Below are her general comments by juror Clarissa Lewis. Specific comments on the award winners can be found with the respective art pieces in the gallery. To see the artwork, click here.

May 25, 2010  

Dear Markham Group of Artists, 

Many thanks for inviting me to jury for your exhibition today. It has been some time since I have visited and the very nice consequence of this hiatus is that it has allowed me to see significant leaps represented in the submitted work.  I would also like to mention how extremely difficult the choices I had to make became toward the end when the only criterion became about exhibition space limitations.  Although jurors may be inclined to point to the difficulty of their assignment citing that many good pieces had to be excluded for reasons of practicality rather than of artistic merit as a kinder way of letting individuals down,  in this case it is true.  Exhibition space constraints made for some very difficult choices resulting in works of merit having to be excluded.  That being said those pieces that were selected, in my estimation were very affective and extremely successful. 

I should confess what some of you already know, that I am strongly attracted to successful experimentation and to work whose content evokes something in the viewer and sets up a communication of its own using the ingredients the artist has contributed (technique, subject treatment, opinion, heart, trust in the viewer and so on) and the response of the viewer.  It was wonderful to see work today that communicates in this way.  

The portraiture offered for jurying was especially surprising.  I tend not to be drawn to portraiture.  When I stepped back to review my choices, I was astonished to see how many portraits I had chosen including some I regretfully turned down because of exhibition space limitations.  That communication ‘thing’ I mention in the paragraph above was particularly successful in the selected works. 

I’ve been asked to comment specifically on the pieces chosen for award.  Each piece that I chose to award trusted the viewer to bring his/her experience to the ‘looking’ and to interpret the work -- the work being open rather than closed.  This is essential for me when looking at art.  The meaning and impact of all art is made in that space between the artwork and the viewer. The artist offers ‘something’ including integrity in the work; the viewer brings a receptiveness, his/her life experience and way of seeing to it and between them, if the artist has been successful, they create something wonderful in that space. The art experience is neither in the work of art alone, nor in the viewer alone. It is a collaboration, a moment of synergy.