Higher, stronger, faster … messier. Old Olympic ideals were recalled on the weekend as painting was presented as a competitive sport at the 16th annual ArtWalk in Lake Country.
Artists squared off in fierce, 15-minute sessions to produce work judged by kids.
“It was pretty exciting – paint was going everywhere, and my canvass fell off the easel at one point,” artist Julia Trops, who normally paints portraits at a much more stately and deliberate pace, said Sunday. “I think I was mostly finger-painting by the end of the 15 minutes.”
Up until the late 1940s, producing art in competitive settings was an Olympic event, said ArtWalk organizer and UBC Okanagan professor Sharon McCoubrey.
“With the Vancouver Games coming up, we thought it would be fun to stage an event that had artists painting under pressure, competing in front of a crowd,” McCoubrey said. “Then we asked for volunteers under three feet tall to come forward and judge the finished results.”
The crowd-pleasing paint-off, held six times through the weekend, was a new wrinkle for ArtWalk, which seems to grow in popularity every year. More than 7,000 people attended, coming out for the chance to buy works by more than 300 artists.
While some events struggle to attract sponsors or reach fundraising goals this year because of the economy, that hasn‘t been the case with ArtWalk.
“We‘ve had just the same great response from our sponsors,” McCoubrey said, adding it was expected the value of art sold on the weekend would top $100,000.
Given their hasty creation, it‘s perhaps no surprise the “Olympic” paintings didn‘t sell. Instead, each of the young judges was given the work they said they liked best.
“Maybe she‘ll hang it up in her room, and it‘ll inspire her to go on and become an artist herself,” said Rebekah Wilkinson, who won “gold” from one young judge for her painting of an Inukshuk. Top of Page
