New For 2020 - Challenge Artist of the Year

Each monthly Guild meeting has an assigned topic challenging members to create art with that topic in mind. The art can be newly created or a past painting, photo, sculptor, etc.
 
The art does not have to be framed, it can be a quick sketch or illustration, etc., easy-peasy.  During the monthly meeting, members vote for their favorite art.  The art that has the most votes will be awarded 3 points, the second highest 2 points, third highest 1 point.   At the end of 2020, the artists with the most challenge points will be the Challenge Artist for 2020.
 
February Challenge:  "Tropical"

March Challenge:  "Into the Light" 

April Challenge:  "Germination"  (Coincides with CoBACH April/May Exhibition)

May Challenge:  "Bright and Beautiful"

* Note:  Check back frequently as challenge is subject to change
 

2019 Challenge Winners

​December - No Challenge Holiday Party

 ​November - Jill McGinn

​2019 November Art Challenge: “Harvest,” was won by Jill McGinn, a new BAG member.  Jill said that “Fall is a favorite season for me visually and I love the colors. That’s what attracted me to doing a pumpkin in a pumpkin patch.  This painting was done in an underpainting of pan pastels. I thought that looked pretty nice as it was, but when I picked it up to make it a little more intense using regular pastels, it evolved into a kind of Fall still life-ish, landscape-ish, feast.
 
Her artistic journey: I was not an artist during my life, I did pottery in college, stained glass, but I was an English teacher, social studies teacher and a medical social worker at different points in my life.  I retired about 3 years ago, took a class which lead to another class and then just fell down the rabbit hole after that. I love it! I feel like I’m living the dream, I don’t have to feel like I have to make a living at it.  I can do it and just enjoy it – it’s wonderful. 

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September Co-Winners

​Sandy Hanert

The title of my painting is “Sanctuary.” 
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I started out with an abstract ink background with texture and then I pulled the painting out of it: the tree and the lovely ground of the forest which were there, then just enhanced it.  It was a kind of deductive painting.

It was fun, experimental and tactile so what I thought of when I did this technique - which I’ve done several times - I see what’s in there and I pull it out and very often it’s something from nature because that’s what I love. 
I named it “Sanctuary” because it’s like when I’m out in nature, it is a place of sanctuary, almost like holy ground to me.  “Sanctuary” was painted a couple of years ago, before this show even happened. 
Interviewer’s note:  Deductive painting, per online definitions: a technique where you start by laying the darkest values (or negative space) and then erasing (i.e. reducing value) to pull out values, working from darkest to lightest. ​

Master watercolorist, Cheng Khe Chee, does an excellent demonstration of deductive painting at: 
https://emptyeasel.com/2012/02/06/video-the-deductive-method-of-watercolor-painting/.  Sandy used inks whereas Chen Khe Chee used watercolor. The idea of deductive painting is the same regardless.

  Peggy Brewer

Pastel, titled Mary’s Grotto at St. Patrick Church, Brighton.
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I’d always admired the grotto at St. Patrick and I happened to go there several times while my mother was in a nursing home in Brighton. 

Fr. James had visited my mother, per my request, and ultimately he gave the funeral mass for my mother. So, he gave me permission to go over there and do art in the grotto area and this is the result. 

It has connections to St. Mary, the Church here locally and to the memory of my mother.