries from March 1, 2016 through June 15, 2016. If you are an artist, don’t miss out on your chance to compete.


MEAM/Salmagundi 2014/2015 International ARC Salon Exhibition

For the first time many of the works from the ARC Salon will be exhibited in a live traveling exhibition that will start at the MEAM museum in Barcelona, Spain, where it will be on view from November 17th till December 28th to celebrate an intense collaboration between Europe and America for representational art. The ARC Salon’s works will be mounted at the same time the MEAM mounts its 8th Figurativas Painting and Sculpture Competition. The MEAM competition is organized by the Foundation of the Art and the Artists, which is, along with the ARC Salon, the other most important competition for representational art in the Western world in which more than 2,300 artists from more than 90 countries participate. The 8th Figurativas Painting and Sculpture Competition, Figurativas 2015, will run between November 17th and January 10th. The Official Awards Ceremony of ARC Salon and Figurativas 2015 winners will take place as one tremendous event on November 20th, 2015 at 19:00 hours at the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) in Barcelona and a Forum of American and European representational artists will take place the following day on Saturday the 21st. Works for this exhibit are still being selected, though the MEAM Purchase award and the ARC Purchase awards shown below will all be included. The ARC Salon portion of the show will then travel to New York City, where it will hang at the Salmagundi Club from January 18th to February 4th.



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