Robie Benve Art

Happy me in front of the ArtPop Street Gallery billboard featuring my painting "It'll Be Grand". Oh my, there are times when you hope for things, you want them very hard, and everything goes wrong. But there are other times when you think "that sounds interesting, I'll give it a try" and you get the the best results.  The first time I applied for the ArtPop Street Gallery Columbus, in 2019, I thought I had a strong piece, but did not get selected. It was a little disappointing. So, this year I applied again. Even if I had very low expectations, I tried to do it right. I chose a piece I really liked, I cropped it just right, and I made sure I followed all the technical requirements of the online submission.  Then I moved on and kind of forgot about it for several weeks. The Advantages of Submitting for a Juried Art Competition I think submitting for any juried competition is a win-win, especially when, like in this case, there is no submission fee. It takes a...

Do you ever have periods in which things go well and you are afraid to wake up?  I'm in such a period right now. Things are going well, and I am so afraid the it will end out of the blue, just like it started. But hey, in the meantime, I'm doing my best to enjoy every minute of it. Never waste something good, right? Home-life is going great and my artistic endeavor is giving me some satisfactions that I thought would never come. Not only people are buying my paintings, which is amazing all by itself - to know that they are willing to pay for the products of me having fun in the studio, and keep them in their home, where they look at them every day, how wonderful is that?? Also, I am now represented by a super nice art gallery, and the owner invited me to participate in a small group show of mixed media art. Yay! It was supposed to be a solo show for one of the other two artists but, being over-committed, she requested to have someone else to share the space with, and...