Please read these carefully:

Welcome to registrations for Creator’s Mark 2025 - celebrating creativity, community wellbeing, spirituality, and the arts. We invite original art submissions in paint, graphite, and mixed media (on canvas, paper, and sculpture), no larger than 1m x 1m, that explore and celebrate this year’s theme, “Wide Open Spaces”.

To register, please carefully read the following five (5) criteria including the conditions for registration to the Creator’s Mark Art Prize and Exhibition 2025. By registering in the competition you are agreeing to the terms and conditions for registration below.

1. Theme: “Wide Open Spaces”

Please respond to this year’s theme below:

The Creator's Mark Art Prize and Exhibition is proud to offer Illawarra artists the opportunity to explore and interpret the 2025 theme: "Wide Open Spaces".

Inspired by the following Scripture:

“Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self, ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored. But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!”

Romans 8:5-11 MSG

If you have any questions about the theme, please feel free to email us at: info@creatorsmark.art

2. Categories, Registration Fees, & Prize Money:

1. Open (18 + years) each artist may enter multiple artworks at $40 per entry

2. Youth (13-17 years) each artist may multiple artworks at $15 per entry

3. Children (12 years and under) may enter one artwork with no entry fee

Prize Money:

We offer generous prizes in four categories:

• Open category (18 +): 1st prize $3,000.00; 2nd prize $1,500.00; 3rd prize $750.00

• Youth category (13-17 years): 1st prize $300.00; 2nd prize $150.00

• Children’s category (12 years and under): 1st prize $100.00; 2nd prize $50.00

• People's Choice Award: $500.00

3. Judging Criteria:

Judging will be considered against the following criteria:

• The artists unique consideration, reflection, and written response, together with their art piece, to the 2025 Creator’s Mark Art Prize theme (10% weighting)

• The execution of the chosen artistic medium in response to the theme (90% weighting)

4. Key Dates for Artists:

• Entries open on May 1st, 2025

• Entries close on August 1st, 2025

• Accepted artists notified by August 15th, 2025

• Artist to deliver accepted artworks to Gerringong Town Hall by September 10th or 11th, 2025

• Open, youth, and children’s prizes awarded – Friday evening September 12th, 2025

• People’s Choice Award presented on Sunday September 14th, 2025

• Collection of the artworks to occur from Gerringong Town Hall by Sunday afternoon September 14th, 2025

5. Conditions of entry:

• To be considered for selection, the artist must comply with all entry instructions and conditions and other important information on this page

• Artists are invited to create original artworks based on this year’s theme, “Wide Open Spaces”

• Your submitted art work MUST be an original of your own design that does not infringe the copyright, moral rights, or other rights of any third party

• All artwork submitted will be carefully considered and selection based on the quality of the work and its interpretation of the 2025 theme “Wide Open Spaces”

• Art submissions will be accepted for consideration in paint, graphite, mixed media, and sculpture (on canvas and paper), though NO part of your artwork may include printed or digital images

• Artwork/s must be NO LARGER than 1m x 1m

• All artwork needs to be fitted with D-ring hangers 10cm from the top of the work

• Your registration does NOT guarantee your entry will be automatically selected for competition and display in the 2025 Creator’s Mark Art Prize and Exhibition. A committee will determine the successful entries and artists who have been selected for exhibiting will be notified by email by August 15th, 2025. If a piece you have entered has been unsuccessful the committee will also notify you by email.

• The judging criteria includes a weighting of ten percent (10%) for the written response to the theme together with your art piece. So please consider your written response carefully

• These conditions apply to  all categories - Open (18+), Youth (13-17years), and Children (12 years and under)

• Each artist is to pay a non-refundable registration fee for each art piece being registered. The registration fees are:

  • Open Category (18 + years - $40);

  • Youth Category (13 -17 years - $15)

  • Children’s Category (12 years and under - no entry fee)

• To enter any category artists must upload a high-resolution image of the artwork with brief description between May 1st and  August 1st, 2025

• All artworks must be framed and have a label attached to the back with the ARTIST’s NAME and the TITLE of the work, and a contact phone number

• Paint must be dry, with frames in as new condition and the canvas edges clean or painted

• Please adhere to the drop off time you have chosen

• All unsold artworks are to be picked up on Sunday, September 14th, between 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm. Please bring identification. You will be advised on arrival if your artwork has sold

• We value your work and will take all care possible, but we cannot accept responsibility for theft or damage

• All accepted artworks will remain on display until the close of the exhibition except in exceptional circumstances

• The committee reserves the right to reproduce images of artwork for the purpose of exhibition publicity or art exhibition records

• All artworks submitted must be for sale and 25% of the profits will go to the charity Illawarra Community Care to cover costs for the event, for future Creator’s Mark events, and for general charitable purposes

• Registration fees will also contribute toward opening night festivities and expenses for artists only

• A separate door charge will be applied for public entry and for which the entrant will receive an art catalogue

• All information gathered by Creator’s Mark will be stored securely and confidentially and used only for the purpose of the Creator’s Mark Art Prize & Exhibition