Terry Ward
In July 2020, Terry Ward’s portrait titled Kimbal was exhibited at Sotheby’s New York in the 14th International ARC Salon Competition, the largest and most prestigious competition in the world for realist artists. The competition, hosted by Art Renewal Center (ARC) in United States, received over 4300 entries from 73 countries. Ninety-nine works from around the world were chosen for inclusion in the exhibition.
Unfortunately due to covid-19, ARC was unable to bring the exhibition live to Sotheby’s New York as planned. Instead, a virtual exhibition has been organised to show online indefinitely.
Virtual Salon Walkthrough
A digital catalogue was created specifically for the 99 works in the exhibition, containing the videos of participating artists who talked about their work.
Watch Terry Ward’s video about her exhibited work Kimbal on YouTube
An Interview with Art Renewal Center’s Co-Chair Kara Ross
‘’The techniques used to create representational works, like those studied and used by the old masters, techniques that had been passed to them, have been transferred from one generation to the next directly from teacher to student – they have been preserved throughout time. This is something humanity can be proud of, not only for the works themselves in museums, but that this knowledge of how to create such works has also been protected. Since the vast majority of the art world in the 20th century moved away from representational art, I am still occasionally asked, ‘’What relevance does representational art have in today’s society?’’ How can it not have relevance? It is the same as if the person had asked me if written and verbal communication still had relevance. Since the artist is a product of society and the world they live in, everything they do or create is a reflection of that. It is automatically both relevant and contemporary.
21st century Representational Art cannot possibly be mistaken for any other period in fine art, as it is inherently an expression of today’s society, and if there are core elements in these works, like the human figure, or expressions of love or hate that we hold in common, then this only reinforces that these elements are timeless, which in and of itself has historic significance. For 100 years, artists have been deconstructing works of fine art, creating paintings that are visually flat, throwing paint, or even showing blank canvases. At the time this was new, exciting and shocking, but now, in the 21st century, thousands of artists want to start reconstructing again, reclaiming our universal visual language, and, like great theatre, suspending disbelief and expressing it all with beauty, poetry and grace.’’
There are just so many great representational artists out there now creating qualitatively superb art, but with a distinctively contemporary feel. Kara Ross Co-Chair ARC
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