Young artist Chan­tal Boynes de­cid­ed to take mat­ters in­to her own hands two years ago when a re­quire­ment of an art com­pe­ti­tion dis­cour­aged her from en­ter­ing. In­stead of sim­ply throw­ing her hands up in frus­tra­tion, her cre­ative mind went to work. She came up with her own or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Boynes Emerg­ing Artist Award, an on­line art com­pe­ti­tion to pro­mote and sup­port bud­ding artists world­wide.

So far, her or­gan­i­sa­tion has run the com­pe­ti­tion and dis­trib­uted prizes to win­ners twice a year. Awards vary with each edi­tion and have ranged from a US$90,000 prize pool to a three-month $15,000 PR con­tract to the win­ner from PR for Artists based in Los An­ge­les. For its sixth edi­tion which opened on Feb­ru­ary 15, the Boynes Emerg­ing Artist Award has teamed up with No­ce­Fres­ca, a res­i­den­cy that caters to artists, de­sign­ers, writ­ers and cre­ative no­mads across the globe, to of­fer a ful­ly-fund­ed three-month artist res­i­den­cy in Sar­dinia, Italy.

There, the win­ner will have a chance to par­tic­i­pate in planned work­shops and train­ing ac­tiv­i­ties over­seen by artists, while re­ceiv­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion, art equip­ment and gear as well as help in de­vel­op­ing and or­gan­is­ing col­lec­tions and ex­hi­bi­tions. The prize al­so in­cludes dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties for ex­po­sure. The sec­ond and third place win­ners will re­ceive US $1,000 and US$500 re­spec­tive­ly, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and a pub­lished artist in­ter­view.

A oil on canvas piece by Chantal Boynes, The Perfect Devil #3.

Emerg­ing vi­su­al artists of any age and na­tion­al­i­ties may en­ter the com­pe­ti­tion via the Boynes Emerg­ing Artist Award web­site and may sub­mit 2D and 3D orig­i­nal art­work based on any sub­ject mat­ter and com­plet­ed in the last five years.

Fund­ing for the com­pe­ti­tion usu­al­ly comes from the en­try-fee pool in com­bi­na­tion with spon­sors and part­ners. Boynes is es­pe­cial­ly proud of the res­i­den­cy prize this year which she was able to ob­tain by sim­ply reach­ing out to spon­sors.

“I de­cid­ed on a res­i­den­cy as be­ing a re­al­ly good prize for an emerg­ing artist to get that kind of in­cu­ba­tive cre­at­ing in a guid­ed en­vi­ron­ment. I sim­ply reached out to No­ce­Fres­ca and they got ex­cit­ed about the idea. We ne­go­ti­at­ed and came to an agree­ment,” she said.

Urg­ing oth­er peo­ple with dreams or ideas to pur­sue them, she said some­times it was sim­ply a mat­ter of ask­ing for help.

Fifth Edition 2nd place winner, Pippa Hale-Lynch with some of her work.

“The ma­jor­i­ty of the time, you are the on­ly per­son in your own way. A lot of times if you just ask, it can hap­pen. For these last few years, I just asked.”

By sim­ply ex­tend­ing an in­vi­ta­tion was how Boynes was able to ac­quire the ex­per­tise of one of her in­spi­ra­tions–Span­ish self-por­trait pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Fares Micue–as a judge in one of the com­pe­ti­tions which are usu­al­ly ad­ju­di­cat­ed by a pan­el con­sist­ing of Boynes and no­table peo­ple in the in­ter­na­tion­al art world.

The com­pe­ti­tion has seen en­tries dou­ble from over 400 be­tween the third and fourth edi­tions, with artists hail­ing from coun­tries like the US, Aus­tralia, Cana­da, the UK, Bel­gium, France and Chi­na. A Russ­ian artist be­came a fi­nal­ist in the third edi­tion and the last edi­tion boast­ed an all-fe­male group of win­ners.

Al­though Ja­maican artist Ku­ru­ma Reid cap­tured sec­ond place in the fourth edi­tion, Boynes hopes to see artists from T&T and the Caribbean em­brace the chance to el­e­vate their pro­file through the com­pe­ti­tion.

Black Molasses (pen and ink on paper) second place, fourth edition by Jamaican artist, Kuruma Reid.

Boynes said it was an ho­n­our to be able to view such a di­verse range of tal­ent each round. She hopes to build a com­mu­ni­ty where artists can net­work and en­cour­age each oth­er long af­ter the contest.

Apart from or­gan­is­ing spon­sor­ship and oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive as­pects re­quired to pro­duce the com­pe­ti­tion every six months, she spends most days li­ais­ing with past win­ners about their needs, and ar­rang­ing mar­ket­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, me­dia ap­pear­ances and av­enues for them to ex­hib­it their work and con­nect with peers.

The 24-year-old has nur­tured a love for art since child­hood when she would draw fash­ion de­sign sketch­es in a fluffy lit­tle neon pink book. By age 16, Boynes, who at­tend­ed Prov­i­dence Girls' Catholic School, AS­JA Girls' Col­lege and The British Acad­e­my pri­vate school, was pas­sion­ate about art. Af­ter try­ing to paint a class­mate from mem­o­ry one day, she was con­vinced that art was her call­ing.

“It's a very dif­fi­cult thing to paint a per­son from mem­o­ry. I was feel­ing so stressed out and even in that mo­ment of try­ing to get it right, it was sat­is­fy­ing. I could not have had a bet­ter time. In that mo­ment, I was like: that's it. I'm go­ing to be an artist,” she re­called.

With a bit of help from videos on the in­ter­net, Boynes used her spare time teach­ing her­self how to paint. Ob­serv­ing her ded­i­ca­tion, her moth­er, a lawyer, sent her to art class­es with wa­ter­colour artist Tes­sa Alexan­der. The young cre­ative found her niche in oils.

Cours­es in sculp­ture, pho­tog­ra­phy and Art His­to­ry in Italy, a cer­tifi­cate in Vi­su­al Arts in Cana­da and a diplo­ma in Vi­su­al Arts in Aus­tralia would help hone her skills. She thor­ough­ly en­joyed the ex­pe­ri­ences, do­ing some of her best work in street pho­tog­ra­phy in Italy.

Boynes' art has been ex­hib­it­ed lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and fo­cuss­es on fig­u­ra­tive works on women.

“For me, the fe­male is just more in­ter­est­ing, more beau­ti­ful, more in­tense. That's part of the rea­son I paint women in­stead of men,” she said.

She said she was fas­ci­nat­ed by how mul­ti­fac­eted and com­plex women are, start­ing with her moth­er, who was the pri­ma­ry force in her up­bring­ing af­ter her par­ents di­vorced.

Displacement (photography) by 5th Edition winner, Ruby Hyde

“I've al­ways recog­nised her a s some­one who has mul­ti­ple sides to her which I find very in­ter­est­ing. I've ac­tu­al­ly paint­ed my moth­er a cou­ple times be­fore and I think she was re­al­ly my first in­tro­duc­tion to the un­der­stand­ing that women could be so dif­fer­ent in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions.”

Re­call­ing how she start­ed her or­gan­i­sa­tion, Boynes said while pur­su­ing her stud­ies in Aus­tralia in Oc­to­ber 2019, af­ter ful­fill­ing all the re­quire­ments on an art com­pe­ti­tion form, she was tak­en aback on notic­ing that the en­try fee re­quired was US$100. An­noyed at the fee and the fact that the prize did not in­clude oth­er re­sources for the win­ner like sup­port from or con­nec­tion to oth­ers in the art com­mu­ni­ty, she thought to her­self that she could bet­ter or­gan­ise such a com­pe­ti­tion and set about do­ing re­search. By No­vem­ber 1 that year, she launched her first art award com­pe­ti­tion.

“I think how lucky I am be­cause of the way I was raised by my moth­er. At no point in my life did I ever have the men­tal­i­ty that I couldn't do some­thing. If I do the re­search, if I put the work in, it will work. That's just my at­ti­tude and I try to en­cour­age peo­ple to have the same at­ti­tude. I know that that kind of free­dom in your head is a bit dif­fi­cult to get to, but I re­al­ly en­cour­age it with every­body I meet,” she said.

Dead­line for en­tries for the Boynes Emerg­ing Artist Award com­pe­ti­tion is May 25, 2022

The dead­line for en­tries for the Boynes Emerg­ing Artist Award com­pe­ti­tion is May 25, 2022. For more in­for­ma­tion vis­it www.boy­ne­sartistaward.com, https://www.face­book.com/boy­nese­mergin­gartistaward/

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