yay! another 1st place

I decided at the last minute to enter "Wenona Wallowing" (see a previous post for the story of its creation) in a juried art show here in my city, and after a lot of problems with my frame and hanging mechanism, I finally got it submitted. I almost decided to give up because of the technical problems I was having.
I got a pleasant phone call when I was out catching the horses in their new pasture last week. To draw a picture...

this is their new, 30 acre pasture, and I've been using lots of cookies to convince them that letting me catch them is preferable to running free on seemingly limitless grass and visiting with new horsey-friend neighbors. So I'm surrounded by three cookie-seeking sets of lips attached to 1,200lb. bodies, and I answer my phone.
"Hello?" (as I hold the phone between my shoulder and head, trying to rid myself of the last cookie/magnet, which disappears between who knows who's lips)
"I just wanted to congratulate you on winning the mixed media catagory in the art show..." all I could think of, standing there amongst the swirling horses, was that the horses were the ones who deserved the credit, because it was them that I painted and them that inspired me. What a great moment, it felt triumphant, but not in an egotistical way. It was a feeling of being in the flow, like that is exactly where I belonged at that moment, and no where else in the universe.

At the reception and gallery opening the judge, Susannah Vandyke, did a great job of touching on why she chose each winner in each catagory. My catagory was mixed media, because I did this piece on scratchboard and with gouache (it's like an opaque watercolor). Here's what she had to say about this piece,"appealing subject matter gets exciting treatment with arrangement of values and colors, masterful drawing ability. A real gem."

I'm definately feeling inspired to continue to enter pieces in competitions. I think this is a good venue for me right now, rather than exhibiting several pieces in galleries.