Another season of Work of Art is behind us, and I can’t help but feel a bit let down. The season finale proved a bit uneventful and more than a tad predictable. But, even though something seemed to be missing, the season produced some memorable pieces.

For the finale, WOA stuck with the tried-and-true reality competition format with the mentor visiting the artists at home to critique their progress and offer advice. It all was perfectly nice and charming and heartwarming. And everyone has a dead father! Reality shows should tread lightly around contestants’ personal tragedies but too often don’t and we end up with some of the treacly, maudlin moments served up in this WOA finale.

Young basically structured his entire show around his late father, and it all came off as too personal and even exhibitionistic. Young – trying to respond to criticisms that his art is overly intellectualized – fell head-first into exploitation and emotional manipulation. The funny thing is that a larger exhibit is the one time you can get away with a more intellectual approach to your art and how you present it (as did Sara). Instead, Young went as far in the opposite direction as he could imagine with little experience in dealing with such an emotive approach to art. And the result were telling.

When dealing with the death of a loved one in your art, subtlety should control. But subtlety requires careful examination of the subject matter and how to express it using the chosen materials, which it seemed Young was not be ready to do so we get instead a sledge-hammer approach with lots of personal items of the deceased along with some death-bed photos for good measure. There was nothing organic about it, and it was so personal that it avoided examining larger human themes.

Sara took a more cerebral approach to her show almost to her detriment as she struggled to give her theme concrete and consistent expression. She had some wonderful individual pieces – her bird cage was the best piece among all three finalists and one of the best from both seasons of WOA – but it all came off a bit disjointed.

Her show was the most diverse in the materials she used and in her presentation of her work (from sculpture to painting to performance art) but it was the least cohesive and is probably why she ended up third. Personally, I would have put her in second for the strength of her individual pieces alone.

Kymia struck the right balance by combining an intelligently planned exhibit around a larger theme with individual pieces that were personal and possessed emotional depth but did not stray from the focus of her show. For me, surrealist works deal most effectively with the subject of human mortality and our fears related to it, and Kymia expertly wielded a surrealist style within her exhibit that left the viewer haunted by apparitions and unsettled by make-shift burial mounds.

Kymia succeeded with one mesmerizing image – the painting of her father’s boat – to convey what Young couldn’t with his entire exhibit: a deep and genuine sense of emptiness and human loss.

Overall, Kymia deserved her win. This season was not groundbreaking in the art it yielded, but then I would never expect the avant garde from Bravo or any other cable TV channel. WOA is entertaining and gives viewers a glimpse – as manipulated as it may be – into the creative process and the complex functioning of the art world. Despite all the product placements and corporate sponsorships that I find so irritating, I think the show introduces viewers to how important art is and how diverse are its forms. As such, long-live WOA!