Florida Watercolor Society - Awards

FWS Annual Exhibition Awards

The Florida Watercolor Society funds awards through many different methods, including fundraising, donations, endowments, and memorial gifts. It is through the generosity of these philanthropic foundations, vendors, businesses, and our members that we can provide significant awards to our talented member artists.

Memorial awards can be established to honor those who made significant contributions to the excellence in watermedia. We greatly appreciate our members who remember FWS in their estate planning, as well as friends and family who memorialize our members. Anyone who would like to establish a single-year or recurring artist awards in the name of a beloved friend, family member, living or dead, may contact Nina Tarnuzzer at Treasurer@floridawatercolorsociety.org. The minimum contribution to name an award is $250 and is published in our Annual Exhibition Catalog. Enjoy learning about our ongoing memorials below.

Susan Lattner Lloyd Gold Award - Best in Show

Though she lived in several states, throughout her life, Susan Lattner Lloyd spent part of each year in Delray Beach, Florida. Just after graduating from the Boston School of Fine Arts, she taught art at The Town School in New York City. In the 70's, after losing her daughter to leukemia, she helped to found the first Ronald McDonald House in St. Louis to aid other families.

Susan's interests were many including oil and watercolor painting, gardening and landscape design. She was the President of the Forrest and Frances Lattner Foundation, the beneficiaries of which are social services and environmental endeavors.

Susan was known for her loyalty to her many friends and generated feelings of joy and happiness in everyone she knew. She passed away in 2020.

This award is funded through a gift from the Forrest C. Lattner Foundation.

Guy Beattie Award - First Place

Guy Beattie, while director of the Maitland Art Center, held a show featuring Florida watercolor artists in 1972. Twenty-six of the artists in this show went on to become Charter Members of the Florida Watercolor Society.

Here we are more than fifty years later with membership of over eight hundred! This award honors Guy Beattie's vision and his appreciation of watercolor as a medium.

This award is funded through donations by Signature members of FWS.

Winslow Homer Award - Second Place

Winslow Homer is regarded as one of the most important 19th-century American artists. He was primarily an oil painter, but later in life he started to turn to watercolor because of the quick and straightforward way he could capture impressions of the landscapes, seascapes, and countryside. The new medium was gaining in popularity at the time too!

Homer made his first trip to Florida in the winter of 1885-1886. He enjoyed fishing and the opportunities it gave him for painting. After that trip, he made several mid-winter trips by steamer from New York to Florida. His favorite Florida locations included Jacksonville, Enterprise (on the St. Johns River), Homosassa, Tampa, and Key West. Homer’s watercolor scenes of this time were considered advanced for the day...fresh, with a spontaneous flair. Winslow Homer is now considered a watercolor master and one of the greatest painters of seascapes - many that capture the remarkable beauty of Florida.

This award is funded through donations by Signature members of FWS.

Healing Arts Purchase Award

The painting receiving this award will be donated to a local hospital or medical center chosen by the FWS President. The painting is chosen by a representative of that facility.

This award if funded by generous donations from members and supporters of FWS. A vendor or business who chooses to support at least half of the total value of this award ($750 of the total $1,500 currently) will have a plaque displayed alongside it in the medical facility.

Click the link above to consider your donation to Annual Exhibition Awards

FWS Memorial Awards

Jim Carpenter Memorial Award

Jim Carpenter was a beloved educator and award-winning director of the theatre arts who found great painting success upon retiring to Florida in 2003. His acrylic and watercolor paintings express the confidence, energy, and risk-taking that he taught on the stage. He began as “a painter of flowers” but in 2008 transformed, almost literally overnight, into a powerful spiritual and figural artist, working mostly in acrylic. Jim had his first painting submitted and accepted to FWS in 2009, and this was the beginning of a relationship that was to last for the rest of his life. National organizations were just beginning to take notice when he passed away in 2016. Jim's writings about art were published in a number of books following his death.

Friends, headed by his husband Jim Hulbert, established the Jim Carpenter Memorial Award as a tribute to his love of painting and to honor his memory.

Kim Minichiello Memorial Award

Kim Minichiello's career in art and design spanned over 30 years. As a designer for Walt Disney Imagineering, she designed shops, restaurants, and attractions for Disney theme parks in Paris, Tokyo, California, and Florida. During that time, she also established herself as a textile artist and created one-of-a-kind garments. She painted and printed home furnishings shown in various galleries in the US, as well as created and produced her own line of wearable art for children.

Her work is in numerous private collections in the US and abroad and has been featured in books and magazines.

FWS established the Kim Minichiello Memorial Award in Kim’s honor when, on July 23rd, 2021, she passed away suddenly. The award is funded by donations from fellow members, friends, family, students, and organizations with which Kim was affiliated. She was FWS President in 2019.

Vee Hill Memorial Award

Vee Hill was a charter member of the Florida Watercolor Society. Many public buildings in the Venice, Florida area still have murals that she completed. Long before moving to Sarasota and then Venice, Florida, Vee (nee Vee Annette Johnson) worked for the government during WWII creating ads for the war effort. After the war she worked as a commercial artist/illustrator in Minneapolis. She married in 1958 and moved to Florida in 1968, where she began a second twenty-five year career of painting and teaching oil and watercolor.

This award recognizes Excellence in Landscape each year and is funded by a bequest that Vee Hill and her student Mary Waters established.

LaVerne Phillips Memorial Award

LaVerne Phillips was an award-winning Signature member of the Florida Watercolor Society and loved to create art. Her description of art says it all. “Making art is a lot like everyday life. One takes what one is given and makes something of it. The important part is the creating. Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t. The joy is in the ‘becoming.’ I love making art! It nourishes my soul and releases endorphins of well-being.”

The LaVerne Phillips Memorial Award is funded by a donation made by her four children. Proud of their mother’s accomplishments and her love and dedication to the arts, they created a way for LaVerne to spread her love for watercolor/watermedia painting to others who will carry on her passion for the arts.

Taylor Ikin Memorial Award

Taylor was one of the best friends that FWS ever had. She enthusiastically supported and nurtured our organization with every breath she took. She gave of her time to be on the board for more years than we can count, including being president. She nurtured and grew the lasting friendships our organization has such as the deep and abiding connection with Cheap Joes and the Leepa Rattner Museum. She adorned our exhibitions with award winning and inspired paintings. She was dubbed the YUPO queen and even had a Cheap Joe's paint named after her, "Taylor's Pink Flamingo".

Taylor loved our great State and used her art as a platform to educate people on the importance of conservation and preservation. Most of all she loved with abandon, and her positive influence will live on and pay forward in rewards to all of us artists for time eternal.

Click the link above to consider your donation to an existing Memorial Award.

Please contact us at info@floridawatercolorsociety.org should you have any questions or if you require assistance.

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Florida Watercolor Society, Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. A copy of the official registration and financial information may be obtained from the division of consumer services by calling toll-free 1-800-help-fla) or from the website: https://www.fdacs.gov/Consumer-Resources/Charities Registration does not imply endorsement, approval, or recommendation by the State of Florida. Registration #CH11285.