karen cooper - Blog: FASO painting competition painting the figure

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Painting The Figure Versus Painting Something Else, And The FASO Painting Competition

by cooper on 3/21/2009 4:46:28 PM5 Comments

Greetings,
Welcome to the Cooper studio, where today is Saturday, and the only thing painted so far is the fence in our back yard. But it does look much better, thank you.

I was just browsing through the entries for the FASO painting competition. Has anyone else noticed how many paintings are appearing there that involve painting the figure in some way, shape, or form? True, a couple of them are fairly abstract, and one is of someone's legs and feet, but we'll call them figurative anyway. Of the 130 submitted when I checked, 41 involve the figure. I thought that was a pretty high percentage, so just for kicks and giggles I jumped over to the canvasflyer pages. I decided that ten pages was a nice round number, that's 60 images, so that's how many I scanned. Four of those 60 had the figure involved. I am an artist, not a CPA, but I think that means 32% of the paintings entered in the contest were figurative, while on the canvas flyer a mere 6% were figurative paintings.

That information could lead us to several conclusions:
1. Do artists think figurative paintings are better accepted in competitions?
2. Do artists paint landscapes, still lifes, etc for their everyday stuff and when they need to jump up a notch, they paint the figure?
3. Are artists that paint the figure more competitive, and therefore more likely to enter a competition?
4. Or one other possibility, ha, maybe landscape, still life, abtract painters are more laid back about getting their entries in and they plan on getting it done tomorrow or one of these days soon. (remember I said "ha" so that means #4 is like a joke!)
5. And the best possibility yet, because I paint the figure, maybe I pay way too much attention to things like this and it's really just a coincidence!

But you have to admit it's a little bit interesting. Now we'll all have to keep a little closer track of the contest entries to see how the scenario plays out! Have a great rest of the weekend.

Later, Cooper

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