Winner, winner of local Art Battle on her way to provincials
When the clouds of paint cleared and the battlefield was silent from the Art Battle onslaught, one winner was left standing, toilet brush held aloft in triumph.
Christina Watts has competed in Art Battle multiple times and last Friday night she dabbed another mark on the event’s history. She was, prior to this year’s throwdown, the only painter not holding the position of Community Arts Council artist-in-residence to ever win the competition (year three, 2015). On Friday evening she dined on chicken before gathering her weapons and earning her second brush with history.
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” she said, invoking the old gambling rhyme. In the five years Prince George has been a host city for the Art Battle event, she is the first repeat victor.
“It feels especially great because I used my toilet brush,” Watts said. As in, she used it as an artistic tool in the painting race. Art Battle contestants have 20 minutes to slather their best image using acrylic paint on canvas. Most use conventional paintbrushes, but some utilize palette knives or sponges but Watts also used a whip-brush “which looks a little like something you’d find in a sex shop, but it’s an actual artist’s brush” and when she thought about a dappling effect she wanted to achieve, a toilet brush was just the implement for the job.
“Now I can say ‘I was beat by a toilet brush,’ said first-time competitor Melissa Bain. “Not many people can say that, I think.”
Bain said she was excited and a bit nervous about the rookie experience, but now she’s already making plans for next year.
“The music is pounding, the lights blinding, and you see constant movement of people in your peripheral vision as you paint,” she described. “It felt like being in a dream of sorts is the only way to describe it. Being my first Art Battle, I thought I’d be more nervous but felt surprisingly calm as I painted. I liked how my painting started out but I’m still feeling uncertain about the finished piece. I learned a lot of things I’d do differently the next time round, so I look forward to next year’s event.”
Watts has been in that state of uncertainty over the final product. She said that sensation lessens the more you practice. She, like many Art Battle competitors now know to do, practices a couple of key images in advance so she’s ready when the starting pistol fires.
Like a championship baseball team vying for the World Series, she knew to use her best pitcher in the first round and her next best in the final round. You can’t win the finals if you didn’t earn the preliminary victory. Art Battle is done in heats, each one offering up a finalist for the closing paint-off. The four (three heat winners plus a wild-card participant) voted by the audience into the finals were Watts, last year’s winner Carla Joseph, Kat Valcourt and Michael Doyle.
The others in contention were Bain, Mandy Paavola, Erin Stagg, Jordan Kelley, Lisa Tosoff, Trevor Stanley, Michael Kast and Mike Rees. All paintings were auctioned off that night, with proceeds split between the artists and the Community Arts Council as chief organizer.
“I know that city scenes are popular, so that was my first image. I felt I could do that effectively and I liked how it turned out in rehearsals,” Watts said. “For the second image, I don’t know, I guess I felt like pushing myself. I have been taking a portrait class from Pat Russman and I think that had an influence, because I decided to do a face. I like how they can have a life of their own, how you can get emotion into the image, but it’s a short timeframe and if you make a tiny mistake it can really ruin it. If you don’t put the eyeball where the eyeball’s supposed to go, there’s no coming back from that. But I kept it simple, it was a closed eye, and I did some things to make it look like there was some wind, some motion, so that helped the effect, I hoped, and if I ran out of time there were some things I didn’t have to colour in to still have a workable image remain.”
Watts admitted she and at least some of the other competitors check out each other’s work online or in public displays. It’s good-natured reconnaissance. Ultimately, artists pushing each other to be better is part of the desired effect of Art Battle, adding a sense of competitive earnestness is fun for painters and audiences alike, but each event’s winner is at the mercy of fate and too many uncontrollable factors to worry about. Watts said she was happy just to be involved with 11 other friends at the easel of battle, and she now felt compelled to represent them and Prince George as well as possible at the provincials in Vancouver in June.