France Tremblay Painting Wins 2008 Paint the Parks Grand Prize Purchase Award!

An acrylic painting titled "Southeast View from Zabriskie Point" by France Tremblay has been chosen as the 2008 Paint the Parks100 Grand Prize Purchase Award Winner. Other major award winners chosen included the following juror awards:
Elaine Hahn Jurors Award - Dan McWilliams, "Best Beach", oil
Susiehyer Jurors Award - Christopher Groves, "Santee Evening Light", oil
John Hulsey Jurors Award - Robert Highsmith - "Morning at Canyon de Chelly", watercolor

In addition, three winners were chosen to represent each of the three national park regions:
Region I Winner - Steven Hileman, "December Afternoon, Acadia", oil
Region II Winner - Robert Gunn, "Full Moon Ascending", oil
Region III Winner - Howard R. Hanson, "Forest Floor", oil alkyd

The jurors deliberated over a 3-day period, scoring hundreds and hundreds of entries before all the ballots were tabulated and the 100 highest scoring paintings emerged from the field. A complete list of all winners will be posted to www.PaintAmerica.org website by Friday, July 4th.

Susiehyer Conducts Painting Demonstration for PaintAmerica

On Sunday, June 29th, nationally recognized oil painter Susiehyer conducted a painting demonstration and seminar for PaintAmerica at the Maner Conference Center in Topeka, Kansas. Susie was in Topeka as a juror for the 2008 Paint the Parks competition, and agreed to conduct the demonstration as part of PaintAmerica's education mission.

Twice each year, as PaintAmerica national competitions are judged, one of the jurors agrees to provide a seminar for interested artists. Group size is kept small so that each attendee is assured of an up-close, intimate session with the instructor. Susie focused her demonstration on creating a better painting by focusing on strong shape and value structures in the early stages of the painting. We thank Susie for agreeing to provide this motivational and insightful demonstration!

Paint the Parks Jurors Work Through Entries

On Friday, June 27th, Susiehyer, Elaine Hahn and John Hulsey arrived at the PaintAmerica offices to begin wading through hundreds of entries in the 2008 Paint the Parks national competition. It was a daunting task. After an Italian dinner where the jurors got acquainted with each other, judging began about 8pm Friday, starting with the mini competition. To accomplish the judging within time constraints, the jurors scored each entry individually, with scores to be tabulated afterwards. The jurors retired for the evening about 11:30.

Saturday morning, the jurors met for breakfast and then dug into the remainder of the mini entries. With a few short breaks, judging went on all through the day, starting the full-size entries about 1:30, and not breaking again until dinner at 6pm. After dinner, the deliberation continued until almost midnight. On Sunday, the jurors discussed the previous 2 days of judging over a leisurely breakfast before preparing for Susiehyer's afternoon painting demonstration.