It has been a great honor for me to serve as the juror of this exhibition, and I want to thank the Fredericksburg Center for the Creative Arts for this opportunity.

I want to congratulate all those artists whose work has been chosen for the exhibition as well as the award recipients. I also want to applaud all the artists for submitting your work to juried exhibitions and other opportunities. It takes courage and may not always seem worthwhile, especially when your work doesn’t get selected. But when it does, so many people will get a chance to experience and appreciate your work (and maybe even buy it!).

There were 118 entries from which I selected 50 works for this exhibition. It’s always challenging to select art work from digital or slide images. It makes the work look and feel so different. Art has to be seen in person in order to really benefit from the experience it has to offer, and to really appreciate the artist’s skill, creativity and use of medium. I was reminded by this again when I viewed the exhibition in person recently to select the award recipients. I thought I knew who was going to receive the awards. However, I ended up almost entirely changing my selection once I saw the work in person.

I felt a genuine connection to the work that I chose for the three awards and not only because that’s the theme of the exhibition. They resonated with me on an intuitive and emotional level. I felt truly engaged by these artists’ work. Some of my choices actually surprised me as I usually am not attracted towards the traditional representational style. I love when that happens.

I instantly felt connected to Sister Mother by Elizabeth Snipes. The combination between realism and the abstract background is beautifully combined. The person in the painting felt very familiar to me, someone that I may have met before, or someone that I would like to know.

I really appreciate Susan Singer’s piece Connected. It’s refreshing to see her use of perspective – what she chose to focus on. I also find her use of light and composition very successful in this painting. It reminds me a little of Lucien Freud’s work. The combination of various textures and color is quite alluring in Pulse of the Morning by Barbara Taylor Hall.

Other work that captivated me are by Robert Greene, Michael Farrar and Raymond Abell (honorable mentions).

I hope everyone here will feel a connection to some of these works and the stories they tell. I certainly have, and I want to thank you for that. Thank you again for this opportunity and for sharing your work with me. Best of luck!