To celebrate the leap year the folks at Art Battle put together a unique night of competition. There were many firsts; first live sculpture battle, largest art battle, first theme based battle and first team battle! It was a very well attended night to remember.

Opening the evening was the sculpture battle between my sister Carolyn Steele Gray and Carlos Delgado. The gathering crowd was amazed to witness beautiful delicate creations shaped out of lumps of clay. My sister did an absolutely stunning sculpture of a figure arising from the form of a tree. It was a big hit and I hope it becomes a regular fixture at Art Battle.

Next was the epic Mega Round: 20 painters at once! This largest single battle had the painters vying for space. Competitors used chairs as easels, painted on tables, the floor and even some just held up the canvas in one hand and painted with the other.

This round also marked a personal first, I did a painting with thrown paint and splatters. I’ve never tried approaching a painting this way before and I thought this battle was the perfect opportunity. Having only 20 minutes would force me to be spontaneous and not over think the artwork. I began with throwing paint on the canvas from above. Then I drizzled, poured water and heaped paint until I thought I had an interesting abstract composition. Then I took a few minutes (just a few!) to look for shapes that suggested a face and developed an element of portraiture by going in with some brush work. I ended up not seeing one but two faces and here’s the finished product:

I found out later that the gentleman who bought the painting named it “The John and Yoko Hair Peace” and I absolutely love the title.

The next round was the first ever Team Battle! 4 teams of 2 painters each competed on large canvases for a speedy 25 minutes. I painted in this round as well and I was so fortunate and honored to be teamed up with Morgan Booth. Together we planned a method of attack rather than a specific composition. We decided to tag team it, wresting style! One of us would paint while the other watched. Someone timed us and every 3 minutes the painter would be tagged out and her teammate would step in. Without knowing exactly how the painting would develop we were open to spur of the moment ideas and were forced to go with the flow. We even flipped a coin to determine who would go first to further enhance the element of chance. I think we were both beyond thrilled with the result:

Our hope that was by taking turns painting we could build on what the other had done and have a more unified composition. We were completely on the same page in regards to bringing interest to the piece through the use of colour, thick and thin areas of paint and different textures. We were elated with the results and the thrill of the process, but the real icing on the cake was that we were voted the winners of our round! We would both be advancing to the final, Main Event to compete for the title (however we couldn’t team up again … we asked).

Very unfortunately going into the Main Event I was out of ideas. Just as I was staring trembling at the blank canvas before me, flipping through images in my head and rejecting them one by one, the master of the ceremonies announced another first. For the first time ever at Art Battle he proclaimed a theme for us to paint. I was saved! We were to paint a depiction of the painter to our right. The easels were arranged in a circle so this would create a time and space vortex worthy of the elusive February 29th where all rules can be broken. After 20 minutes here is my portion of the perpetual circle:

I painted David McKenzie and I was again very lucky because he has such painterly curly hair. I had a lot of fun creating this piece and was very pleased with how it turned out. To round off my evening of fabulous fortune I was voted the winner of the Main Event and proudly took home the championship title (and some cash!). It’s been a while since I even made it past the first round, so I was surprised and overjoyed to win the day.

Besides the excitement of the event itself with the opportunity to connect with enthusiastic art patrons, Art Battle has done a lot to advance my creativity and skill as a painter. It has moved me to push my boundaries and explore new approaches and techniques. I am very blessed to have been invited to paint so many times. I am truly thankful to the organizers Simon Plashkes and Chris Pemberton for not just giving me these opportunities but for creating an event that gets the public excited and involved in art in a way like no other.

I hope to continue to compete and look forward to plenty more blog posts on the subject