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From her home in Devlin, Ontario, Canada, Cher Pruys can look out across the Rainy River and see the northern border of Minnesota, imagining what sort of adventures and experiences she might find by making a passage across the border.
In her painting, “Entranced,” three little ballet dancers look through a large window at older ballerinas and wonder what sort of adventures and experiences they’ll find in the passages of their lives.
Pruys’ painting, acrylic on 300-pound hot-press paper, received $3,000 Gold Medal of Honor award at the 110th annual Allied Artists of America juried exhibition, displayed online and at the renowned Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH.
The story behind charming moment captured in the painting—the innocent curiosity of the three girls—is a dive into Pruys’ childhood memories. “I think of the little girl on the left as me,” she said, recalling that she studied ballet during her formative years. “I tell stories when I paint. To take my inner visions with my hands and create a work of art for the viewer—that is the ultimate in self-expression.”
The gold medal marks Pruys’ first entry into an Allied Artist exhibition. She has lived in various towns and cities throughout Canada. Today, she, her husband and their four dogs and two cats have settled into the chilly hinterlands of Devlin, a rustic area that’s home to bears, wolves, foxes and eagles.
Self-taught, she came to art at an early age, drawing with pencil, charcoal and ink. She eventually turned to oil painting, but in recent years her chosen mediums are acrylic, watercolor and gouache. Her work has been accepted into numerous juried shows and is the recipient of major awards such as the Mary Pratt Crystal Award of Excellence at the 2014 Society of Canadian Artists (SCA) open juried exhibition; the 2022 Biafarin/SCA Award of Excellence; the Gold Medal for figurative painting in the 2018 Mondial Art Academia’s international competition. She was the Grand Prize Winner of the AWA (American Women Artists) 2022 online show, and The American Allied Artists Award at the 2021 93rd AAPL Grand Exhibition.
Pruys is also an avid fused glass artist, and a certified teacher of piano and guitar. Her artwork has graced the covers of three books, 33 magazines, including the fall 2021 cover of the Best of Acrylic magazine.
https://artbycher.ca/ |
