Pelham Art Center Award Winner

Siobhan McBride is a very happy artist this morning. McBride has just been named as the winner of Pelham Art Center's 2013 Alexander Rutsch Award and Solo Exhibition for Painting. McBride beat out 650 other artists from across the country.

The Alexander Rutsch Award is given out every other year. This is the seventh year that the Pelham Art Center has presented the award.

McBride will now have her artwork on display at the Pelham Art Center from May 3 until June 29. You can take a look at her artwork for free during the exhibit's opening reception and all-age art workshop on May 3 from 6:30-8:00 p.m. McBride will be at the opening reception.

McBride says her works are views of a place where magic reveals itself differently than it does in this world.

"The scenes are tense with anticipation or blushing in the aftermath of an unseen event. Paintings combine disparate yet familiar fragments into spaces that are still, anxious, and temperamental," said McBride. "They are descriptions of awkward experiences, passages from books and film fragments, things caught in the corner of my eye, and an attempt to conjure slippery memories. They are, simultaneously, diagrams for understanding events from the past, and puzzles to decode experiences not yet had. I hope the work is strange and suspenseful like the excitement of exploring a new place, and the thrill of knowing you are drifting back into a frightening dream."

McBride, who currently lives in Miami, got her MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005.

The award is named after Alexander Rutsch who passed away in 1997. Rutsch was an artist who supported the Pelham Art Center for more than 25 years.