October 29, 2021
We are very pleased to announce that we have a winner for this year's SAA Agents Award for New Talent: Grace Park for Silk Road Wonders -She is currently based in Canada and has a BFA in Illustration from Art Center College of Design, where she learned to focus on creating stories and evoking empathy. She enjoys making images that are relatable to others, and likes to incorporate small details that enhance the piece. As a freelance illustrator, she strives to tell stories that console people and bring warmth into their lives.
A big thank you to all the judges - Christine Isteed from Artist Partners, Trina Wymandski from Phosphor Art and Jon Cockley from Handsome Frank. Grace was a firm favourite with all of the judges... as you can see from the quotes below,
Trina: "Judging the New Talent was a challenging but very enjoyable task. Fortunately we all agreed on the winner - Grace Park. I loved the detail and sense of design, plus the beautiful colour palette, and it was great to see illustration work used in an interesting way printed onto silk. The standard was very high but Grace’s talent stood out so she is a very deserving winner!"
Christine: "Impressive work submitted to us for judging on the AOI/WIA - SAA New Talent Award. Between us we comfortably made our selection of the winner, and the talented shortlisted selection of artists. Beautifully presented ideas and cleverly conceptualised, it was an enjoyable task! Our winning entry by Grace Park was a popular and outright favourite, the beautiful palette and detail and the original idea which was printed on silk was totally unique.”
Grace's prize will be six month’s trial representation including mentoring and career development by one of the SAA’s member agents.