Vibrant Hues: A Kaleidoscope of Colored Pencil

As the juror for the Colored Pencil Society of America, Chicago Chapter’s exhibition Vibrant Hues, my job was to choose works deserving of recognition and award. There were many pieces I could have selected as the pool of artwork was strong. The technical mastery of the material was clear across many works. My decision for the granting of awards was as follows; I choose works that were both technically impressive and had either conceptual depth or depicted visual phenomena only noticed with deep observation of the world. The integration of forms to create metaphor and implicit connection by combining portraiture with other symbolically implicit forms in Nancy Jacey’s Resilience (Lisa Davis), or the layering of portraits in Tracey Frein’s Bound By Her Weakness, or the careful attention to surface transformed with imagination in Suzen Moeller’s Emergent Remains, are examples of the former. The perception of delicate frost on the ground in Beth Daleo’s Frosty Rest, colored bottles casting their hues within their shadows in Linda Phillabaum Bottles, or the shallow area of a photograph’s of focus against a careful examination of the texture of milkweed blossoms against the dusty scales of butterfly wings in Patricia VanDusen’s Vibrant Monarch on Milkweed exemplify latter. Congratulations to all the artists for your dedication to your craft and thank you for sharing them with the world.

Kelly VanderBrug

Professor of Art, North Park University