Principal Juror - Ron Platt, Curator of Exhibitions, Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Juror's Comments - New American Paintings is not only a forum for presenting the work of painters of accomplishment and promise from all over the U.S.; it also aims to help foster and maintain broader public recognition for artists throughout the country. These are notable goals, and I am delighted to be jurying this year’s Southern competition. I selected each of the artists on the basis of their work alone, with no attempt at any sort of theme or representative aesthetic.

Is there a Southern style of painting? I doubt it anymore. It seems pretty safe (not to mention pretty tired) to say that authentic forms of local expression do seem to be dying out. Maybe what’s still regional to the South is that so many artists in the region maintain painting’s primacy in this era of large format photographs and video installations. There is a long-standing figurative and expressionist tradition in the South, and not just in painting, but in sculpture and photography, too. But, as these selections demonstrate, there are others drawn to abstraction in all of its diversity, and to approaches that blur the line between figuration and abstraction. Whatever their approach, there are certainly a lot of good painters throughout the South, and I certainly enjoyed this opportunity to pull together my favorites from among the hundreds who applied to be represented in this issue.

Artists need lots of uninterrupted time to make such resolutely physical work as paintings; yet most also need to feel connected to a larger arts network. Art schools and residency programs continue to be crucial centers for artists outside large urban centers for interacting with new communities and building relationships. Three-quarters of those featured in this edition of New American Paintings have either graduated from, or are currently enrolled in MFA programs, from schools across the South such as Savannah College of Art and Design and the University of North Carolina, to national powerhouses like The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Yale.

And, now it’s pretty much a given that everyone’s plugged in; once-obscure and specialized information, and bigger and better images are instantly accessible. Information on residency programs and exhibition and funding opportunities is at our fingertips. The web’s influence can be problematic, too. I’m thinking of the multitude of artists web-marketing their work out into the ether (though I doubt there are many serious painters putting much time or effort into their websites.)

Ultimately, artists paint and draw for themselves and for those of us who love unmediated experience and face-to-face dialog. For those painters who choose to live outside of a large art market there are regional audiences, collectors, and quite importantly, non-profits where like-minded people congregate to see art, maybe hear a show, drink beers, gripe, and get a little feedback and encouragement before heading back to the studio. Places like Lump in Raleigh and Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville.

Not so long ago, New York was the sole center of the American art world. Communities nationwide often lost their most promising and ambitious artists to the Apple. Currently, more cities rightfully claim a strong and growing contemporary art scene with a national profile: Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Miami. If this trend holds, it is only a matter of time before smaller and smaller regional communities establish themselves as art centers in their own right. (It will be interesting to keep pace with this phenomenon.) At this point in time, are there artists who choose to live and work in these smaller communities who develop careers on national and international levels? Yes, sometimes; though it’s typically a more incremental process. For those artists in it for the long haul, that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all.