Golden Gala Exhibit at Quiet Waters Park
2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Annapolis Watercolor Club. Our long-anticipated exhibit at the Quiet Waters Park will be the highlight of a series of exhibits in celebration of this anniversary. All paintings use gold (either paint or metallic leaf or other golden color).
Exhibit Dates: May 21 - July 6, 2025
Park/Gallery hours: 9 AM – 4 PM weekdays, 10 AM – 4 PM weekends. Quiet Waters Park charges a daily vehicle entry fee of $6.00 per car except for the Opening Reception.
Reception: Sunday, May 25, 1:30-3:30PM
Awards Judge: Jenny Cawood
In addition to work by our AWC members, hung in the Willow Gallery, the exhibit was open to Guest (non-member) Artists, whose work is exhibited separately in the Garden Gallery at the Visitors’ Center. Our judge, Jenny Cawood, is Manager of Artistic Inquiry at the Elizabeth Myers Mitchell Art Museum at St. John’s College, Annapolis. She selected awards for first, second, and third place in both member and guest categories, and a first place overall. Two honorable mentions were awarded by the Friends of Quiet Waters volunteers, and a Children's Award by six-year-old Thomas Hempel.
Click here for an image gallery of the award-winning paintings
The following are the awards, with comments by judge Jenny Cawood:
First Place Overall: "Matador", Angela Di Cicco
Vitality, like a dance. Looks like the immediacy of a true feeling. Deliberate and spontaneous simultaneously. Love this.
First Place, AWC Members: "Deflection", Karen Norman
I adore how this deals with the relationship between the mechanical and the organic. Metal bending to artificial light like sunflowers. Quiet, contemplative, slightly unsettling at the same time as it is comforting.
Second Place, AWC Members:
"Carnival Jester", Kay Fuller
The gold feels seamlessly justified by the content — gilded opulence covering a face, exhausted and perhaps indignant towards what is seen. Where does humanity stop and performance begin? And how are the two related?
Third Place, AWC Members:
"Valletta Reflections", Theresa Jackson
City light meets the interiority of an individual; dreamy and lush with a unique motif choice that makes full use of its odd perspective — smart color harmony, evokes a rainy night walk when the ground beneath your feet takes on new intrigue. Love the mystery of it.
First Place, Guest Artists: "A Dream", Carole Falk
Love the way this captures the sinew of a misty dream, like one many of us have had and can't remember. Original, mystifying — heartfelt, distant yet inviting. Simple, complete.
Second Place, Guest Artists: "Morning Gold", Nancy Thomas
Emerges like a gorgeous recollection of a childhood memory — sincere, luscious, real but unreal too. The way the landscape feels rather than how it looks. Pushes you away and much as it draws you in.
Third Place, Guest Artists: "Immersion", Linda Gosman
Enveloping, intimate view of the interplay between light and dark. Feels like both a dynamic ocean landscape and, from afar, a static still-life of an animal part. I see life and death in this work, and they seem to pull in and out of each other in turns.
Honorable Mention: Annette Uroskie ,“Golden Morning”
Honorable Mention: Joan Machinchick, “First Light, December Wetlands”
Children’s Award: Cheryl Duvall , “Nest of Dreams.”