 Welcome to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I take this responsibility very seriously. This is the June 2020 painting challenge category and the theme for the month was stillness. I thought it an appropriate category because of so much that's going on in our world and right here you're seeing me browse through the album of all of the submissions in our Monet Café art group on Facebook. Anybody can join who's interested in pastel painting. The great thing is it's a combination of artists of every level so some of these are beginner, some are intermediate, advanced and each artist lets me know what category they're in and at the end of every month we choose a winner from each category and I will show the winners at the very end of this presentation but these are some of the ones that I pulled out for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy! Wasn't that an outstanding presentation? I mean our artist in our group are amazing and the winners are chosen on their painting obviously but also on their representation of the theme of stillness. Now here's the winner for the beginner category. Check out this amazing painting by Elizabeth Ott and I don't want other beginner artists to get frustrated seeing the amazing beginner skill of this artist. It's truly remarkable and I thought not only did this represent outstanding skill but such a beautiful representation of the subject of stillness and how so many of us are clinging to loved ones and cherishing the things that matter in this life. And now for the winner in the intermediate category. Truly there were so many beautiful entries but this painting by Leslie Beasley once again represented the topic so well and it gave me the feeling of how so many of us with our current world challenges are looking to the light and looking to something greater. And now for the advanced category winner who will receive the honor of having their painting as the featured header image in our Monet Cafe Art Group on Facebook. Congratulations Timing Limb for this lovely painting and once again so beautifully represents the topic or the emotion of stillness that is permeating our world at this time. And again the choice is due to the amazing artistic skill level of this painting and also how the theme of us being still and listening to something to find answers perhaps in ways we never would have heard before. So congratulations to these winners but I do have an honorable mention and another special mention at the end. It was very hard to pass by and not recognize this outstanding painting by Irene Giorgipolo. I hope I'm saying your name right. I mean it's hard to believe this is a pastel painting right. Fantastic work and this is indeed a show-winning piece. Now this is the first time I've ever done this with this painting challenge contest but if I had to choose a best of show amongst all of the entries it would be this painting by Sandy Young and I'm going to try to not get emotional with this but Sandy shared this painting that is a painting of her brother who is diagnosed with terminal cancer and this is a painting of him fishing and if anyone is going through the feeling of stillness it would be someone in this situation. So God bless you all thank you for watching and perhaps we will all learn something from these challenges and art definitely makes life better. Happy painting!