"Florentine Ceiling," a work by Michael Anderson has received the Gateway East Artists' Guild 2013 annual Roy and Mary Kerchner Memorial Award for Transparent Watercolor. The prize was announced in an awards ceremony for the 2013 Gateway To Art exhibition at the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows Visitors Center, Belleville, IL. The exhibit includes 140 works in all mediums by 50 artists and will be on view through August 17. Awards of recognition, merit and excellence as well as Best of Show, the Kerchner Memorial Award and the American Frame and Art Supply award were selected by artist Nancy Newman Rice. Ms. Newman Rice is the recipient of a National Endowment for Arts Fellowship For Painting and a Tiffany Award nominee.
Although final enhancements to Florentine Ceiling were completed in studio, the painting was begun and substantially completed as a demonstration piece before an audience of approximately 20 watercolor enthusiasts at Concrete Ocean Gallery, St. Louis, on June 24, 2013.