The crowd was slightly down on last year's opening night, but the three-day Springwood Art Show kicked off in style on Friday with music by The Cassettes, fine food and wine and even finer artworks, ranging from portrait and landscape paintings to photography, jewellery and small sculptures.
There was plenty of praise among the opening night's crowd for the overall winning entry, Dunes by Patricia Riccia, granted the Harvey Norman-sponsored $1000 Rose Lindsay Art Prize.
"There's such a high level of detail in it," an admirer said.
"It's a painting but to me it looks like a photograph," another said.
Host for the evening, Parents and Citizens Association member Xandro Lombardi, said the competition's judges, local artists Victor Peralta, Mathew Lynn and Leo Robba, spent several hours together earlier in the week looking at all the entries and found it a difficult task to settle on the winners.
"They were very impressed with the quality of this year's entries," Mr Lombardi said.
"This annual art show is not possible without the efforts of the Parents and Citizens Association's committee and all the volunteers."
Other winners: Berry Springs, Darwin by Ian Harrowell (highly commended); View at Mount Piddington by Janet Andersen (landscape); The Love Note, Dancers by Robyn Cook (photography); Once Upon a Time by Romy Roeder (environmental prize); The Many Faces of Happinness by Eden Conway (youth). The Uncle Michael Jungura young emerging artist encouragement prize went to Sneaky Peaky Pup by Noah Berrington.
The event is the school's biggest annual fundraiser and proceeds from entry ticket and artwork sales will directly help students of the school by enabling the purchase of more educational resources.
Mr Lombardi also thanked the many event sponsors for making the art show possible.
