Art Renewal Center 2011-2012 ARC Salon™

THE WINNERS

ADDITIONAL AWARDS

HONORABLE MENTION

THE FINALISTS

Salon Results Announcement

Message from the ARC Chairman

RC is pleased to present the winners of the 2011/2012 International Salon Competition. This was our largest turnout yet with over 2,100 entries and over 800 artists participating. There were a large number of high quality works that did not make it into the finals. This was true even after extending the original 300+ expected finalist pieces to over 500. Out of the 802 artists only 359 are represented here, less then half, and only 25% of the total submitted works are shown. To become a finalist is even more difficult than before and a huge accomplishment; so congratulations to all!

The Salon Catalogue this year will run over 200 pages and will be a monument to the spectacular art being created by talented realist artists around the world; offering the viewer high technical skill in the representation of both traditional themes as well as an explosion of new subject matter with a 21^st century feel that cannot be confused with any other time period. It is truly an exciting time to be an artist. We are at the cusp of a new dawn for realist style paintings, with new schools taught by atelier trained artists opening around the world, and more and more galleries and organizations dedicated to realism opening their doors, we expect a strong shift in the art world around the bend. Artists who are still doing abstract expressionism and paintings of squares and squiggles feel dated and old fashioned to much of the public, and more and more critics who claim realism is a return to the past will be laughed at when shown the contemporary work and subject matter of today's realist painters and sculptors.

Because of the large number of entries, we will be introducing a new category for the Art Renewal Center 2012/2013 International Salon: Imaginative Realism. This new category will include historical work, fantasy, religious, and Sci-Fi entries, with portraits and other realist based figurative works remaining in the Figurative Category. Entrants will be able to enter their work in multiple categories as they see fit. We will start accepting entries to the 2012/2013 Salon September 1^st, so if you are an artist, start planning now.

Kara Ross,
Director of Operations

s Chairman, and one of the Founders of the Art Renewal Center, I was overwhelmed to see the enormous success of this year's Salon. The quality as a whole and sheer number of highly skilled, creative, and original works submitted was staggering. When we first started this organization, there were only a fraction the number of artists creating the top quality realism which we can see today as evident by this years competition.

I was particularly pleased with the Landscape entries this year, which as a category as a whole has taken an enormous step up in quality and was along with figurative, the most difficult category to judge.

We are very excited to start accepting entries this coming September for our next competition, for which we are expecting an ever larger turn out then we had this year. For those who did not win, and those who did not make it to the finals, many of you still demonstrated very high and advancing levels of quality and accomplishment. Please don't be discouraged. There is always next year, when with hard work and uncompromising dedication you just might be a winner. Many of this year's winners only won after several years of disappointment. Contemporary Realism needs to always have the best of the best competing if we are to once again see vibrant realist imagery reach the heights achieved in the past. It takes the pressure of the most skilled, the most talented and the most creative minds competing for the top prizes, to achieve the kind of advancements that only can come from continuous feedback and cross pollination of skills, methods and brilliant ideas.

Once again, Please join all of us here at the Art Renewal Center in wishing warm and robust congratulations to all of our winners, honorable mentions, and finalists.

Fred Ross,
Chairman

Click here to pre-order this year's ARC Salon Catalog with all the winners and finalists in full color.

To learn more about the judges for this year's salon, click here.

To all applicants, please note that we we will post the 2012-2013 Salon prospectus in August, and will be accepting entries for the Art Renewal Center 2012-2013 International Salon from September 1, 2012 - December 31, 2012.