Moorestown resident Christine Wagner took first place in acrylics for her painting, “Life on the Move,” at the 57th annual New Jersey Senior Citizen Art Show earlier this year in East Windsor Township.
Artists Nancy Everham, Lenny McDonald, Sherry McGrath, Larry Chestnut, Greg Stett, Vince Matulewich, Leokadia Stanik, Cindy Wolf, Joan Capaldo and Gerald Purnell also received first-place awards in the professional category for their mediums.
The show’s art represents the first-place winners selected from local senior exhibits earlier in the year, according to the Senior Citizen Art Show website. Both professional and non-professional New Jersey artists 60 or older can enter their county shows, all of which are juried. First-place professional and non-professional winners in all categories (acrylics, crafts, mixed media, oils, prints, photography, watercolor and more) automatically go on to the state show.
This year’s senior art exhibit was displayed at the Meadow Lakes retirement community in East Windsor.
“The art was displayed in this huge corridor all the way around the building, and also the sculpting and crafts were displayed on these huge tables,” Wagner said. “It was a magnificent show. I had never seen that many art pieces in one spot, except possibly a museum.”
Perkins Center for the Arts held an awards ceremony for its fall annual juried exhibition in September, when Wagner took home first place for her piece, “Fresh Paint.”
“I’m feeling good about it,” she noted about winning both shows.
All of Wagner’s art comes from an emotional place – the heart and the soul – and with just one stroke, the work unfolds.
“It basically creates itself,” she explained. “I have a dialogue with my art and it just sort of happens. I can hardly describe how that goes, but it’s a lot of fun for me to do art, and I tell a story with my art.”
Wagner specializes in acrylics, multimedia fine art, sculpture, watercolor/gouache and drawing, according to the Moorestown Creates website. Her pieces have a lot of empty space that she believes is necessary.
“I also use detail to make it more interesting, and texture is something that I try to create by scratching and taking away and removing, and then reapplying until it speaks to me and it feels right,” Wagner observed.
“It’s basically a feeling that I have – and then I can call it done.”
It may take Wagner more time than expected to complete a piece, but it’s all about finding a balance and knowing when something is finished.
“It has to have a certain combination …” she said. “I don’t really focus on things until the very end. It’s just something that I see that it’s finished. I don’t really want to overdo my work. I would like for something to be left for the viewer to interpret in their own way.
“The painting, as it progresses, speaks to me,” Wagner added. “I have this dialogue with the painting, and all of a sudden there’s a feeling of, ‘Okay, this is done.’”
For more information on the New Jersey Senior Citizen Art Show, visit www.njseniorarts.com.
