I recently entered the Royal Academy (UK) Summer Exhibition. The painting is relevant; I did some homemade marketing for it; I've donated to the RA when they were laying off staff during the pandemic (I paid £2 per person made redundant) ; I've met one of the judges and bought them a flower at their exhibition.

And I was rejected. This is what a first round rejection looks like:

Summer Exhibition 2023
Dear Christopher,
Thank you for submitting digital images of EUROPEAN DEATH.
The judges have given careful consideration to your entry and we regret to inform you that it has not been selected
for the next stage.
Thank you for supporting the Royal Academy and we very much hope that you'll submit work again in future years.
With best wishes,
The Summer Exhibition Team
Royal Academy of Arts - Summer Exhibition

And it does sting a little bit. I can understand that the painting might have been controversial but it could have really took off. What more can I do? Sometimes I do think if you're too clever you're not going to get through. The next thing with these prizes is that you see what does get through and it's a total jip, it really is. Not entirely, but you will have been better than a reasonable percentage of what did get through, usually.

I present to you, European Death:

And these were some of the postcards made with the painting on the front face.

I've entered my next painting competition for the year, the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize. Not sure when I get the rejection for that.

How are you lot getting on?

    Chris
    I did Bob ross style oil paintings for a few years. It's a lot of fun. Swtced from oil to mini figures a while back and havnt returned to oil. Keep trying. You'll get where you wanna go eventually.

        Gigachad

        Bob Ross is interesting because he had an influence, there was this TV painting instructor before him. And then Bob went on in turn to influence fine artists. In particular Ull Hohn, who came to the USA from Germany in 1987, discovered Bob on the TV and took it up seriously.

        Here's an example,


        by Ull Hohn

        Ull is lesser known and he had a short life, but he's a hero to me personally. And Bob's art has a lineage, and, you know, it's a beautiful thing really.

        And Bob influenced you too! His art lives. Something worked for once. Yippee.

            Chris
            idk much about the voting/judging process for events like these, but I think thats really cool. Its not super overt with a message but leaves enough breadcrumbs to put something together in your head.
            I think you should still be proud of it.
            You do have to remember, and I'm sure you know already, but any sort of donations or anything like that cant influence the judging, and i'm confident you dont want it to, but the subconcious sort of 'well i've done x for you' is still there anyway.
            I hope your next one gets further 🙂

            I'm not too arty myself, my highlights include a MEAN coconut and orange painting in school, and a pretty good pencil pot (with pencil) also in school.

            Chris
            I should try to do Bob Ross esque stuff, they were always a fun watch

                  Lumeinshin
                  Well I said to Dave in the pub 'Art is not enough' but he rejected my plans for direct action :/

                    How competitive are these exhibitions? Maybe it became a matter of luck with a large applicant pool.

                    Lumeinshin

                    I do think it's a good work and I do think it has a purpose, thank you for your compliment. It was never supposed to be like this, it started out as a ordinary portrait and I was influenced by Freud in this to start with, so his paintings of himself topless in his studio.

                    A photographic example but there is a painting somewhere (that he painted).

                    And I realised looking at my studies I was using for it that one had a flash and one didn't (I was working from a photograph). So looking at the naturally lit study I saw the shadows were much more pronounced so I really went at it to get the light and dark and this image was just created.

                    And I looked at it and I thought 'stop, that's it it's done'. It is surrealistic, it's beyond the artist, it's a really strange experience.

                    I feel about it that it's similar to the Wasteland by Elliot. In that it's transformational, by confronting something that's disturbing it also allows grieving in a safe way. I find it to be a very peaceful painting, it's sad, but it's things that are sad that have passed, that can't hurt us anymore type thing.

                    Thanks for reading, sorry about the blog. Right, do a bit of painting.

                      a month later

                      I managed to get quite a lot of painting done today. I've started a new landscape painting too.

                      It's coming on well. I'm pleased with it.

                      9 months later

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