Cape Coral artist Carlos Suarez has been selected to compete in the Florida Art Masters 2026, a painting competition that celebrates artistic skill, creativity and the excitement of painting from life.<\/p>\n
Hosted by The Depot Arts District and Notta Gallery in Lakeland, the competition will bring together 16 artists from across the state for a series of live portrait-painting sessions, which will culminate in a championship round in December.<\/p>\n
The winner will receive a $5,000 portrait commission.<\/p>\n
Suarez will compete Saturday, Oct. 10, in the first of four preliminary heats at the Notta Gallery.<\/p>\n
The artists will work under timed competition conditions to create a portrait from a live sitter, giving spectators an opportunity to watch each painting develop.<\/p>\n
The sitters are breast cancer survivors associated with the Breast Cancer Foundation of Central Florida.<\/p>\n
The four heats will determine the four artists who will advance to the championship round.<\/p>\n
\u201cPortrait painting is normally a very deliberate process, so the challenge of creating a finished work in a timed, competitive setting is exciting,\u201d Suarez said. \u201cI\u2019m honored to have been selected and am looking forward to meeting my sitter and painting alongside the other artists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Classically trained beginning at age 10, he draws upon the techniques and craftsmanship of traditional representational painting, while bringing a contemporary sensibility to his subjects. Suarez is a member of the Alliance for the Arts and Portrait Society of America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cape Coral artist Carlos Suarez has been selected to compete in the Florida Art Masters 2026, a painting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-426033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}