"Thank you for the honor of jurying this show of animal art. I am humbled and also impressed with what has been put in front of me to view and to judge.

 

"I see a broad range of style, technique and a lovely array of approaches to the challenge of making animal art.  As in any genre there are countless ways to approach and portray the subject, whether straight portraiture or allegorical storytelling, and all the shades in between.

 

"Animal art in particular can come across as scientific illustration or be as emotive as any abstract expressionism; just depends upon what the artist wants to say.  There is room for both.

 

"For the most part my selections are influenced by a number of things that guide ME as an artist: composition, use of light, some degree of understanding of how a thing is put together . I do not look for photorealism and there are things that can put me off (see THAT discussion after my picks!) . I do hope for some accuracy of anatomy and color relationships if the artist is being representational. All the work in this show fits my definition of ‘representational’ though the subject might be more than simply ‘here is an animal’ lol.

 

"I also have learned to try to view art in a way that does not start out as ‘fault judging’, a term and concept I borrow from a hobby of mine that involves sorting out and judging something. Fault judging can too often lead to mediocre choices with no outstanding virtues. I try to think about that when judging art (my own and other), dogs, tv shows, the lot. So I first look for what is outstanding. I can nitpick shortcomings but I try to first identify strengths.

​

"There were as many other artworks I could have included in this list, some very excellent work. I wish I could have known media and sizes of the artworks, and had second viewpoints of the sculptures, but not because I might change my choices. Just interesting to know sizes to envision them on the wall; this was juried by jpeg due to pandemic issues. 
 

"A few comments: I loved the varying viewpoints and styles and media used. In all my choices and many more that I couldn’t formally recognize, I saw excellent use of light,  excellent handling of media (several lovely drawn works) and good rendering of anatomy, fine draftsmanship. Some lovely still lifes I wanted to also be able to use but ran out of awards. In artwork I did not choose, there were varying reasons, but as I said, I could have handed out a number of additional awards given the quality."