To tell the truth, the award-winning pictures—plus a few more—in this fine exhibition caught my eye within the first minutes of walking around (meaning three or four passes) the room where some ninety entries were arranged.
There is something to be said for this method of jurying a show, at least initially, because good art should stand out—if not immediately, then at least upon second glance, like Pat Walker's Winter Merced and Robert W. Davis' Trouants Island I, small jewels of superb skill in the medium, watercolor and pastel respectively.

After the walkabout, of course the task was to verify, carefully, one's first impressions; I took an hour and a half to do so. All the winners shared one essential quality: they were visually appealing. Simply put, I liked them right away. Peter and I had a nice conversation about this factor--attraction--and he used the phrase "an emotional relationship that happens," which struck me as exactly right.

The Juror's Choice, Pamela Hill Enticknap's Brando, was pretty much a slam-dunk, not only because it's a very good painting--rich color, imaginative composition, excellent drawing--but also because it invites our curiosity; we want to know what's going on here, even before we connect the title to the central figure. We are always drawn to images of ourselves, like those in Robert Wolfe's Easter Sunday, which deserves a ribbon for the exuberance of color and action in his family, in spite of the rather pedestrian (pun intended) drawing.

Same goes for Ron Freese's Waiting and Watching, which nearly made the final cut. There were just not enough ribbons; if there had been four more, the other three would have gone to John Rowbottam's charmingly casual El Paseo, Judeen Warren's whimsical Waiting for the Hunt, and Loren Nibbe's striking Kimono. Too, there are many competent landscapes here which deserve mention, a tough game in this town where stand-out landscape art is so, delightfully, plentiful.
And finally, another tough category--abstract (if I may use that catch-all term) works. Ribbons went to Barbara McIntyre's Flight to the Moon, Lesli Pepper's Untitled, and Rica Coulter's Ancient Matter because, primarily, they were just a notch or two more original, more arresting, than the other nonrepresentational entries.

All in all, if I may, "Good show." And PS:I went back to view the exhibition after it was hung (well done), just to see if I was satisfied with my choices. Like I said, I wish I'd had more ribbons...

Duane Unkefer