Winners of ARTchallenge#16 Announcement! Invited Judge @nature.sauv...

Sorry for the little delay in the announcement. I didn't have internet yesterday evening as I am still on vacation.

It is the 16th Artchallenge and we had 4 participants. It was not an easy painting to interpret and I am very thankful to my heroes!

Last week we had a very interesting painting of a Steemit artist, @nature.sauvage!
Participants should give an interpretation to a surreal painting of @nature.sauvage

enter image description here
@nature.sauvage

This painting took part in one of my ARTstyleARt contests the theme of which was Surrealism and Frida Kahlo's painting "A Few Small Nips"

enter image description here
A Few Small Nips

@nature.sauvage wrote a fantastic comment to this challenge which made me cry:

I am so grateful to experience this experience !!! This is the first
time that one of my works has been so interpreted by people and I have
no words to describe what I am currently living and feeling by reading
the interpretations that have been submitted so far !!! It is
reversing to see how my emotions, my intentions, my imagination and my
perceptions are communicated by my drawing and felt by the people who
see it. I had never realized how art could be a means of communication
because until now I had never really composed a work; Nature is so
beautiful and speaking that I always contented myself with reproducing
it in my drawings as I saw it with my eyes, without letting go my
imagination, without trying to communicate something, in short without
leaving my heart and soul speak. This drawing is one of the first ones
where I allowed myself to express myself. Thank you @aksinya for
offering me the chance to experience this enriching and transforming
experience. I feel like a caterpillar that becomes a butterfly, full
of new possibilities and it is up to you all, the participants of the
challenge, that I owe this awareness. Thank you for being here, for
being you, and for the pleasure of reading the other entries by the
end of the challenge. It will be very difficult to judge and choose
the best interpretations ...

AND THE WINNERS ARE:

@nature.sauvage 's comment

It's so difficult !!! ... Each of them has named several points that I
wanted to express in my drawing ... Put together, they superbly
described what I felt and what I wanted to express about pain, Life
and our power to choose and create. If it were possible I would reward
them all equally. That is my first choice. I still have to think for a
ranking...

THE THIRD PRIZE (150 TRAIL + 5 SBD) GOES TO: @torem-di-torem

@nature.sauvage 's comment

for having seen and felt that the ego creates fears and that we have
to observe and learn throughout our life, throughout our multiple
lives.

ARTQUEST-TRAIL#16 (ARTchallenge)

For most people the understanding of the boundary between life and
death is still closed. But this does not detract the fact of its
absence. The illusion of the "visa regime" of crossing this border is
created by our fears generated by human EGO. In reality, however, we
are talking about the flow of different qualities of one life. It
would seem that yesterday you hurried to your office, tried to sell
shares of your company more expensively, in order to buy shares of
someone else's cheaper, and on the way to scold negligent employees
for their mistakes. Today, on the way to the conscious world, you
already look at all this material fuss through the eyes of your
delicate body. Tomorrow, after going through the experience of
awareness, your soul will again come to the same office. No, not for
the briefcase that you forgot on the desktop. Is wants continuation of
knowledge. This time you will return to the body of a negligent
employee. You ask why all this is necessary? Undoubtedly, the Creator
has a sense of humor, otherwise how will the Universe be built without
our many different lives? If in the course of evolution we lose any
least experience, our big common house with you will be defective. And
we understand that the Creator not only has a sense of humor, but he
is also meticulous. So you and I have someone to learn from. That's
why we live ... forever.

THE SECOND PRIZE (250 TRAIL + 7 SBD) GOES TO:@animal-shelter

@nature.sauvage 's comment

for having seen and felt the fear that we all share and that we must
recognize and welcome in order to take care of it with love and
transform it into inner peace.

ARTQUEST-TRAIL#16 (ARTchallenge)

It comes more often at night. Anxiety ... Groundless, inexplicable,
based on the ancient fears of our ancestors, but on a large scale
based on one common human fear - the fear of not surviving.

It exhausts the soul and weakens the body: the heart beats like a
driven rabbit, weakness spreads over the arms and legs, a cotton ball
grows in your head, which does not allow you to think clearly. If it
is not stopped, it will crush you!

Who is your anxiety? Your fear? May be it is your ancient ancestor who
could not escape from the saber-toothed tiger or lost fire and frozen
in his cold cave?

Calm him! He is very scared, but you know that there are no reasons
for worrying. Tell him what you know and what you have, and that the
world is plenty and there are always people in it who are ready to
help. Let your anxiety and your fear turn into a small kitten sleeping
near the warm hearth created by you.

THE FIRST PRIZE (300 TRAIL + 10 SBD) GOES TO:@sumsum

nature.sauvage's comment:

for having wonderfully interpreted the pain and the will to conceal it
and for having plunged into her own pain, recognized it and realized
that Life must be lived and not undergone.

surviving pain - interpretation for the ARTchallenge # 16

I see a woman that is hanging on to life even though it is pure pain.
I see her pain in her facial expression. She seems to be screaming. Al
the same time she can be holding back the scream and try to laugh, to
hide the pain. Maybe she does not want people to know she is in pain.
Maybe it is hard for her to ask for help.

She is her only support because the only thing holding her, is her own
hair. She is about to lose her head and her soul is in great danger.
Many people belief that the soul lives just behind the belly button.
So the sword pointing to the belly button symbolizes the danger her
soul is in.

The painting includes the words: feeling like being killed by life .
.... it hurts a little. This statement shows that the women is in
great pain but it minimizes the pain and the situation at the same
time. The statement is also written on a beautiful blue ribbon which ,
in my opinion is there to take attention away from the pain.

What it means to me For me the painting shows how we all try to hide,
when we are in pain. Even if life tears us apart. We want to appear
strong. We want to be independed and overcome things on our own. Even
if we feel life is nearly ending. For me personally it mirrors my
pain. The pain I had to go through in my life. I was born in
Kazakhstan in a very small village. We were poor but we always had
enough to survive. Because we had land to live off. But all we did was
just surviving. I see that now as I am older. Today I live in Germany.
I survived being born prematurely, being disabled, losing my father to
suicide when I was just seven years old, moving to the homeland of my
ancestors without knowing the language or anything about what was
coming. I survived an operation on my legs which later turned out to
be unnecessary. I survived bullies in school and I survived feeling
broken all my life and trying desperately to fix myself with very
painful methods at times.

It took me until today, until the year 2017 to see that life is not
about surviving. Life is about living. The strange thing is: My life
never felt like my life to me. My achievements did not feel real to
me. I have seen so much beauty and I am successful at many things but
it never felt like my success. It took me to break down completely to
discover that all this is due to all the trauma I endured. I found a
way to let go of the trauma and today I have moments when I feel and
see: Hey! This is my life! How awesome is that?! And those moments I
see more and more. I am very thankful to be alive and out of
survivalmode. I feel like the women in the painting is only in
survival mode but does not really see it. This has taken some time to
come forth for it is somewhat painful. but I guess it fits the
painting as well.

Special Mention (3 SBD):@snooway

nature.sauvage's comment:

for seeing and feeling the hope hidden in this drawing

ARTCHALLENGE #16 entry: Hanging by a thread

The pain on the woman's face is the focal point of the drawing and the
first thing I noticed is the wrinkles on the forehead which not only
represents the bitter suffering from being "beheaded" and hung upside
down but also the trace of time on this earth. Hair is often seen as a
symbol of strength (Samson in the Bible lost his power after his hair
was chopped off), so the woman's hair flowing upwards like a tree
could be interpreted as source of her power. The fact that the hair is
wrapped around the swords suggestions that it is actually trying to
resist the sharp point from digging into the woman's body. Although it
seems like the woman is barely surviving, "hanging by a thread", the
colors used at the top of the image suggests there may be hope for a
better future.

The words on the blue ribbon "it hurts a little" is a huge
understatement but perhaps it also points to the fact that women are
resilient and can endure much more pain then men. Although she feels
like she is being "killed by life", there is a glimmer of hope
expressed in the blue ribbon which reminds me of first prize winners
getting a blue ribbon as a reward. The blue ribbon also could be a
symbol of childhood because girls wore ribbons in their hair. Maybe it
suggests that we should remember the more innocence and carefree days
of childhood to push past the current pain. The two birds also give a
hint that things may get better in the future.

I admit that I was going to skip this week's contest because I didn’t
know what to make of the picture other than seeing pain but I want to
support the wonderful Steeemian artists so I decided to take on the
challenge and try to see some hope in it. Thanks for reading.

nature.sauvage's comment:

I maintain that it was really very difficult to choose. All the
interpretations were excellent! Congratulations to all participants.
And thank you from the bottom of the heart for this wonderful
experience, moving and rewarding! Thanks again for the invitation !!

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS!!!

THANKS TO EVERYBODY FOR PARTICIPATING!!!

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR JUDGE @nature.sauvage!!!!!

And I have one more surprise for you for the next challenge!

All the information about TRAIL and how to claim it you can find here.

If you have never dealt with SteemTrail Discord , you can go and check what it is here.

enter image description here

To claim TRAIL you need to open an account. Just go to Open Ledger Account and follow the instructions. Then submit your Open Ledger account info (OL account “my-username” and Steem account “my-username”) in the #open-ledger-account-add channel or to me.

If you want to open Streemian account, just go here
enter image description here

THEME FOR ARTCHALLENGE #17 will be announced today if internet works)).

You can see the previous artchallenges here:

EVERYBODY IS WELCOME!

I would like to THANK again those who supported this challenge, all the participants, @steem-trail (STEEM TRAIL Team), our invited judges @looftee, @paolobeneforti, @silviabeneforti, @surpassinggoogle, @ezzy, @lpfaust, @nature.sauvage and our supporters @ogochukwu and @looftee.

Please FOLLOW, VOTE and RESTEEM this post.

I will be also very happy to any support of the artchallenge! If you want to be a judge or a sponsor, you are very welcome!

Join me on a quest to discover the treasures of beautiful artworks!

Sorry for not answering your comments in time (due to my travelling). But I try to resteem and upvote with my both accounts all your posts and comments with interpretations.

Always yours, @aksinya.

Winners of ARTchallenge#16 Announcement! Invited Judge @nature.sauvage