25th Annual Spring GFAA Reception and Awards Ceremony at Kentlands Mansion and Multimedia Show Reception at the Arts Barn

The City of Gaithersburg in parternship with the Gaithersburg Fine Arts Association, David Terrar, Susan La Mont, Joanne Bleichner and Merle Davidson sponsored two art receptions at Kentlands Mansion and The Arts Barn on Tuesday, April 5, 2011.

Well-attended, the receptions featured food, drink, live music, an awards ceremony for the Gaithersburg Fine Arts Association (GFAA) show at Kentlands Mansion.

The judge who juried the exhibit at Kentlands Mansion, Peter Sellmeyer, shared his opinion on the artworks that received awards in the following categories: Best in Show, First, Second and Third Place, and Honorable Mention for Oil and Acrylic, Watercolor and Acrylic under Glass, and Mixed Media.

With a keen eye for technique and composition, Sellmeyer who teaches art at Montgomery College and is a practicing artist himself, took the show's audience on a guided tour of the award-winning pieces.

"What I was looking at were the shadows," he commented on a painting of a commercial storefront with a romanesque archway canopied by a deep turquioise awning by Deb Cohan titled "Nouveau Roma."

"This piece is very nice to look at both from far away and very close. One of the hardest things to know is when to stop when working on art," he said about Individuality, an abstract painting by

"In general the technique has to be effective. Some successful work has to have different temperatures of color in it."

Further elaborating on his emphasis on technique and composition, he commented on "Red Canna," a large watercolor painting featuring red flowers: "This piece really holds its own. You know how to read it from a distance, and the composition makes the background engage with the foreground."

A First Place winner in the category of Watercolor and Acrylic under Glass, Linda Sherman's larger than life portrait, "Jim," piqued Sellmeyer's sense of composition in particular:

"This piece achieves an intriguing composition through cropping. The painting embodies the most difficult aspects of painting. Watercolor is a hard medium to control. The human figure through watercolor is even more challenging. What's more this painting is big!"

He wrapped up his informal critique followed by throngs of visitors to the show by stopping at the other award winners and stating that to make something look good you, the artist, and the audience have to be able to stay engaged with the piece.

Award winners in the 53 piece art show at Kentlands Mansion include: Kathy Bush (1st Place in Oil and Acrylic); John Hastie (2nd Place in Oil and Acrylic); Anna Shuman (3rd Place in Oil and Acrylic); JP Bresh (Honorable Mention in Oil and Acrylic); Natalya Parris (Honorable Mention in Oil and Acrylic); Marrianne Kost (Honorable Mention in Oil and Acrylic); Kathy Bush (Honorable Mention in Oil and Acrylic); Linda Sherman (1st Place in Watercolor and Acrylic under Glass); Deb Cohan (2nd Place in Watercolor and Acrylic under Glass); Catherine Fleming (3rd Place in Watercolor and Acrylic under Glass); Linda Sherman (Honorable Mention in Watercolor and Acrylic under Glass); Barbara Bauer (Honorable Mention in Watercolor and Acrylic under Glass); Angela Lacy (Honorable Mention in Watercolor and Acrylic under Glass); Deb Cohan (Honorable Mention in Watercolor and Acrylic under Glass); Catherine Fleming (1st Place in Mixed Media); Angela Lacy (2nd Place in Mixed Media); and Ronald Johnson (Best in Show/Sharon Sage Award).

At the Arts Barn, a smaller group of artists is showing oil paintings and scultpures.

David Terrar, who was recently featured in The Portrait of the Artist series, paints Maryland landscapes in gold leaf. Susan LaMont paints intricate city scenes - mostly New York - in stunning detail. Joanne Bleichner captures the twists and turns of gnarly but elegant trees in varying intensities of light and times of day. Merle Davidson sculpts the human figure, expressing a deep sense of individuality and self-contained tension through her small but striking creations.

The GFAA Annual Show is on view at Kentlands Mansion through May 31, 2011 while the oil paintings and sculptures show at the Ars Barn is on view through May 22, 2011.

To learn more about Kentlands Mansion, click here.

To learn more about the Arts Barn, click here.