First Place: Cover
Caroline Jasper
of Bel Air, MD

    It was the mood of "Twilight Quilt", the warm, shimmering sunset that won first prize for Caroline Jasper. Caroline knows "there's a lack of stillness even in still water," and she captured that easy rippling precisely. But before this contest, few people has even seen Caroline's completed painting. It was begun at an outdoor show, completed two months later, and then sold at another outdoor show within a few hours. "It's been hanging in my friend's living room ever since, so very few people have even seen it." Until now.
    Caroline's always lived around the water and, as a painter, is drawn to its reflective surface. She paints from her own photographs - "they're personal, they're my images" - and combines them to create her own compositions. Years ago, when Caroline received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Fine Arts, she decided she didn't like painting. The practice of using gray backgrounds and of adding black to make colors darker turned her away. But as she began to study more and more art history, masters like Vermeer, Sargent, Thiebaud, Parish, and Chuck Close, she found new color theories, which restored her faith.
    Today, Caroline starts with a red ground, doesn't use any black at all, and paints her highlights first. Color theory is one of her main interests, so she experiments with complementary colors and the interplay of warms and cools.