This past Saturday night, THEMUSEUM hosted a fundraising event called The Brush Off, a live painting competition that pitted 20 artists in 4 rounds of competition, culminating in 38 original works of art and one winner declared champion of The Brush Off!

To simply call the night a success would be a disservice to the incredible enthusiasm that both the artists and the community at large showed this weekend. Close to 400 people witnessed this outpouring of creativity, twitter was buzzin', and the atmosphere in the building was absolutely electric. In all, we tripled our expected attendance - people were practically hanging from the rafters watching the artists do their thing in speedy fashion.

Special thanks must go to the artists. Without their creativity, imagination, stamina (4 rounds of grueling competition!) and sheer artistic force, this night wouldn't have been nearly as magical. And to Wyndham Art Supplies, who defined being an active sponsor by providing many of the prizes and all the supplies the artists used throughout the night - thank you.

And now on to the pictures! Warning, there are a lot of them (and more to come on Facebook)...

As the audience trickled in, the artists began setting up.

Many of the artists' other works were on display on the second floor.

And round 1 was underway!

As you can see, the crowd was enraptured by the imagination expressed by the artists.

Guests used every vantage point possible to see what the artists would come up with.

Here's James Spencer with his Round 1 entry.

Lots of action!

An overhead view.

Between rounds, Christina and Melissa would furiously count the votes to see who would make the next round.

The inspiration for Round 2 was "See" as depicted by a video of this 1950's housewife demonstrating a TV that folds into a table.

Some artists preferred painting on the ground as opposed to using the supplied easles.

The evening was hosted by Chris Ahlers owner of Wyndham Art Supplies.

Through a few more rounds, we were left with 3 finalists...

Here's Nik Harron contemplating how to interpret "Swell", the word used for the final round's theme of Speak.

Finalist Chris Austin went right to work, choosing to drown out all distractions with his headphones.

And Meredith Blackmore made it to the final round as well, hoping to emerge victorious.

And the winner is...

...Meredith Blackmore!

And finally, a picture of the two head organizers of The Brush Off: Laurel McKellar and Meaghan Hawkins