Our Winner Of the Relaxing Pink Contest: Kaye Menner

Over the past weeks, we introduced the Relaxing Pink contest which we also advertised as the Calming Pink contest. In our post Relaxing Pink contest winners, you were able to see all the beautiful, inspiring art created by our 10 top contestants. Today, we are going to give you a deeper look behind the scenes with an interview of our winner, Kaye Menner. 

Before diving into the interview, we want to refer you back to why we are diving so deep into art. We like to walk people through decluttering and getting organized while reducing the emotional chaos that comes with decluttering. We found, in our own experiences spanning decades, that viewing beautiful objects such as relaxing, calming art brought us to a state of relaxation. It gave us a breather from decluttering. It allowed us to recenter ourselves and get past the emotional drudgery that comes with sorting through items you need to organize or donate. For our full take on our decluttering process, you can view our online course on Udemy, Decluttering Without The Emotional Overwhelm. For a summary of our 3 step process and how we use colors to calm us down, you can review our blog post Creating Calm Using Colors.

We are so grateful to the 474 artists from Fine Art America who competed in our contest. Altogether, they submitted 2,307 pieces of art for our judges to assess. We tallied a total of 3,415 votes to get our winner, Kaye Menner. What an accomplishment! If you want to see all 2,307 pieces of art you can see the full contest here. 

Inside The Clutter (ITC):

How long have you been doing art / photography for?

Kaye:

I commenced my amazing passion for photography around 2005 after purchasing my first digital camera. I have not stopped my love of photography since.




ITC:
What got you interested in the creative arts?

Kaye:

I have always loved 'arts' of all kinds, and once I purchased my first 'digital' camera, I was hooked! My mother was an artist (painter and pencil drawings). Not sure that I followed in her footsteps, but something 'artsy' was passed on to me!




ITC:
Did you formally study any where or did you just pick it up?

Kaye:
After my amazement as to what I could view through a camera lens, I decided to do an online course. I did this through Proud Photography - a wonderful course covering all of the important aspects of professional photography with personal tuition /correspondence. I have also done many online tutorials to further enhance my knowledge and professionalism.




ITC:

Who were your mentors?

Kaye:

For the first few years, Proud Photography and the amazing members were really my mentors as they had forums where we could exchange positive and negative feedback on our work. Now I receive comments and retweets on twitter and other sites also.




ITC:

What is your favourite art medium?

Kaye:
I love all mediums of photography, but I must say that macro photography has always been a favorite of mine.




ITC:

Who were / are your favourite artists / photographers in history?

Kaye:

I love a lot of history art, but like so many, so will not pick one now.




ITC:

Tell me about your winning piece – what was the inspiration behind it, what were you thinking about when you were doing the piece / taking the shot?

Kaye:
I have always loved macro photography, and loved flowers, especially dahlias. I have a fascination with water droplets and the refractions that can be captured. I was inspired to do a photo shoot of a pretty pink dahlia in my garden after the rain. It was a lovely bright and sunny day and I was able to capture the water droplet at the right moment.


ITC:

Here is the winning piece from Kaye, Spring Raindrop as featured on Fine Art America

Kaye:
Timing is of the essence with water droplets. I always like to capture them when they are just about to drip, but a second too late, the chosen droplet drips! I can spend hours waiting to capture my desired shot. The angle of the shot and the background behind the flower and droplet is also very important.




ITC:

How do you find support for doing art? What or who are your go–to people or communities for supporting you in being an artist? Do you use Facebook groups, community organizations, workshops, family, friends, a network of artists in person or online, or a combination of many people and groups?

Kaye:
I have always had a lot of support when submitting my photographic images, initially through Proud Photography where I took my detailed course years ago, but thereafter from entering my images to contests on many online sites. I am also on several social media platforms where I receive many lovely positive comments and support also. My family and friends are also very supportive of all my artwork.




ITC:
Tell us about your connection to art. What motivates you to create your pieces?

Kaye:

Just looking outdoors motivates me. Just going on a walk, I always take my camera. There is always something special to capture if one looks closely. And of course, my love for photography and the desire to capture beauty in nature and explore beautiful landscapes, especially beach scenes.




ITC:
How many pieces do you create in a week, month, year?

Kaye:

I always capture many images wherever I go, but just lately have not had as much time to post as many as I'd like.




ITC:
How has the process been for you? What was it like to get from just starting out to the skillset and experience that you have now?

Kaye:

It has been a very long and interesting learning curve. I have loved every minute of my learning and progress and will not stop learning!




ITC:
What advice would you give to artists just starting out?

Kaye:

Enjoy your photography.

Don't be too critical of yourself.

Practice and learn as your go.

And do some courses if you choose.

ITC:

What great advice! I find it is so easy to be overly critical of your own work yet many others find it amazing.




ITC:
What advice would you give to artists that are experienced but not getting noticed or selling any pieces?

Kaye:

In this day and age, everyone needs to promote their skills, eg photography, so get online to the many amazing sites to promote.

ITC:

Kaye’s favourite sites are listed at the end of the interview as well as links to her personal sites and stores.



ITC:
Do you ever get burnt out or just lose all creative inspiration? If so, how do you get past that?

Kaye:

I must say I never get burnt out without the desire to photograph. Only due to being very busy or health issues (and Covid) recently. To those who seem to lose some interest, don't worry. It will probably be temporary. Just take your time, go on a quiet walk, either around your local neighborhood, or on a lovely bush walk. Always have your camera in your bag! You never know what might amaze you on your travels, eg a funny face on a tree or even a funny cloud pattern. It is really endless as to what we can find on a simple walk.



ITC:
Do you usually sell your art online or do you sell through a physical store?

Kaye:

I mainly sell online but if someone local likes my art, I am most happy to print them an image or sell an online digital image at a discussed price for their own use. I have sold a few images through local church, school and council art shows.


ALL MY IMAGES ON FINE ART AMERICA ARE AVAILABLE FOR ONLINE ELECTRONIC DIGITAL PURCHASES by contacting me through Fine Art America, or by direct by email to me at menner@bigpong.com. 

Price to be discussed and short contract signed.

ITC:

That wraps up our interview and what a fabulous discussion we had with Kaye. I really found so many of her tips really helpful. Here are her websites and social media links if you would like to see more of her artwork. She gives us some comments on her different sites below, just click on each site to get to her inspiring artwork:

Fine Art America

Lens2Print

(English 'Print on Demand' Photography and Arts site similar to Fine Art America)

Twitter

I have around 27.6k followers on Twitter. I think my best social media for promotion

Facebook

Pinterest

I have lots of images on my Pinterest account

Linkedin

Flickr

Instagram

ITC:

In closing, we will leave you with another piece by Kaye. She had 2 pieces that finished top 10 in our contest. Her 2nd piece is called Art of a Pink Blossom and it finished 9th. 

Relaxing Pink Contest Winners!

Just a few weeks ago I presented my 3 stage process for getting through decluttering by minimizing the emotional chaos. One of the tools I introduced was using colors to calm down and relax while decluttering. In my blog post, Creating Calm Using Colors, I talked about how I did this to get myself from decluttering stress to organization success. In our blog post, Relaxing Pink Contest on Fine Art America, we discussed our first contest along these lines. We focused on looking for art in calming, relaxing colors. When we are overwhelmed, in the midst of decluttering, we can use these pieces to just take a break, find something beautiful to look at, and remove ourselves from the emotional and mental chaos that comes from decluttering. We tend to intermix the terms calming and relaxing so our promo graphics advertised for the contest Calming Pink instead of Relaxing Pink because we were so relaxed we just interchanged the words. I apologize if this caused any confusion. 

We ran our contest, and what an absolutely amazing contest it was. 448 artists competed! Each artist could submit up to 8 pieces of art. We received 2,302 submissions. There were so many wonderful art works, it was truly inspirational. If you would like to see all 2,302 artworks you can find them here. There was no way we would be able to judge all the pieces, we definitely needed help with voting. We opened up the voting to anyone, so members or non-members of Fine Art America could go online and vote. In total, there were 3,415 votes. A really big round of applause to all of our top 10 finishers. It is really impressive to place in the top 10 in a contest like this! Congratulations!

Here are our winners, in order. There were a few artists that had 2 or 3 art pieces in the top 10! If you would like to see their piece in more detail or see more pieces by that artist, just click on the link to be taken to their artist site on Fine Art America:

Kaye Menner took 1st place with Spring Raindrop: 

Gary F Richards took 2nd place with Reindeer Haven:

John Rogers took 3rd place with Rosebud Reflections:

In 4th place, Elaine Manley presented us with Heaven Sent Peony:

Sarah Irland took 5th place with Welcoming Spring:

Joan Han finished in 6th place with Soft Pink Rose:

In 7th place, we had a tie. We had another piece from Gary F Richards. Here is

Perfectly Pink Orchid Black and Bokeh:

The other 7th place finisher was Lori Deiter with Pink Dreams:

Our 8th place finisher is Rebecca Herranen with Pretty In Pink:

In 9th place, we had a 5 way tie!

Anna Serebryanik presented us with Lavender Happiness:

This is Blush by Bonnie See:

Tara Turner presented us with The Pink Boulevard:

Our first place contestant also had a piece finish in 9th place. 

This is Art Of A Pink Blossom by Kaye Menner:

This is another piece from Sarah Irland, who had her piece finish 5th. This piece below 

is called View From The Bridge:

We had a 4-way tie for 10th place. As well, some artists showed they really excel in this contest format by placing again. Larisa Fedotova presented us with Queen Of The Garden:

Sabina Von Arx presented us with Swiss Mountains Early Morning:

This is another piece from Joan Han and is titled Pink Dream:

Gary F. Richards ended out this contest with his 3rd piece in the top 10. This is 

Chinese Orchid Japanese Garden Hawaii:

We will be following up in a few weeks with an in depth interview with our winner, Kaye Menner. We will also be highlighting the top 5 pieces in a YouTube video so that you can see them in a larger format. I find the YouTube videos played continuously can really provide a calming effect. As well, we will be featuring all the artists and their pieces on our website and will provide an update when it is ready to be viewed. 

If this artwork inspires you to begin decluttering, our course is now live on Udemy. You can find Decluttering Without The Emotional Overwhelm here.  

Creating Calm Using Colors

I have a 3 stage process for decluttering. Stage 1 is planning and preparing to declutter. Stage 2 is minimizing overwhelm by reducing the emotional impact and chaos inside the home that comes from decluttering. Stage 3 is when we actually declutter, not before.

In today's blog, I want to discuss one of my methods for Stage 2, minimizing overwhelm. One of the essential things to have prior to decluttering is a go to place or sense of being for when you feel overwhelmed by decluttering. It is essential to find something, some place, some ritual, or some item that makes you feel calm. Decluttering brings up so many emotions and requires so many difficult decisions, if you are not able to just chill out when you need to, you could end up in a deeper hole than when you began.

One of the tricks I have for calming is to have a visual area I can look at and just lose myself in the colors. I have an aesthetic Pinterest page for this reason. I built it solely to calm myself down when I was going through tremendous medical challenges. I chose colors that I could just stare into and feel better for doing it. You can click here to get to my Pinterest page if you want to see it. My aesthetics pages are the ones that just have posts dedicated to specific colors: blue, green, pink, white, purple, and grey. I also have nature elements as a calming board for myself which includes animals or nature photography that is relaxing to look at.

I found that having a piece of art that I could stare at, get lost in, really helped me to calm down when I needed to. If you find that pink is your calming color, we will have a website for you to view in a few weeks. If you want to preview the site, you can find it here: https://mrjbsinc.wixsite.com/calmingpink. We will be replacing the demo art on the site with artwork done by very talented artists. We are hosting a contest currently where more than two hundred artists are submitting their work. The pieces are inspiring, beautiful, relaxing, and amazing to look at. We will feature them on this blog, and on our websites, and on our YouTube channel so you can see their work in video format as well. For those interested in purchasing a piece that inspires them, we will provide information for you about the pieces and the artist it was created by.

In the future, we will bring forth other colors that I found to be calming: blue, green, white, cream, and grey. Are there other colors you favour when you think of relaxing, meditating, or sinking in to that deep sense of calm and tranquility. Let us know and we will run a contest, bringing forth beautiful art work that inspires and relaxes at the same time. You will be able to view the pieces on our sites whenever you need to. Art transports us into another time and dimension, so we want to help you by providing some great pieces to look at.

If you have not used color to help create tranquility before, let me explain the reasoning behind why we do it at Inside The Clutter. First, you can find out if there are colors that make you feel calmer, safe, more relaxed. You may already know your colors and just need to surround yourself with that color. Once you know your color, we will have a site dedicated to that color where you can go when you need a break and just view beautiful art pieces that remove you from the stress you are experiencing in the moment. Second, you want to be able to get in tune with how you feel, what reactions you have to things, prior to decluttering. In our hectic lives, we often forget how we feel and get into our routine based on actions, duties, and responsibilities. We push down our feelings and then forget we have them. We want to be able to know if we like or don't like an item or a color when we are looking at it. So we begin slow, with looking at items that are in a color group, and start to decide if we like or don't like the color. Then we look closer within that color to choose pieces we like, pieces we react to positively. All of these actions increase your ability to handle decluttering and the inner turmoil that comes with it. It helps in your decision making process when you need to decide on whether you like your oven mitts or if you should donate them. Decluttering is a lot of tiny decisions, all the time. So begin with looking at art dedicated to one color and then we can build from there.