Gregurić Breg. 100 x 80 cm (40 x 32 inches), oil on linen.
There has been a proliferation of online painting contests recently. In many I find the judging to be erratic and I don’t usually enter twice if I find I strongly disagree with their choices.
On the other hand, I don’t mind losing if I feel the winning works were excellent. The bimonthly contest offered by Plein Air Magazine is the one contest I both regularly enter and regularly lose. Even though I get beaten by other artists most of the time, I think the quality of the work selected for awards is almost always great. Their judging is done with an intelligence and taste that I almost always agree with, even when my submission is not selected.
So I’m happy to announce that, after entering numerous works over the past few years, my painting of Tina in a field in the little hamlet of Gregurić Breg took first place in the recent October/November Plein Air Salon.
The painting was done outside, on location, over the course of a couple of months this year. Below is a photograph of my set-up. It’s in a small village in the hills above Samobor, a small town just outside of Zagreb.
The location at Gregurić Breg.
The grass is of different heights in part because it grew the whole time. It was at the level of Tina’s waist when we started in April, and over her shoulders when we finished in late May. Our landlord was nice enough to leave that little patch of field for us uncut, so I could finish the work.
(Gregurić Breg is currently available for purchase via my London dealer, Constantine Lindsay.)
A second entry, my painting of a snow covered road near Les Plans, Switzerland also took first place in the plein air catagory:
Road in the Snow, Les Plans. 30 x 40 cm, oil on panel.
Below is a photo of the location:
The location in Les Plans.
Update: There is a short piece on my win on the Plein Air website here.