Congratulations on receiving an Art History Honorable Mention/ Spring 2026 and best wishes ongoing to: Shannon Raditz, a sophomore at Carthage College studying Art History with a minor in Chemistry.
“My current plan is to graduate with a major in art history and minor in chemistry to give me a base for one of the four graduate programs in the United States for art conservation. These programs require a specific amount of credits in art history at a certain level, at least organic chemistry one, and studio art credits. They also have a preference for incoming students that have some experience in a related job like entry level museum or gallery work. It can let them know that the student has experience working with pieces of varying materials. I want to enter this job field because I like the idea of getting to work on either a piece of literal history or even simply personal importance. I would be able to give people access to a side of history, whether global or personal, that they didn’t have before. I enjoy the prospect of getting to help people explore an avenue of intellectual inquiry they may not have realized they could. I have always loved learning about whatever I could get my hands on and I want to be a part of the process that allows others to share that same passion.”
Honorable Mention ESSAY: Compare and contrast the 2 paintings below:
Shannon’s Essay:
The piece “The Inlet, The Cove” by Eileen Monaghan Whitaker is a watercolor painting with a muted palette of mostly blues, greens, and tans. It has a subject matter of several white sailed ships in the background and a beach shore in the foreground. There is also a wood scape that is curving with the water on the left side of the painting with a few houses in the wood scape. The painting “Day is Done, Norwalk River” by Fredric Whitaker is also a watercolor painting with a muted palette of mostly blues, pinks, and beiges. It has a subject matter of several fishing boats with a focus of a central one towards the shore with a line of dinghies sitting on the beach. There is a small beach shore in the foreground, the mountainous landscape in the background, and an inlet on the left side of the painting.
Both of these pieces are naturalistically impressionistic paintings with bold and unblended paint strokes used to make up the natural landscape in the scenes. The man-made objects have more blended strokes but not harsh outlines that allow the objects to have a more realistic look. Both paintings have dynamic compositions that allow the audience to get a sense of movement in the way the water is painted and that there are several boats in each that are actively sailing. This invites the audience to move their eyes around the piece to explore each part. Each piece is visually balanced due to the clear horizon and shorelines that help to break the composition into smaller parts, and the boats’ visual weights are countered with the landscapes’ visual weights. The piece “The Inlet, The Cove” doesn’t have one specific subject but is rather focused on the group of sailboats in the background. This invites the viewer to look around the piece and to consider how the boats are interacting with each other. Most of the boats are nearly identical. The main difference seems to be the size of the boats because most of the boats are brown, probably wooden, bases with white sails; there are only two boats that have colored bases. The painting has a lot of shades of blue and tan to create a palette that gives a sense of time around late evening or early morning. It isn’t a sunset in the other piece but just beforehand, possibly at golden hour. There are houses on the left side of the painting in a wooded area. With the type of boats that are on the water it is possible that the people that live there are the ones sailing. That may also give reason as to way the artist may want us to focus on how the boats are interacting to represent the community of people that live here.
The piece “Day is Done, Norwalk” does have a specific boat that is the central focus.The fishing boat that is towards the foreground to the left is the largest and most detailed boat in the painting drawing the audience’s attention to it. This piece in contrast to the other doesn’t want the audience to focus on how the boats are interacting but rather what each one is doing on its own. This piece’s composition is more made up of man-made objects rather than the landscape. There are more boats with more details and there are also wooden posts in the water in the left background that could possibly be for tying the boats up at the end of the day. This color palette is mostly made up of deeper tones of blues, pinks, and beiges to give the look of a sunset. With the visual clues and the title clue this painting was likely made to show the fishermen coming in after a day’s work.
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