November 2015 • The Gallery

About the show, juror Paul Mordetsky writes: Over the course of my career, I have been juried into, and out of, a great many shows, and, having been selected several times as a juror, I have also had the opportunity of being on the other side of the equation. The task of deciding who and/or what gets into a show – be it amateur, student, or professional – is a serious business not to be taken lightly.
Jurors have a responsibility to the eventually attending public to assemble an engaging and interesting show of the best works submitted. A show should be consistent in quality and merit and reflect appropriately high standards.
For the artists who have taken their time to submit work and who run the risk of rejection, the juror owes it to them to look deeply at the work, strive to understand their pictorial aims and to judge them objectively and squarely along those lines.
From the selections offered up, I looked for work that had a strong understanding of design and a solid level of skill in execution within the chosen medium. Ultimately, I wanted work that would be evocative and arresting, work that would provide us a moment’s vision of the natural world as seen, studied, and/or imagined by an artistic mind.
We have that with several broad landscapes with their big visions of space and, too, with a number of works that ask us to contemplate the world of flowers and plant forms up close. Some works, presenting us with a more abstracted representation of the world of flora and fauna, move us through a psychological or conceptual space unbound by perceptual rules. Two works, giving us an external look at no longer living creatures, evoke time and mortality as they turn us inward to contemplate those animals in their former states.
My congratulations to all, and I am delighted to have been able to participate.
Paul Mordetsky