Honorable Mentions went to Julie R. Bradbury-Bennett for her “Point Loma Yacht Club,” Tamara Stautland for “Morning Mist,” Donald Freymuth for “Table Tops,” and Lynee Schulante for “Mission Trail View.”
Keiko Tanabe had two wonderful paintings in the show, “Bordeaux Cafe” and “Cermont Dessoun,” which should have won awards but did not. Mike Morse, the LJAA webmaster, who helped hang the show, also favored Tanabe to win. His comment: “It just goes to show that art evaluation is highly subjective!”
This was the first year that Honorable Mention awardee Toni Danchik entered the competiton, She lives in Laguna Nigel and normally shows her work at a gallery in San Juan Capistrano. Danchik was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa and lived under Apartheid. She left there 19 years go just as it was ending. She speaks Afrikaans, which is a modern Germanic language. Danchik stays connected to her homeland through her involvement in a project to help children who were orphaned because their parents succumbed to the African HIV epidemic.
Danchik came to the United States to go on a blind date and ended up marring the man she went out with. “I had a dream and knew that I was going to marry an American,” she says. “We were introduced through a mutual friend and hit it off right away. My husband proposed after just 2 ½ weeks of knowing me. I think that my story is very similar to that of Isaac and Rebecca in the Old Testament. I think ours was a made-in-heaven relationship. After all, God is the ultimate matchmaker!”
Although Danchik has been painting since she was a little girl it was only after she moved to the USA that she pursued it full time. “I am interested in the effect of light on objects and my first response to a scene. I try to hold onto this first feeling all through the painting. It’s all about the feeling. I start by creating chaos on the canvas, then bring out the unexpected, and finally create order.”
Scottie Brown was also the recipient of an Honorable Mention Award. She is a member of PAPPASAN or the Plein Aire Painters of San Diego. Brown graduated from the University of Southern California (USC) and has been painting in oil for the last seven years. “I like oil because it is so forgiving. You can scrap it off or start all over. In my painting, I am trying to capture the lights and the darks.”
