"Dear Artist,
Thank you for submitting your work to be considered for the Bulldog Bursary, your effort is greatly appreciated.
Although your work was not short-listed for the final selection, the committee hopes you might submit future work to bursary and to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Open in 2012.[...]"
I do, yes, resent being addressed as 'Artist', and being told I wasn't selected in a sort of roundabout, "you should have figured it out by now" sort of way, especially when I paid £6 to enter and a total of £57 to get the painting to and from London. Which, i might as well add, was utterly unneccesary when you consider that much more prominent art competitions select a shortlist based on online digital submissions, which would have saved me £57. But when a gallery writes you letter to tell you you've been declined, you can maybe see that efficiency isn't to their strengths. This is further stressed on their website, www.mallgaleries.org.uk, where up to 6 competitions, with varying rules and submission details, all use the same registration pack and application form, hence the confusion over when i actually had to get my paintings back.
But, for all the weaknesses of Mall Galleries and Royal Society of Portrait Painters, i can't help feeling that maybe they'd got it right by rejecting the paintings i submitted.
I like them both. The first one, of my dad holding a pigeon, is especially good around the hands and pigeon.. not the face then. And it could be viewed as unfinished, both the background and the coat are very flat, plain, ad un-nuanced, the face is dry, and although as a whole i like it, it does need some work. The second painting, perhaps the most complete of the two, is of my girlfriend, maybe it says something that the most complete painting is the one i did in uni, with a full support system in place. But, in terms of consistency, these paintings do not fit well together, they are not a united front, they are disparate, erratic, and could have been done by two completely different people.
But what i feel is most worthy of learning from this, is the unfinished..ness of my recent paintings. The colours, too simple, too reliant on heightened bright sections, and easy complementaries. Too reliant on outlines, and i'm too easily bored and too easily willing to move on to the next work. With no-one to be able to tell me when, no, i have to wait until i review my work in a few months time, and then i tell myself, as if i was looking over my own shoulder, "that's not right."
try, try again.
