WRITE UP
THURSDAY 1ST SEPTEMBER – SATURDAY 3RD SEPTEMBER 2022
HIGH CROSS CHURCH, CAMBERLEY, SURREY
There were over 200 paintings and several competition prizes to be won at this year’s Annual Exhibition. The Mayor of Surrey Heath was unexpectedly unable to attend the event due to pressing council business. Frimley & Camberley Society of Arts is very grateful to Councillor Sarah Jane Croke, who agreed to stand in for the Mayor to open the exhibition at the Evening Reception on Thursday 1st September.
Kristin Rawcliffe was invited to judge the different competitions. She is a local artist who came to be known to FCSA from a recent Zoom Oil Portrait demonstration that she gave during the Coronavirus lockdown.
Liz Seward, Frimley & Camberley Society of Arts President, thanked everyone involved in organising and realising the exhibition and then she announced the winners of the various competitions.
The Winsland Prize for best watercolour/mixed media painting was won by Sera Knight for “Red Bus and Black Cab”.
The Valerie Brooks Memorial Prize for the best pastel painting was a new prize on offer this year, which was specially commissioned by Valerie Brooks’ family in her memory. The winner was Lisa Clifford for her pastel “Newlands Corner”
The Themed Competition this year was “Our Country” and it was won by Lesley Kilner for her painting “Living Legends”
The winner of the Themed Competition will be given this newly renovated trophy to keep for the year.
The Committee Prize was on the theme of Ordinary Things and the winning painting was “Thirsty” by Valerie Painter.
The Seward Memorial Trophy, also known as the People’s Prize, is determined at the end of the exhibition by the painting with the most public votes. This year it was won by Carole Head for her painting”Flying Free” and she will collect the trophy at the Annual General Meeting in the new year.
Graham Scandrett, the President of FCSA for many years, passed away last year and it was decided to set aside an area of the exhibition space to display some of his paintings.
Terry Ralph and Graham Scandrett were great admirers of David Hockney. Terry Ralph painted a portrait of Hockney for Graham and offered his painting from Graham’s estate to the exhibition so that any money raised from the sale of it could go to the charity MSF Médecins Sans Frontières. The painting sold and the money will be given to this charity.
It takes a team of people to put together the Annual Exhibition every year. The Chairman, Peter Tuitt, was supported by members of the committee, who together with many of the exhibiting artists and society members, were responsible for mounting the exhibition again this year.
A special vote of thanks should go to the volunteers who worked with Craig Whitehead to get all the display stands erected on Thursday morning and then dismantled them again on Saturday; this is no mean feat. Good to see they are all still smiling in this photograph. Great work! Thank you!
At the close of the Annual Exhibition many of the paintings have moved to an On-Line Exhibition on the website. These can be seen by following this link: https://fcsaonline.org.uk/exhibitions/annual-exhibition-2022/
Gallery of exhibition photos
The Society’s thanks must go to Alan Meeks of the Windlesham & Camberley Camera Club who kindly attended the Reception Evening and provided most of the photographs used in the write up and all the photos in the gallery below.
