An Encouraging Win

As you may know, I painted this painting 'After Losing a Loved One' a couple months ago. My main goal was to submit it into a Canadian portrait contest. However, I stumbled across an international online art contest on Art-Competition.net and decided to submit this piece. The category was 'Emotion and Energy of Color', and probably couldn't have been more fitting to my current work. At the beginning of April I submitted this painting. At the end of April I got an email saying I came in first place. I couldn't believe it.

To see my artwork in first place was extremely encouraging, yet part of me was still in disbelief. Did I deserve it? The other pieces recognized in the contest were amazing. It was hard for me to justify my painting being in first.

But it made me realize something. Despite the doubt that comes along with being an artist (for me anyway), there also comes possibility. And as long as you are creating the work, putting your heart into it, and putting in effort to market yourself, great possibilities will follow.

You can't succumb to doubt. You must use it to challenge you instead.