Vancouver’s Colleen Heslin wins annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition

TORONTO – Colleen Heslin has won this year’s RBC Canadian Painting Competition, which recognizes emerging artists in the first five years of their artistic careers.

The Vancouver resident will receive $25,000 for her work “Almost young and wild and free.”

Honourable mentions went to Ottawa’s Colin Muir Dorward for “Labyrinthineon” and Neil Harrison of Toronto for “Fig. 13 Knowledge.” The runners-up were each awarded $15,000.

The annual competition usually gives $25,000 to a national winner and $15,000 to two honourable mentions. But this year, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the competition, it’s also awarding an additional $5,000 to each of the other 12 finalists.

More than 500 artists submitted works for this year’s competition, which was judged by artists, gallery directors and curators across the country. It is supported by the Canadian Art Foundation.

Paintings by the 15 finalists, who hail from Vancouver, Guelph, Ont., Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Vancouver, Brooklyn, N.Y., Delta, B.C., and Saskatoon, will be exhibited at the National Gallery in Ottawa until Oct. 13, at Art Toronto from Oct. 25 to 28, and will be featured in Canadian Art magazine and at rbc.com/paintingcompetition.

The 2013 winning paintings will join previous winning visual artists’ works as part of RBC’s corporate art collection, which holds more than 4,000 works of art collected over the past century.