Portrait

Our third art competition “Portrait” started in March 2021 and concluded on April 15, 2021. Art Room Gallery received entries from many countries around the world: USA, Germany, Canada, Brazil, Ukraine, Slovenia, Russia, Poland, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, France, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, Nigeria, Romania, Switzerland, South Africa, Israel, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Sweden, China and Mexico. The Portrait theme in this competition included a diversity in types, styles and mediums (oil on canvas, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, charcoal, graphite, pencil, gouache, collage, photography). The following evaluation criteria has been used for judging the artwork: creativity, interpretation of the theme, originality and quality of art, overall design, demonstration of artistic ability, and usage of medium. Jury decided to select 140 artworks for inclusion in the exhibition. Aside from first, second, and third place jury also presented Merit awards and Honorable Mention awards.

Thank you, and enjoy the exhibition!

Statement:

Born and raised in Shanghai, China, Xiaodong "Eric" Li started drawing and painting at an early age. He worked as an art director and illustrator for a newspaper when he was a high school student. Eric obtained art training in drawing and painting at Fudan University, where he received a Bachelor's degree in International Politics and a minor in Fine Art. After graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Master's degree in Information Science, Eric started his career in IT as a web designer and developer. He then incorporated his artistic talent in design work. Eric's early works were influenced by expressionists and impressionists, such as Edvard Munch and Paul Cezanne, and were known for strong color and composition. Eric has traveled extensively around the world and his trips to over 30 countries have inspired many of his most memorable paintings. Mr. Li is always in search of a new and original manner to express himself in art. He strives to find new forms of self-expression using both contemporary and classic techniques and combines them with his extraordinary style into his works. A significant change in his style occurred in recent years when he started showing a great passion of the neo-classicist style and realistic genre paintings of artists such as William-Adolphe Bouguereau and John William Godward. Eric works very hard to learn practical painting techniques in order to stay up to date in today's changing art market. Currently resides in Houston, Mr. Li is a multi-award-winning artist and a member of the Portrait Society of America (PSA), Oil Painters of America (OPA) and the National Oil & Acrylic Painters' Society (NOAPS). His works have participated in numerous art exhibitions both in the US and overseas and many of his works have been privately collected.

Statement:

I am from Germany. Born in Munich, where I worked and lived. But End of 2019 I got my Greencard and now I am living near Dallas, TX together with my wife and muse. My roots go back to the Viennese painting school. A master student of Prof. Ernst Fuchs teached me. I was very ambitious at that time and when something didn't work out, I was very angry. But that made me start all over again and again to perfect things. Nevertheless, I would describe myself more as an autodidact, because the "uniform" painting at the art academies has never interested me. I always wanted to do something different.

Statement:

I was born in Nashville, Tennessee on July 4, 1952. I spent a rather idyllic childhood living in the country outside Macon, Georgia where I started drawing at the age of about seven, got my first oil painting set at about ten and, sometime in-between, first saw an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci’s engineering exploits. I was sold. I wanted to be an artist and thinker. During high school, I attended a college preparatory boarding school with an extensive art program and was able to pursue my interest in art, including painting. From there I went to Oklahoma City University where I received a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honors and a major in art in 1974. In 1979, I went to the University of Idaho where I was granted a teaching assistantship and, in 1981, received a Master of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in painting and printmaking. In 1985, I began teaching Painting and Drawing in the Continuing Education program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and, in 1987, Basic Design and Drawing at Mt. Hood Community College. I am now retired from both schools. Altogether, I taught twenty years at the PNCA and twenty-one at Mt. Hood. I have made it a habit over the years to play with paint in order to learn more about what it is capable (and not capable) of doing. This has led me to paint on glass, then transfer that paint into "paint assemblages"; extrude paint from modified syringes creating webbed paintings that resemble bent, colored wire; carve my own rubber stamps and stamp signifiers onto canvas; and most recently, to sling paint from ultra-fine straight pins, at very high speed, onto canvas.