The Harlin Museum would like to announce the winners of their Annual Spring Art Show Competition for 2022, which is currently on display in the museum’s Hathcock Gallery through Sunday, May 1st. The generous sponsors for this year’s competition awards include West Plains Savings & Loan and West Plains Bank & Trust, two of the museum’s most ardent local supporters, who donated a collective $400 to reward the show’s winners and support the arts in the Ozarks.
The show includes twenty combined competition entries of oil, acrylic, and watercolor paintings, graphite drawings, and mixed media pieces—some presenting a more realistic representation of their subjects with others displaying fantastic abstract and fantasy themes that excite the mind. It is the portrait of the lady, in a style very realistic and portrayed in great detail, that has earned Best of Show. The entry, an oil paint-rendition of a lovely silver-haired elderly woman in a complimentary silver frame, is titled “Mo-Mo” and was painted by the talented artist, Bonnie Heenan, of Gassville, Arkansas.
The show’s entries were divided into the three categories of drawings, paintings, and mixed media, earning a total of fourteen awards for area artists.
In the drawings category, first place has gone to, Last Turkey Season, another realistically-drawn portrait—this one of a seemingly-pensive man in a curve-billed cap with his hand resting at his chin as if he were in a thoughtful repose—done in graphite by Bonnie Heenan of Gassville, AR. The second and third place drawing category ribbons were both taken by Ron McGarry of Willow Springs, MO for his entry Galway Girl, a black & white graphite portrait of a woman standing in an ivy-covered stone archway, and for his entry The Pinnacle, a graphite landscape of a curving cove with a water-lapped shore of boulders and forest undergrowth in tones of black, white, and grey.
The paintings category consisted of twelve pieces in oil, acrylic, and watercolor mediums. The first place in this category has been awarded to the already-two-time winner Bonnie Heenan of Gassville, AR for her entry Champion Of Time—an oil painting of the metallic mechanical inner-workings of an almost futuristic-looking timepiece. Second place has gone to the dream-like watercolor of two fish swimming amidst a swirling, blue-tinged current set against a stone-filled riverbed in Swimming Upriver by Marie Ann Robinson of Willow Springs, MO. And third place is another claimed by Bonnie Heenan of Gassville, AR for Car Show Stopper, an oil painting featuring a classic roadster in shades of crimson and cadmium yellow. Honorable Mentions in the painting category have gone to Dusk Approaching, an acrylic entry of moody florals by Angela Bullard of West Plains, MO, and to the mostly blue, squiggly-lined abstract by T. Fenske of West Plains, MO titled Came Back Home.
In the category of Mixed Media, first place has been awarded to the talented Ann Kulpa of Cabool, MO for her high-contrast abstract collage entry, House By The Duck Pond. The second-place mixed media award also goes to Ann Kulpa of Cabool, MO for her other vividly colored abstract entry, High Steppin’ Joe. The third-place ribbon for mixed media is awarded to Akasha Davis of West Plains, MO for her fantasy-themed entry, Cherry Blossom Dragon, a piece depicting the crest of a fine blue waterfall flowing through a soft pink cherry blossom forest with a silver metallic dragon flying overhead. The Honorable Mention winner of this category is the red-hued abstract entry, Under, by T. Fenske of West Plains, MO.
Finally, a special Young Artist Appreciation certificate is being awarded to young Vale Fenske for his entry, Handiwork, a modern-feeling piece featuring a black hammer on a yellow background matted in white and framed in a simple black frame with crisp corners, for being the only youth entry to this year’s competition.
The winner of the final award of the show, the People’s Choice Award, will be decided by the public through voting at the museum gallery and through online voting on Facebook, which begins on Friday, April 22nd on the Harlin Museum’s FB page (@HarlinMuseumWP). Voting ends at 2 pm on Sunday, May 1st and the winner will be announced shortly thereafter.
