Day 100: Healthy Competition
Today I went to Tuscany for the day to participate in a small town painting competition in a village near Florence called Marcialla.I almost can’t believe it but this is the 6th year in a row that I’ve gone to paint in this little town competition. It’s a competition where the big prizes are large quantities of the local wine and donated trophies. 
Under the Arches, Marcialla30x20 cmOil on Panel© Kelly Medford, 2012Everyone from art students, young children to professional artists and elderly people from the surrounding towns come out to participate. I truly love taking part in this annual event and interacting with all of the local artists.We got there mid-morning and I walked around for nearly an hour before discovering this series if arches with the light coming through at just the right angle. We turned our paintings in by 2 p.m. and here everyone hangs their paintings in the narrow main street in the village and goes to lunch or nap.After 4 p.m. everyone comes out not only to check out the paintings but to vote on their top 3. In this competition there’s not only the jury vote, but here the big prizes (all that wine that I mentioned before) go to who wins the people’s vote. I like this kind if competition!Everyone wins a local bottle of wine along with some pasta and a cup or trophy of some kind. It’s such a good spirited event, I would hate to miss it.This year I got lucky and for the first time won 3 rd place in the popular vote, pretty exciting especially since I got am entire case of the fabulous local wine!Tomorrow I will post a proper photograph of the painting, I had to take this one with my cell phone.Hope you had an adventuresome Sunday, I really enjoyed mine.Cheers!