Chairman's Message
The past year we have seen ARC's visitor rate soar faster than any of the prior 4 years. Last September we celebrated the culmination of a 32 year project, the publication of the William Bouguereau Catalog Raissoné published by ARC in conjunction with one of the art world's leading art publishers, the Antique Collector's Club, led by it's President, Diana Steele, who took a personal interest in working with me to bring that project to fruition. The two volume set was met with rave reviews from all quarters. Ten months later we have yet to see a single bad review. The ACC has sold out in 6 months and has notified us that they plan to do a second printing.
This year's ARC Salon Competition continues to demonstrate the boundless potential of the human spirit and of the Realist paradigm's vocabulary to express the infinite creative spirit of the human soul. Please encourage every fine artist that you know to enter next year's ARC Salon™. We know that there are a number of top quality artists, including several ARC Approved Living Master's, whose lives, careers and commissions are doing so well that they did not have time to enter the salon. This is a mistake. Traditional Realism needs to always have the best of the best competing if we are to once again see Traditional Realism reach the heights achieved in the past. It takes the pressure of the most skilled, the most talented and the most creative minds competing for the top prizes, to achieve the kind of advancements that only can come from continuous feedback and cross pollination of skills, methods and brilliant ideas.
For those who did not win, and those who did not make it to the finals, many of you still demonstrated very high and advancing levels of quality and accomplishment. Please don't be discouraged. There is always next year, when with hard work and uncompromising dedication you just might be a winner. Many of this year's winners only won after several years of disappointment.
Once again, Please join all of us here at the Art Renewal Center® in wishing warm and robust congratulations to all of our winners, honorable mentions and finalists.