Each year during the exhibit Small Works, Big Presents at the White River Valley Museum, visitors vote for the winner of the People’s Choice award.

This year the honor – and the tidy $400 check – went to Carole Lynd for her watercolor painting, “Goose and Goslings.”

“Honestly, I was more pleased with that than if I had won first, second, third or best in show,” Lynd said.

Although last year one of Lynd’s paintings claimed a third-place honor at the Puyallup Fair, this year marked the first time she has entered the WRVM contest.

Lynd, who grew up on a farm in Graham, lives today with her family – and Ashley, a 16-year-old milk cow and mama-to-be next July – on a farm near the community of Kapowsin, eight minutes distant from her childhood home.

“When I was a young girl, I used to draw all the time. I took art classes in high school, but when I graduated I went to work, got married and had kids,” Lynd said.

“What happened is that in 2008 my daughter bought a painting kit for a friend of hers, and I thought, ‘I could do that,’ so I went to the store and bought one for myself,” she said.

Lynd did not get serious about her art, however, until three years later when she started lessons at Gallery on the Hill in Graham.

As to the subject of her art, well, remember that bit about her farm upbringing?

“From the time I was a little girl I’ve lived on a farm, and I’ve always been drawn to wild places and to animals, wild or tame. I love them all, so I mostly do animals and country scenes. I feel in my paintings that if there’s not something alive in there, the painting is just not finished. There has to be an animal, a bird, a person in there.”

Although she paints with oils and acrylics, too, her favorite medium by far is watercolors.

“Because it’s alive; it’s got a life of its own,” Lynd said.

Small Works, Big Presents closes at WRVM on Sunday when the museum shutters for a month of interior renovations. It reopens on Jan. 18 with a new exhibit called Women at Work: Uniforms and Work Wear 1910 to 2010.

For more information, visit wrvmuseum.org.