A longtime Weyburn artist and strong advocate for the People’s Choice art competition, Barry Lautner, had his oil painting voted as the top work of art in the annual James Weir People’s Choice contest, announced at a reception held on Thursday evening at the Allie Griffin Art Gallery.
In naming the top vote-getters in the annual art competition, Arts Council curator Regan Lanning noted this year’s event garnered 919 ballots, which was about 400 votes more than last year.
In second place was Weyburn artist Heather van der Breggen for her acrylic painting, “Connect”, and in third was Christopher Borshowa for his photograph, “Dark Waters”. The runners-up were Deanna Pierce-Colbow, Elisa Fawcett and Jo Anne Fahlman.
Lanning noted that the top three recipients of votes were all within 30 votes of each other. She pointed out that she hosted a number of school tours through the art competition which helped bolster the number of ballots cast.
“It was an absolutely amazing experience to see the children as they toured the exhibit. They also had a lot of interesting viewpoints on the art that I would never have thought of,” she said.
Lautner said the idea for his painting, entitled “Noisy” and featuring a wren singing while perched on a gnarled tree branch, began with the desire to do a piece on a wren.
“It’s one of those things where you start it and the picture just took over. There are only three colours. When I started my colour selection, I wanted to highlight the wren. After that, it was just a whole lot of fun,” said Lautner, who noted oils are his favourite medium because it’s the most forgiving, as he finds watercolours the most challenging medium to use.
“I have nothing but respect for watercolour painters,” he said.
He has entered the James Weir competition every year for the past 24 years and is a past winner.
“I’m an advocate of the people’s choice competition. It has a cleansing effect where you’re not being cluttered with a person’s bias,” said Lautner.
For van der Breggen, who has also placed well in the competition before, her painting of a woman leaning her forehead on the forehead of a horse, said the picture stems from her love of horses.
She liked how the person makes an intimate connection with the horse, which she tried to portray in the painting.
Borshowa featured Heather’s daughter, Rickee-Lee Webster, in his photograph, and explained he feels this is one of his favourite photographs he has ever produced.
“We had done a whole photo shoot around the farm and she suggested using this slough,” said Borshowa, noting it was her idea to lie in the dark water.
Observing the finished photograph, he said, “It has a very life-and-death feeling to it. It was the last shot of the day. It was a fun day.” This was his third time in the James Weir competition, and he placed second in last year’s contest.
