3 First Place Winners - $4000 ($12000)
Miriam Rosenthal
Aged 19
School: Academy of Realist Art
Entrant's comment:
I have been determined to be an artist since I was very young. In Kindergarten the one complaint the teachers had was that, “Miriam will not stop her art projects when it is time for the next class or for lunch”. I think I was about 6 when I decided I wanted to be painter after watching my dad's friend work on a landscape oil painting. This strong passion and diligent work ethic has continued in my work at the “Toronto Academy of Realist Art” first as a part time student (when I was still in high-school) and as a full time student since Sept. 2016. It has been a struggle so far for my parents to pay for my school and supplies (only one of my parents is working and I am one of four children), so this scholarship would greatly help me to reach my goals and develop my talents and vision to share meaningful art with others.
Mackenzie Swenson
Aged 24
School: Grand Central Atelier
Entrant's comment:
My belief in the tradition of realism is rooted in exploring a moment. I believe in allowing ourselves to be confronted with the experience of honest and humble observation, abandoning the mediation of device, authority, and previous assumptions. I believe in fostering an ability to appreciate what is in front of us—being more fully alive through heightening our sense of wonder. With my professional art career approaching, one desire is to encourage people (not just artists) to seek out ways of reconnecting with their senses. While there is some cultural movement towards awareness, the greater part of our culture is on the fast track to numbness through artifice and over-stimulation. The practice of drawing and painting, however, requires engagement in a single moment. I aim to foster this practice both as an instructor in the atelier tradition and through writing and speaking to a broader audience.
Helena Vallee Dallaire
Aged 23
School: New York Academy of Art
Entrant's comment:
I have studied figurative drawing and painting full-time since 2012, in many different institutions including Angel Academy of Art, Italy, 2012-2013, and Grand Central Atelier, New York City, 2014-2016. The more I learned, the more passionate I became. Art is what I want to dedicate my life to. My reason for changing schools was partly due to financial limitations ( depending from year to year on the possibility of scholarships and grants) but as I result I have learnt enormously from this constant change. I adopted from each school a different piece of puzzle, naturally through a personal inclination and understanding of what I wished my art to become. I am incredibly grateful to every artist I had the honor of studying with; each new way of working that I was exposed to embraced a distinct philosophy, a distinct process, but all of them were linked by a great passion for the history and beauty of the representational tradition. Each teacher helped me realize just how much I still have to learn.