I had an amazing time at the ETA awards (Emerging Toronto Artists) last year, and am gearing up for this years show with brand new paintings that have been nominated in different categories!.

The event was held at the Palaise Royale in Toronto,Canada and the venue was beautiful, everyone's setup looked amazing!

The award show

It was great being surrounded by such amazing artists and seeing everyone's artwork up close, (you can't really appreciate a painting until you see it in real life) each so different one from another and everyone dressed up in 1920's attire which was the theme for this event.

I met a lot of great people at this show and have become really good friends with a lot of them, which is one of the major things I liked about this event, its great to be surrounded by people who share the same interests as you and you can bounce ideas off of when you need some help.

I really couldn't find anything that matched the era, so I just pulled together what I could to kind of blend in.

What can I say, I'm more of a jeans and hoody kinda guy.

The Awards

It was such an honor to be nominated for 3 of the 4 awards

Emerging Toronto artist
Creative composition
Technical excellence

I never expected to actually win anything in any of the categories but I'm very happy to say that my piece "When you're gone" won 3rd place for creative composition.

I painted this piece right after a breakup, When I broke up with them, I felt it was what I really wanted and it was a good decision, then after a few days I came to the realization that I really missed this person, and was spending so much time reaching over the bed just to find them not there.This is one of my industrial enamel paintings, that I do using only a toothbrush and letting the paint drip off the toothbrush onto the canvas.

We are back together now, so I guess all in all it worked out and made me appreciate what I had much more

It was also extremely flattering to be told by one of the judges that my work actually spoke to him and he felt the emotion and meaning behind the painting, it's an incredible feeling to be told something like that and to have people understand why I painted a particular piece.

"When you're gone" - Industrial enamel on canvas - SOLD

Illegal burger trafficking

I have to say that one of the best moments of the night, was when Jaime (my partner) went out to pick up McDonalds for a few of the artists at the show because we were STARVING!!!

Ironic I know, the whole starving artists stereotype and all, LOL

So we planned to meet him in the back of the venue in 20 mins, it was quite an elaborate plan, we scoped out a spot where we could sit in the dark and no one could see us so we could scarf down our burgers without anyone ever knowing LOL!!

we managed to get back into the ballroom about 5 mins before the award announcements started, which I'm really glad for, because it would have been really awkward to accept an award with my mouth full and ketchup on my hands.

All in all it was a great night and the award certificate now sits proudly in my studio.

The award money was spent on the lovely winner who received a fresh coat of varnish. and allowed me to purchase new brushes and paints, because I'm a total brush whore..LOL