Lopez Island artist, Steve Hill, shown right, has just been awarded “Best Overall Pastel” in Plein Air Magazine’s 5th Annual Juried Art Salon Competition for a pastel painting titled “Sol Duc Morning” It’s now a semi-finalist for the annual awards, which total $21,000 in cash prizes, in the Salon Competitions finals, in Tucson, Arizona next April. (There are six rounds of semi-finals, each juried by museum curators and major contemporary art gallery owners).
It was painted on-site (en plein air) at the Sol Duc River and also won a top award during a week-long event “Paint the Peninsula” last September, where 30 artists from around the U.S. were invited to paint within the boundaries of Olympic National Park.
Hill’s painting will be reproduced in the February/March 2016 issue of Plein Air magazine, which has just become the #1 best-selling representational art magazine at Barnes & Noble, nationwide.
For info, visit www.pleinaairmagazine.com
The term “en plein air” was originally coined by a French Journalist, describing what he saw when a then new invention (squeeze tubes) allowed artists (the French Impressionists) to escape the confines of their studios and take their paints outdoors to work in the natural light. It translates literally to “outdoors in natural light.” That movement enjoyed popularity into the 1920s all over the world, only to be quieted by modern post war movements like Fauvism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, etc.
The modern plein air art movement has enjoyed a huge revival in the last 15 years, especially in the U.S., with more than 300 annual national festivals attracting artists, patrons and collectors from all over the world. For the past five years, Plein Air Magazine has championed the new movement with high quality editorials, beautiful reproductions and a focus on keeping the artists and their artwork in the public eye, especially through this competition.
Hill says, “I feel lucky to have made one of the bi-monthly award rounds, as it is very difficult to even get a piece accepted with hundreds of artists from all over the world entering their best work. It definitely raises the bar for me and sharpens my focus, figuratively speaking . . . . I try to keep my painting style loose, fast and free.”
In 2015, Steve participated in 4 national plein air festivals and one international juried competition by North Light Books “Strokes of Genius 8, Expressive Texture” where his unique landscape drawing “Kittitas Valley,” done with a ball point pen on a full sheet of watercolor paper, will be published in November 2016. His list of major awards and honors has grown to 36 in the past 11 years. Hill’s work shows in the islands at Crow Valley Gallery in Eastsound and Windswept Fine Art Gallery on Lopez, as well as galleries in Carmel, California, Springdale, Utah and Vancouver, Wash.
He also teaches pastel painting workshops around the U.S. and Europe and has been invited to teach a workshop at Islands’ Museum of Art in Friday Harbor, January 16-18, 2016. For complete info on all of his 2016 painting workshops, (including Croatia and Bruges, Belgium), and to see more of his work .
For more info, visit www.windsweptstudios.com.
