President’s Message – Nov

Hi, everyone,

I was very excited to see such a good turnout for our first-ever monthly Zoom meeting! We had more than 60 participants, many of them first-time Zoom users. I’m proud of all of us for being flexible and patient and supportive of each other as we learn to do things a new way. The meeting was a huge success. Linda Doll did a great job critiquing the 2019-2020 Painter of the Year entries. (We were going to have this program last April, but had to cancel our meeting because of COVID.) This is a case where there was a silver lining to having our meeting virtually. We normally have our critique judge point to a painting and say something like, “If this was cropped here, I think it would look better.” We all squint and try to picture it. Because Linda had the paintings in advance and was willing to go to some extra work, she used Photoshop and made up a new version of each painting with the changes she was suggesting. She was able to show the original painting and the “improved version” side-by-side and explain why she was suggesting her changes.

I heard from many members that they found this critique the most helpful of any that they’ve seen at our meetings, and I would agree. As Linda said, “Artists are visual people” and seeing the original and the improved side-by-side made it easy to see how the changes strengthened the impact of the paintings.

Congratulations to our Painter of the Year, Nancy Rizzardi, and to Pat Kodet, Second Place, and Mandy Main, Honorable Mention. Thank you to Linda Doll for sharing her time and expertise, and thank you to Moira Johannessen and Lance Brechbill for their support and assistance to Linda in preparing this program.

This month at our General Meeting, we will have our own Kathleen Scoggin, who is a fun and inspiring teacher, demonstrate wet-in-wet for our meeting. In December, we will have Eric Weigardt, whom we normally would not be able to bring to the desert because he lives in Washington State. The silver lining for our programs and workshops during COVID is going to be that we will be able to have practically anyone, since they won’t need to travel to our meetings. So we can look forward to some exciting programs this year!

Dues are DUE! (I guess that’s why they’re called that!) Please go to www.cvws.org and pay with a credit card online or print out the form and mail it in with a check. We need to stay together, stay strong and connected and keep learning and painting together, until we can see each other in person again.

See you on Zoom!

Robin