| Professional Artist Members Main Line Art Center proudly presents the founding members of the Professional Artist Membership program. After an application process, artists were selected based on educational background, exhibition participation and gallery experience. Throughout the year, the Art Center will promote their work on our Welcome Gallery "big screen," Facebook page and Twitter feed, and their work will be included in the Professional Artist Exhibition, May 23-June 14. |
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B:
Ball, Deena
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Water and pigment flow over the paper surface and I am in awe. Watercolor is simple and yet complex. The pigment and water combinations are endless. No other media matches the nuances and effects of watercolor. A painting is a dance between controlled anticipated marks and random surprises. When the dance goes well, when pigment and water flow just right, the painting seems to come to life. Watercolor painting is a constant source of new discoveries, adding a textured base to portions of landscape paintings on Yupo or plate bristol paper allows the paint to run into the gullies.
This experimentation creates unanticipated pools of vibrant color. The contrast in the painting between the textured and smooth surfaces is beautiful to view.
Banks, Lori
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Lori F. Banks, a graduate of Cornell University, owned a graphic design/web and corporate branding business from 1982 until 2008, when the business was sold so she could pursue painting, teaching and new business ventures. Lori has exhibited her work in the last several years at: The Muse Gallery, Google Works, Highwire Gallery, 3rd Street Gallery, Wayne Art Center, Mainline Art Center, Cheltenham Center for the Arts, McGopa Juried shows and Mill Creek Capital Advisors.
"Every time I apply paint to a canvas, the experience always has me on edge, a little uncomfortable. But the art unfolds as I work and, and expresses a part of me that I am unable to communicate through words. My paintings challenge me, and I hope they will engage you too."
Barker, Al
Al Barker was born in New Jersey and raised within the metropolitan area where he learned to appreciate the outdoors by hunting and fishing. These activities led him to pursue academic studies were he earned a B.S. and M.S. in Forestry and later received a National Fellowship for Doctorate work. For a few years, Al was a forestry-educator and taught post-secondary education; however, for the past thirty years, Al has been a full time artist who specializes in smaller-sized paintings which are completed both in oil and watercolor. Al also has produced over 150 editions of etchings. He has won over fifty major awards in Premier art competitions including the Grand National American Artists Professional League and Salmagundi Club in New York. Al's work can be seen frequently in almost every nationals miniature exhibition within the United States. Recently, Al had a small painting accepted into the White House Collection, Washington, DC.
Barr, Sarah
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Sarah Barr received her BFA from Rosemont College and is currently working toward her MFA in Visual Arts at Lesley University's Art Institute of Boston. Her work has been exhibited in such venues as the Griffin Museum of Photography, The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, The Biggs Museum of American Art and the New Orleans Photo Alliance. In early 2011, Barr began photographing the interiors of Philadelphia churches connected to her family's history. The first church was the now demolished Saint Boniface.
Bass, Elaine
The contexts of my paintings reflect the ordinary people I see as I travel around the inner cities where I work or the towns that I visit. They are the workers and the peasants of our genre. They have a subtle melancholy that speaks of sacrifice and struggle- their human passions contained in settings that allude to timelessness and immortality. In addition, the architecture and the cityscapes are carriers of more formal qualities of rhythm, geometry and texture and allude to the monuments of our own psyche.
My paintings are gutsy, frank, sensitive and gentle, and reflect all aspects of my own personality. The colors are exuberant and transcend the tensions that speak of contemporary urban problems and moments of uncertainty.
Benson, Beverly
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As a colorist painter, my work reflects my love of nature as I observe the array and arrangement of hues it has to offer. My language is strokes, blends, harmony and dynamics of structure. Light carves out space as the strength of the light predicts the intensity of the hue. I am intrigued as much with the colors in the dark as I am with those in the light.
Construction of a picture to me is a constant push and pull of idea: composition, architecture of light, surface texture, believability, authenticity, abstraction, dream, illusion, reality, forgetting the picture plane... remembering. My best pieces have evolved when there was a paradoxical engagement of the deep subconscious simultaneously with heightened awareness.
Brand, Trina
My current work is charged with energy. I am continually inspired by Joan Mitchell, Phillip Guston and De Koonig. I often work with collage which provides added texture and richness.
As I begin work, I am reminded of the pure joy of putting brush to canvas, charcoal to paper or texture to collage. The sensual feeling of process can be quite spiritual in and of itself.
The joy and struggle to create art begins with an idea then extends into a direction. My paintings are involved with color, calligraphy and spatial relationships. The work originates organically as it resolves abstractly. My work is kept in flux as each change, however small, impacts the whole.
Over the years my images and materials have changed however the artwork continues to focus on color, movement, composition, texture and space. In the beginning of the process, I allow the painting to lead me and then I lead the painting. I feel a work is complete when all the parts are choreographed and unified to a new reality.
Breakell, Elizabeth
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As a lifelong student of painting, I work primarily in oil and pastel. With a background in scientific and technical illustration I have studied with regional and national artists such as Christine LaFuente, Elaine Lisle, Giovanni Casedei and others to round out my fine art training. I strive to describe light, shadow and atmosphere in my paintings in a
loose painterly style whether it be in a landscape, still life or interior.
Bunn, Dot
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I am a classical studio oil painter with a strong commitment to working with and teaching traditional methods. Still life, landscape and figurative work all interest me. It is my belief that spontaneity and intuition are only useful when paired with a strong background in drawing and value management. I am committed to merging the lessons of those who have gone before me as well as embracing the latest tools of technology. My paintings are the result of many preliminary drawings built on the system of divine proportion taught for centuries. With this foundation I focus on producing a unique work of art that hopefully will resonate with an audience. All art is a form of communication and as with music or literature there is a level of skill necessary to be able to express ones self in an engaging way.
C:
Collins, Carol
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I paint full-time and continue to take classes to maintain and enhance by ability and to connect with artists. While working, I attended evening and day classes at PAFA 3 times a week from 1988 to 2000. My art-centered communities include a studio in the Upstairs Studio Artists building in Phoenixville, www upstairsstudioartists com, and a studio in Venice, FL. As I experiment with composition, shapes and color, I explore the possibilities of still life. I am inspired by Matisse, Braque, Dufy and many contemporary artists. This January 2012, I have 2 paintings in the juried Art Center Sarasota show. The image on the Main Line Art Center Professional Member Page, "Summer Apples," won Honorable Mention in the Wayne Art Center Fall 2010 show. I like to show my work with other artists and am honored that my Jenkins Arboretum's Azaleas watercolor series was chosen in 2009 for the Artist's Equity Select Exhibition.
Cooler, Karen Love
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I have always been an artist, making art since I could hold a crayon. I received my four year certificate degree from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after years of writing and presenting art tours at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
My art is subject driven. I choose the medium to best express my thoughts. Symbols of universal female myth have been an underlying theme throughout my work. I am also interested in those natural forms which contain the earth's memory. Creating art based on my travels helps me to remember and to share my favorite places, a souvenir. My art works require contemplation...revealing themselves over time. Often the true subject is just below my conscious thought.
Art is my passion. My intention is to create art that is long lasting. I use earth friendly, archival materials and techniques to optimize the life of the work.
D:
Davis, Suzanne Pitkak
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The work of Susanne Pitak Davis draws from the world of fairy tales and mythology. Each sculpture appears to encompass a story told in an arresting assemblage of objects,color and form. Her sculptures are brightly painted and have a strong Hispanic influence as she lived for a time in Southern California and Arizona. Susanne has won top honors for her sculptures in many prestigious shows, including New Hope's Phillips Mill and has had shows at several museums including the Ellarslie in Trenton, NJ. She is a graduate of Pratt Institute and currently works as a art therapist at New Jersey State Prison.
De Girolamo, Pia
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My paintings and drawings move. They are marked by charging lines and swirling colors that telegraph a sense of restlessness or uplift. Sometimes, the colors are muted and the lines slow; a sense of space overtakes the lines and forms, imparting a meditative quality.
I regularly turn to natural abstract forms such as the curl of a wave or the tangle of a thicket and use them to express an emotional and spiritual response. Guided by the way nature creates and destroys, I start with a big definitive gesture, perhaps a calligraphic sweep of black paint or large fields of color, and then layer on and scrape off paint as I go along. I dig in with pencil and charcoal and scratch out with a sharp point. The process is both spontaneous and analytical and results in the surprises and discoveries that mark any journey of exploration.
DeMartino, Joanne
I achieve visual narration by using images from life or by using marks and symbols as metaphors to express emotions and past and present experiences. What I create evolves as an expression of my life, and it is always highly emotional for me. My inspirations are mostly taken from family, friends and lovers. I use color to draw on these same feelings and memories. My palette consists of blues, greens, and reds. Paintings within paintings signifying transition and orderly chaos.
My life experiences have occurred in a similar sort of transitional chaos, so I have used that framework in which to express my artistic goals and vision. I have come to believe that this is a constant that we all experience as individuals. Therefore, I hope to speak to each person on that shared individual level, invoking the sense of events within events and creating an overall life experience.
Diven, Michael
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The inspiration for my narrative art comes from dreams and dream research, memories, stories, everyday occurrences, statistics, and political or environmental concerns. I create art to be visually interesting as well as intellectually and spiritually provocative. A subtle sense of humor runs through some of my work. The symbols in my art represent transitions, conversations with the past, or a search for new growth and promise for the future. The words and numbers in some pieces become part of the design as well as hinting at the narrative. The figure in the artwork represents a participant, an observer, a witness, a victim, or a survivor.
I received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and taught painting and drawing for many years at several institutions including California State University. I recently moved to Pennsylvania from Northern California. My work is represented by the James Snidle Gallery in San Francisco, CA. and has been exhibited nationally.
Dubin, Marlene B.
For me, art is about the process - the physical act of creating on an empty canvas. The joy is in the making.
Using crayon, charcoal, pastel, and paint, I scribble, build layers, drip, scrape, remove, add, and rework the piece to create form, depth and solidity.
The first sketchy lines, scribbling, and under painting are all incorporated, and often remain visible when finished, translating into rich texture, depth, pattern and movement with imaginative, elusive imagery.
Combining information and experience, I paint from instinct and work with energy, action and concentration.
I am entranced by the lusciousness of color and its possibilities. My palette is bold, creating new abstracted realities for the viewer to interpret.
F:
Farina, Teresa McWilliams
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I am a painter of life and my passion is to capture the energy of what I feel and see in my surroundings. My goal as a painter is to represent life by integrating light and color in my paintings as it is reflected in the subject's character, personality, spirit and feelings. My subjects vary from landscapes to still lifes, florals, figures, and portraits of people and animals. I do some abstract studies and work in oil, watercolor, pastel and mixed media. Commissions are available upon request.
Feldman, Marge
Marge Feldman is a formally trained professional artist who attended Syracuse University (BFA), Maryland Institute College of Art, and Towson University (Art Teaching Certificate).
Ms. Feldman has lived in seven different states and traveled extensively on six continents. This rich experience is reflected in her work.
She has taught in public and private schools and exhibited in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Maryland in juried, invitational and solo exhibits. Her work is surreal, describing the contradictions of our universe. The concept is well depicted in her series Heaven and Earth. She Is currently painting Nature vs. Invention. See www.margefeldman.com
Julien Robson of PAFA chose Feldman to exhibit in the 2009 Betsy Meyer Memorial Exhibition at Main Line Art Center. Victoria Donohoe, art critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, cited her work as a "high point" of the Artists Equity 61st Anniversary Exhibit, 2010.
She is member of ARTsisters, Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity and exhibits at Tyme Gallery, Havertown.
Fine, Deborah
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I don't plan my work in advance because, for me, art is an intuitive exploration where emotion precedes my thought.
My motivation for each piece can be a response to just about anything - an experience, a color and even a dream. Once begun, the work is shaped by an evolving process. I am constantly responding to what I see on my canvas - adjusting the relationship between line, color and space. Every alteration seems to require a response. That evolution continues until I reach the point where I see what was in my mind's eye and there is nothing left that needs to be changed.
Unlike the rest of my life what happens on my canvas is unplanned and often unexpected. I experience a freedom in painting that, for me, exists nowhere else.
My work has been exhibited at Woodmere Art Museum, Main Line Art Center, and The Rosenfeld Gallery.
Formica, Ruth
My parents refusal to send me to art school, and my stubbornness, at the age of 18, kept me from attending any college. After staying at home with my children for over twenty years, getting them through college, while painting landscape and still life, I happily entered art school. At last, I will be a 59 year old graduate this spring! I've always felt something was missing, was there a step in the art process I skipped? After entering art school, it became clear, the missing piece was abstract art! My love of nature, plants and landscape are now referenced in my abstract paintings, though color, form and size change to suit my will.
Fox, Nikolai
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I've been learning about perception and culture through imagery as it is represented in history. Simultaneously I have been fascinated by wilderness as a place to spend my time, a subject for imagery and a theme in art. I am fascinated by photography, music, painting, drawing, life sciences and narrative film. An emotionally and intellectually motivated manipulation of the formalities of an image creates a perceptual narrative which relates the struggle of our cognitive facilities as we process limited information about our surroundings. We are able to approach an understanding of the limits of our perceptual abilities and define and understand our relationship to our surroundings more thoroughly through artistic disciplines. What emotional and intellectual potential can be communicated through the formalities of imagery? What potential does the image have for affecting the path of civilization?
G:
Garfield, Linda Dubin
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Linda Dubin Garfield, an award-winning printmaker and mixed media artist, creates visual memoirs exploring the mystery of memory and the magic of place, using hand-pulled printmaking techniques, photography, collage/ mixed media and digital imaging. She also creates installations that include public participatory art, especially when she is exploring themes relating to women in today's culture. In 2005 she founded ARTsisters, a group of professional artists who empower each other and their community through art. In 2007 she started smART business consulting, helping emerging artists reach their goals and their audience, providing consulting and coaching on the business side of art through individual, small groups, and workshop experiences as well as providing opportunities to exhibit their work. She has been juried into many shows and invited to participate into many exhibits locally, nationally and internationally, and has won several prizes and awards, including a Leeway Grant and an Artist Residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Today she serves on several non-profit boards and appreciates her good fortune to be able to make art every chance she gets.
Glickman, Barbara
I've been producing art in one form of another since I was a child and still feel that childlike excitement when I'm painting and see what I have created. Whatever medium I'm working in, I find that when I walk or sit still, I work on pieces in my head. The first thing I do in the morning is run into my studio to see how my various pieces in progress or just completed look after a night's sleep and this inability to stay away from them continues all day even if I'm not working on them. Art keeps the child in me alive and kicking. It's wonderful to be involved in something that reflects all my previous experiences and at the same time makes me feel so excited to be young at heart.
As I get older and continue to expand into new media, I find myself in a struggle to tap all my artistic talent and fully explore the depths of my creativity, recognizing that, like all of us, I'm in a losing race against the clock.
Grentzenberg, Georgianna
Georgianna studied drawing and painting through private lessons prior to attending classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1978-1982. After the Academy, she worked for over twenty years in several Philadelphia museums, and had a concurrent career as an archaeological illustrator, where she worked in pen and ink.
As an adolescent Georgianna lived and traveled in Europe. The visual feast of centuries in art and architecture informs her work. She has been influenced by artists who create fantastic worlds such as--Hundertwasser, Dubuffet, Birchfield, and the intensity of Outsider artists.
The detail in Georgianna's work pulls the viewer into a created world, at turns surreal, whimsical, unsettling and sumptuous in color. Working first only in ink, she adds color after the design is complete. The free play of imagination in line and compo-sition, is tempered by color to create internal coherence within the fantasy.
Grimaldi, Antonio
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My pictures are sparse, with elements conceived as minimal landscapes, whether as spaces filled with trees or as an empty desert, using color and sand as a way to create texture on an otherwise ambiguous surface.
My landscapes are without boundaries, are inspired by nature and the beauty of her many changing phenomena.
They are spiritually elemental gestures idealizing a state of flux in nature such as moist haziness, wind sounds, a quiet heaviness of dusk, or the silent clarity after a storm, events relived during my long retreats in the rolling hills of southern Italy.
To do this I visually record moments with sketches and recreate them in my studio. I work mainly on paper and canvas using a mixed media technique with sand, acrylic , oil paint and oil pastel. Through my use of color or texture I make a tension which forms a curiously alive but meditative space.
Gross, Bonnie
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I paint what's out there. Drawing on rural interpretations, I take home inside me what will become a painting to surface later on a canvas or panel. I rely mostly on the internal image in my memory. Coastal waters, wetlands and outlands continue to be a natural reference for my work, providing a personal notebook of nature's effects - light, reflection, colored layering. Local and foreign farmlands offer me seductive scenarios with their produce of fields, fencing, pathways and sheds.
To express these impressions, an evolution takes place where paint begins to play with the subtleties of woven color, light and texture. Sensuality of surface is important to me, as evidenced by gestural strokes making their mark. Drawing provides an essential foundation for my work, whereas design is what ultimately defines it's composition.
My work is in many private collections in Pennsylvania, New York and South Jersey.
H:
Halbert, Nancy E. F.
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Nancy E. F. Halbert was a choreographer and modern dancer. She has a Masters in Teaching Art from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA. According to Victoria Donohoe, art critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Boredom is foreign to Halbert's paintings-variation, not repetition, is her rule in dealing with the figure. Several of her finest subjects achieve an independent complexity in their rugged, hearty dignity." 4/22/11
It is the balance between energy and stillness that Halbert focuses on in her art making. She draws and paints in a gestural, painterly, contemporary style while mixing a variety of media.
Nancy's paintings have been chosen in such renowned, juried exhibitions as, Art In City Hall, The Woodmere Art Museum, Main Line Art Center, Immaculata University and Knapp Gallery. She is the former Director of the artists' cooperative and a still a member of MUSE Gallery in Philadelphia.
Nancy has had an extensive career teaching Drawing and Painting to students of all levels. Halberts' work is in collections in Australia and the United States.
Hanselman, Barbara
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First I wanted to build with clay, eat off its river rock surface and drink from the empty spaces it defines. I then wanted to hear the sound of clay as it moves to and fro within itself or as it tries to be its own call in the wild - so I make rattles which memorialize beginnings. Now I want to be what the clay is saying as I wear it and fondle it, so I strive to compose the language of clay with clay beads. CLAY is my voice in this wilderness and I love where it takes me!
For more about Barbara, visit her Etsy shop (http://www.etsy.com/shop/BHClaysmith), her blog (http://bhclaysmith.blogspot.com), or her Picasa image gallery (http://picasaweb.google.com/bhclaysmith).
Harris, Dwight
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Dwight Harris studied philosophy at the New School in New York and received his BA from Penn. State. He has been actively pursuing his passion for photography for 25 years following stints creating and developing a cartoon strip and performing standup comedy. He currently lives in Lambertville, N.J. doing digital manipulations called "Digital Paintings" based on his photographs and/or his digital drawings.
His work has been shown at various galleries and juried shows around the Pennsylvania/New Jersey area, including the Noyes Museum in Oceanville, N.J., Absolute Abstract in Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Gallery 125, the Ellarslie Museum and Capital Health System in Trenton, N.J., the Islip Art Museum in Islip, N.Y., the Artizen Gallery and J.B. Kline Gallery in Lambertville, N.J. and the Creative Genius Gallery in Medford, N.J., along with many area arts & craft shows, restaurants and theaters.
Herring, Louise
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My oil/mixed media paintings, inspired by nature and travel, reflect my involvement with the process of making art. I am not concerned with rendering what I see, but am challenged to express my reaction to what I see.
Recently, the rural landscape of northern Pennsylvania has been the springboard from which I explore my fascination with color, pattern, marks and gesture. The finished piece is often a composite of memories, sometimes partially hidden or blatantly apparent.
I often work in series, a format that offers both the challenge and freedom to explore. Presently, I am exploring the circle as seen in haybales, piles of logs, and ponds. Throughout my years of painting, it is color that has endured as a constant and motivating voice in my vision.
Holt, Mary Powers
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My recent work is involved with the dramatic impact of the landscape and my focus is on recording its abstract patterns of light and color. An emotional undercurrent is important to my imagery and my use of paint is mostly expressionistic within this framework. Personal and unconscious experience influences my compositions of form and color. The landscape is a launching point for my imagination and walking in it and interpreting the experience through painting a form of meditation.
I studied painting at the PA Academy of the Fine Arts and I later studied Art History at the University of Pennsylvania through the joint B.F.A. Academy Certificate program. I have exhibited my work in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs, Maryland, New York, New Jersey and South Korea.
Horwitz, Vittia
I've been a sculptor in the Philadelphia area for 25 years, having studied at Tyler. My work has been displayed at The Art Alliance, Woodmere Gallery, Bourse Building, at First Friday Events, and had a one-man show at South Street Gallery.
I've been featured at Peddler's Village Gallery and at the Pen and Brush Gallery in New York. And worked in marble at Pietra Santa in Italy.
Presently I'm working at Lower Merion and have taught at Delaware County Community College.
My work is emotional and linear. I start with a representational form, then abstract it in my own style. I'm especially concerned with motion, line and form. I love ballet, many works representing ballet dancers. I'm intrigued with the grace and strength of animals and love to create works that define their power.
In my collection are pieces large and small, made of stone and wood.
K:
Kane, Mary
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I love color. I'm amazed at what a difference to the retina one color next to another makes. I am delighted when finding just the right hue or vibrant complement to smear next to a shape. I love to layer color on color to surprise myself. Finding the right balance of darks and lights, line and form, openness and depth, calm and activity, is a matter of trial and error. When I am in some state of zen consciousness, without judging what is happening, I am probably getting the best results. Then art making is almost spiritual.
As the painting leads me on, I may find subject matter lurking there, which I often choose to obliterate to keep me aware of the composition. Sometimes a deliberate subject may be my guide.
Each successful painting is like a newborn baby... Sometimes the gestation period might have been a few days ...sometimes months... and often I'm still revising, trying to give birth after years.
Kennedy, Meg
As a calligrapher and book artist, my goal is to explore the nuance of words through style, color, shape, and size, and to look for layers of meaning that create rapport with the viewer. My academic training and professional career as a writer reinforces my focus on text. My love of book arts challenges me to reveal meaning through form and design. This dichotomy creates a process that involves lettering as drawing and using words as image and environment. For inspiration, I'm drawn to "small" nature—the seed, the shell, the feather, the nest—as opposed to landscape. Concepts that capture my imagination include the difficulty of communication, the power of secrets, parallels between natural and artificial, and the losses that come from progress. I live in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, and am co-author of Building a Book, Binding a Poem: Artists' Books in the Classroom (2010).
L:
Lachman, Diane
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Diane Lachman's paintings are widely exhibited. She has had solo shows in Philadelphia, Bethesda, Maryland, and in Panama City, Panama. She has participated in many juried and invitational shows, most recently at the Other Colors Gallery in Exton and The Art Trust in West Chester.
Her most recent solo exhibition, Color Conversations at Muse Gallery featured new paintings that explore color, line and form as a means of visual communication. In watercolor and oil, she uses layers of paint to transform the surface into an image of vibrantly colored shapes and undulating rhythms. She is interested in how color defines our idea of form and meaning. Her intuitive approach complements her years of teaching color theory at Penn Design at the University of Pennsylvania where she earned her BFA and MFA.
She is a member of the Muse Gallery in Philadelphia. Her paintings are represented in numerous private and corporate collections.
Laputka, Alice
Alice Laputka is a representational and abstract artist specializing in pastel and oil landscapes. Her award winning paintings are defined by strong color and beautiful compositions.
Her background includes graphic design, television, animated film, and teaching. She has focused on fine art since 1994, when her pastels and water media work began to be accepted into national and international shows. Her paintings have been featured in Pastel Artist International, International Artist Magazine and The Artist's Magazine as well as Rockport Publishers The Best of Acrylic Painting.
She has done editing and writing for the Pastel Society of America where she holds signature member status. She has been inducted into the Masters Circle of the International Association of Pastel Societies and is a signature member of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, Knickerbocker Artists, the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society, and the Philadelphia Water Color Society. She is also a member of Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity.
Lavins, Marilyn
This work was juried in for the Betsy Meyer Memorial Exhibition by Juror Julien Robson, Curator of Contemporary Art, PAFA, PA Academy of the Fine Arts. Altogether there were 19 artists chosen for the exhibit.
The method I used for this work in Photoshop is called "Displacement Mapping". A background image with highlights and shadows are required suggesting a pronounced 3-dimentional quality upon which a map of another transparent image is placed over the background image to create a greater 3 dimensional quality.
Lazard, Monique
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When I was a young girl I spent my Saturdays in the art department of the Junior Museum in San Francisco painting and drawing. One day my teacher showed me her portfolio of costume illustrations and was stunned. I was so electrified by her drawings that from that moment on I knew where I wanted to direct my creative talent. My first job as a Fashion Illustrator launched me into a 15 year career in commercial art taking me from San Francisco to NYC.
There was doubt in my mind that someday I would become a fine artist, it was just a matter of...when? In 1989 I moved to Telluride, Colorado and fell in love with the San Juan Mountains. I began to spend entire days in the wilderness painting the endless vistas.
What I try to achieve in a painting is the expression of beauty no matter what form the subject matter takes. It could be light leaving the day or a person sitting on a bench. My aim is to paint the light and pieces of color that describes what I see. My experience with painting is impulsive and fluid rather than an organized plan of action. When I paint I am reacting to the excitement I feel when I see something that registers as beautiful to me. That doesn't mean that if I am painting a person that that person needs to meet a certain standard of beauty. What I mean is that I might ideally be able to translate what I see into something beautiful. My focus is on the magic!
Le Vine, Victoria McNeil
Victoria McNeil Le Vine graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a B.A. in Studio Art, then continued her studies at Moore College of Art and Tyler School of Art, where she gained additional experience in drawing and advertising design. She founded Le Vine Graphics, a small freelance business that provided original design and consulting services. Her watercolor training began in 1992 at the Wayne Art Center. She soon became involved in Main Line Art Center also: taking classes, and was elected to the board where she ultimately served as Vice-President and served on the Advisory Board. For several years, Mrs. Le Vine studied in travel workshop settings with nationally known watercolorists. In recent summers, she has enjoyed extended time in Assisi, Lake Como, and France as an independent artist with “Artravel” from Brentwood, CA. She began showing her work in 1994 and participates in a few solo and group exhibitions each year in the Philadelphia region, Nantucket, and Park City. Her pieces capture primarily landscapes taken from local and travel settings, as well as commissions of private residences and cityscapes. When not on location, Le Vine works at her studio in Haverford.
Leavy, Deborah
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According to Danny Kaye – actor, comedian, and painter--"Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can."
I have taken that exuberance and applied it to my life and to my work.
My journey has been from left brain to right brain-from lawyer to painter. Training in the strict literalism of classical painting was too much like the literalism of the law, thus my embrace of contemporary imagery.
A visual experience of form and space and color and movement translates into layer upon layer of paint and material with a textural surface. What is revealed, what is hidden, what used to be, and what remains become the subject, as well as the process.
Irony, spirituality, decay, and the unexpected patterns produced by nature and humankind inspire me to photograph, adding another dimension. Whatever the medium, I attempt to draw the viewer in to pause and discover.
Lee, Kathryn
A graduate of the PAFA and the University of Pennsylvania, my early professional career was in book and magazine illustration and mural painting. Much changed in mid-career when I moved to Florence, Italy for ten years with my husband and daughter for my husband's work. Such a rich and powerful experience obviously changed me. The collages that I now do have, I believe, echoes of the bas-reliefs that can be seen throughout Tuscany. In lifting shapes up off the picture plane and by folding, scoring, curling and using painted and plain papers I obtain an interplay of light and shadow that seems to float and move. In short, I like taking a classic form and rendering it anew with fresh materials.
Levy, Dale
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My paintings grow out of the sensations I experience from my surroundings. I begin each painting with the surprise of a shape formed by pouring paint on a wet canvas or by placing a random area of color on paper. As colors run and spread, they create depth and movement and morph into different colors. Other shapes and colors follow, each replying to the growing family of forms. Sometime in this process I perceive these forms as metaphors for an experience, observation or event, and this perception guides the completion of the work.
I make art to express my intuitions and emotions and to explore the ways that light and image emerge from color. While working, my choices and decisions flow naturally from sensation without conscious analysis. I try to record these feelings, hoping to replicate for others the pleasure and exhilaration that I experience from my work.
Lim, L.C.
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Award-winning artist L. C. Lim uses her creative spirit to compose images that reflect the profound beauty of nature and our earth. Her work is inspired by an emotional response to nature. Rather than recording an exact external reality, she expresses the inner sensations caused by her visual perceptions, calmness, serenity, beauty, awe to name a few. After a successful career in corporate America managing a $500 million division of a Fortune 100 company, Lim returned to her first love and received a Certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2005.
She works in Philadelphia and northern Michigan. A recipient of many distinguished awards, including the Academy's Thouron and Catherine Grant Memorial prize, her work appears in the Dow Chemical, University of Michigan Ross School and Pennsylvania Power & Light collections, as well as numerous private collections. Her paintings have been featured in The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Ann Arbor News in Michigan. She regularly exhibits her work in Philadelphia as well as at River Gallery in Chelsea, Michigan. She teaches printmaking at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and painting in Michigan.
Lisle, Elaine
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Elaine Lisle's work explodes with color and light. Schooled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania, Elaine has won regional and national awards, exhibited widely in the mid-Atlantic, including New York City, and her richly painted oils are owned by numerous corporations as well as individual collectors around the globe. She is represented by Artists' House Gallery in Philadelphia, and until its recent close, the Sherry French Gallery in New York. She is on the Faculty of the Main Line Art Center.
My paintings are more likely to be joyous, energetic, vibrant, complex works as opposed to gentle, pastel or brooding canvasses. I look for the surprise in the composition, whether it be a statement made by a lone figure, a spot of orange found in an otherwise green wood, or an unusual lavender reflection in a river at dusk. I work only in oil.
Lombardi, Carla
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I create ceramic sculptures and ceramic tile paintings.
I enjoy all aspects of my creations: forming, decorating and firing. I love the sensual feeling of clay in my hands and I delight in the colors, patterns, and textures I obtain after firing it to a permanent state. When I unload the kiln I feel excited and surprised by the narrative aspects of my work.
Unfortunately, ceramic work, to my mind has always been considered peripheral and a bit inferior to the serious work of painters and sculptors. This ambiguous position suits me perfectly. I am free to create work that might not be main stream but contains my particular vision. It is direct, and it is crafted in the best possible way I know how.
Lovitz, Sandi Neiman
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My earliest memories are of color: a robin's egg, dandelions, rainbows of fractured light from the sun on a crystal bottle. I wanted to eat those colors; I wanted to be them.
My paintings are about color, particularly the way colors interact with one another and change our perception of them. Painted in layers, each layer influences the next, in the same way that the choices and decisions we make throughout our lives makes us who we are.
I'm willing to take chances with my work, just as I'm willing to take chances in my life, because I've learned that little that is unique or precious is gained without risk.
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McClatchy, Wendy
Vincent Van Gogh once said, "Painting is a faith not created by hands alone, but by something which wells up from a deeper source in our souls." For as long as I can remember, I have had an inexhaustible passion for the creative process: my own as well as others as an Art Psychotherapist.
The last several years have been stimulating and rewarding, as I now cultivate my own painting practice within the confines of frame. I am drawn to still life, landscape, and seascape. I always paint with the intention to capture specific qualities of my subject matter that draw me to share my emotional responses with the viewer.
Mestishen, L. A.
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L A Mestishen's work has been shown in the Reading Museum, the PA State Museum, the Everhart Museum, Villanova University Gallery, Payne Gallery at Moravian College, the Main Line Art Center, Philadelphia Sketch Club, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Studio B in Boyertown and the 3rd Street Gallery in Philadelphia.
Her art has appeared in print, on film, on stage and in private collections across the U.S. Mestishen was a Studio Artist at Goggleworks, in Reading, PA, and has taught Plein-air painting at Lehigh Carbon Community College. She has a BFA from Kutztown University, MFA from Bennington College, and an MS in Psychology from Chestnut Hill College. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology with a focus on Neuropsychological Assessment.
Mettler, Bonnie
My mind is strongly organized by shape. Most of my learning methods use some form of shape recognition. When I paint the shapes around me, there comes a moment when all of the separate, abstract marks that I make magically transform themselves in a thing. They were nothing, then they are something - the act of creating.
There is a more metaphysical reason, too. We are living in Eden. I do not ascribe to religion, but I think the metaphor of life on earth as garden is apt. We explore other planets and find a few ice crystals, that's it. I go into my garden and in one trowel of dirt I find as many living organisms as there are people on Earth. Not one lone ice crystal - billions of bits of life. We live as part of an astoundingly fecund miracle.
I paint in awe of my surroundings.
Miraglia, Betsy
"My work is about ritual...the oneness of creating. It's about color, interaction, and space. It's about patience, time, and getting in touch with my inner spirit. It’s about memories, a fear of forgetting, and about continually discovering new ways to record those memories through visual expression."
Earning a BFA in Graphic Design from Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, I worked in corporate logo and package designing before becoming a printmaker. Years later, a fellow artist returning from the International Paper Symposium in Kyoto, Japan, introduced me to papermaking through a series of workshops. I loved the process and what it did for me spiritually. Gradually, I merged the two mediums while continuing to explore my fascination with design using texture, color, and repeated pattern. I now work with my own collagraph printed handmade papers, laminating and collaging them to create 2D and 3D original works.
Muslin, Lee
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Transparency and layering play a major role in my art. Color and texture are the supporting concepts. Images are built layer upon layer by interlacing my photography with acrylic paint, paper collage, cheesecloth or other textural surfaces to create one-of-a-kind mixed media pieces. My affinity with nature is the recurrent thread that runs throughout my work. The rhythms and patterns of the natural world evoke a sense of calm and serenity in these contemporary compositions.
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Paul, Berince
I have been making visual images with oil paints, watercolors, printing inks, clay, pastels or metal from the time I was a young girl in Russia up to the present. I love to try different media and experiment with them.
Although I enjoy working in a range of materials I keep coming back to oils because of the physicality of the paint itself. I enjoy applying layers of paint as planes of color to make abstractions of the natural world, whether as landscapes, still-lifes, or portraits. Recently I have started to experiment with collage, using a combination of paint, and paper.
In my 94th year of life I still derive immense joy from continuing to paint and create.
Peltzman, Doris
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I paint from life trying to capture a moment in time. The excitement of the moment and the immediacy are what drive me. It is that total impression of what I see that creates the completed painting.
To maintain spontaneity I use a variety of palette choices and the calligraphy of my brush stroke is essential.
My compositions often contain everyday objects. Finished paintings may be of a simplified composition or a busy occurrence. Paintings may have roughly treated areas or I may allow the under painting to surface. This may contrast with more detailed strokes or I may simply allow that first stoke to dominate. It is the visual stimulation that dictates the process.
Plough, Jean
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Born in New York City, I have always been interested in colors and drawing. During high school I attended the Corcoran summer program, and later studied painting at Philadelphia College of Art, where I received a BFA. One of my teachers, Warren Rohrer, motivated me to teach art. Teaching provided the freedom to work within my own parameters, as opposed to completing commercial projects. I taught art in the public schools from 1981 to 1998. In 2003, I participated in "Insomnia, Landscapes of the Night" at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This year I won an award at the Anita Shapolsky Art Foundation painting marathon in Jim Thorpe, PA, and a cash prize in K-Space Contemporary in Corpus Christi, Texas. Recently I began to incorporate words into some of my pieces, and have become interested in using paintings to tell a story, or illustrate images in poems.
Pritchard, Laura
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My work is a reverent, poetic approach to creating interesting and detailed worlds on silk. The luminous fabric is a joy to work on and watching the colors of the dyes spread as they are absorbed is transfixing. The molten wax, as resist, is warm and flexible and creates another dimension to the experience. The entire effort is an homage to the beauty of the decorations of the world and lifts a craft, batik, to a fine art. I am inspired by illuminated manuscripts, children's art, folk art, primitive art, writing forms, shadows, sketches made during the quotidian duties of life, and traveling the world. The face plays a large part in the works and invites the viewer into a lush, fantastic world.
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Roschen, Dorothy
The interplay of light and shadow on concave, convex,opaque and transparent surfaces creating hard and soft edges is intriguing to observe. Some natural phenomena, like cracks and paths left by forces of wind and water as in sand dunes,snow drifts and rock formations inspire my exploration of the infinite variety of surface modulations,the effects of concentrated and diffused light, and the wonderfully
tactile qualities of an object.
Resolving a composition, trying to obtain a balance, an agreeable interdependence of elements of divergent effects,such as positive and negative, is likewise a worthy investigation. This search for equilibrium can be interpreted as a simile for the quest for widely admired aspects of life that are often themselves an interplay of opposing forces: good and evil,justice and injustice,equality and inequality,etc. All this is worth observing,pursuing and striving to portray with slabs of clay.
Ross, Jerri
My paintings are profoundly influenced by the places I have lived, which include Japan, England, Sweden, Canada, and the United States. I am also moved to paint the people I have met from countries I have visited for a short time. The beauty, cultures, and influence of other artists I have met in my life abroad and in the U.S. have impacted my work. As an artist, I find I am always experimenting and learning about the media I use and the subjects I choose to paint. In addition, my 12 year career as an architectural designer has instilled a love of detail and pattern. I work in a variety of media, often I will paint a landscape in several different media until I find what I feel best expresses my emotional response to the beauty and serenity of the place. Nature expresses a synergism of energy and tranquility, beauty is universal and timeless, and I feel I am lucky to be able to see and am driven to express these constituent elements in life.
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Satten, Rona
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Rona Cordish Satten holds a Masters of Creative Arts in Therapy degree from Hahnemann Medical College. She was the founder and principal teacher at Paintpourri Art Classes for Children. Rona studied at the Barnes Foundation and continues her lifelong art making at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Rona's current artwork is a manifestation of her deep connection to the energy in nature, developed through practicing and teaching taiji and qigong for the last dozen years. "I love the excitement of the process of soft ground etching, where real leaves reveal their juicy essence on the etching plate, and chance and nature and the press and intuitive choice together give birth to the image."
Rona's etchings are widely exhibited and are found in public collections including Le Salle Bank and AtlantiCare Medical Center, and in numerous private collections. She is represented by Gravers Lane Gallery in Chestnut Hill, PA.
Schneider, Maria
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A native of Madrid, Spain, Maria Schneider moved to the Unites States to study master. From a Law Degree and an MBA passing through the corporate world, she jumped into art attending local art centers, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine arts and the Art Student League of New York. Her work has shown at the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg and Philadelphia City Hall as well as local galleries. She infuses her canvases and sculptures with ideas and modern symbols that get intertwine into her work. Her art is her voice and a strong one as such.
Seymour, Antoinette
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After a BA in History of Art at Bryn Mawr College, painting at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere during my junior year in Paris, I completed the four year program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Painting abstractions and surrealist works during and after my years at the Academy made me appreciate the accidental and the dream-like state in which many of the best results occur. Gradually, I came to agree with Morandi that "nothing is more abstract than reality." My paintings are a journal, inspired by my work in land planning and design, by days at anchor on the Chesapeake, by live jazz and classical music, and by treasured views, people and places known in childhood. To satisfy me, however, a painting must go beyond its subject and speak to something more universal.
Shattuck, Meg
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I started painting flowers because of their extraordinary beauty and structure. When I began they were botanical in form. Over the years, I have become less involved with detail and more concerned with shape and color.
I have explored the use of thin strokes of paint, as in Chinese Brush painting, to paint the form of a flower more simply and fluidly. Recently, I moved back to drawing and a thicker use of oil paint, enjoying the tactile qualities of both. I am grouping flowers together and find the combination of forms and their intersections a new challenge.
Sperry, Tad
After seeing some of Gehard Richter’s abstract paintings, I began experimenting with the application of paint with non-traditional tools in an effort to achieve some of the effects that he had achieved that I found so amazing. The current work has grown from these experiments in process as I adopted and imagined a variety of techniques, making them my own. This journey of discovery has removed the obvious gesture or mark, yet I am still able to pursue my explorations in color, composition and perceived planes of depth. Not being one who is able to stay in one place for long, I have recently found myself needing to reintroduce the gesture or mark: Can I use the traditional tools, brush, palette knife and paint stick, to add to the deeply nuanced surface that I’ve achieved in a way that enhances the image?
Steen, Karen
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Karen Steen earned an MFA at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a BA in Illustration from Art Center College of Design. She creates drawings, collage and relief sculpture and relishes the challenge of combining the technical skills of illustration with the intuitive approach of fine art. At it's core, Steen's work is about organic forms and their relationships. The notion that civilization is damaging the balance of nature's elaborate systems fuels her interest in the aesthetic qualities of biology and the small scale world, where forms are either invisible to the naked eye, or can be seen only through up close examination. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions in the Lehigh Valley, Philadelphia, New York and California. She works with cancer patients as the Artist-in-Residence for St. Luke's Hospital and is a drawing instructor at Penn State Lehigh Valley.
Stefanski, Susan
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I have always enjoyed taking raw materials and turning it into something beautiful whether it was with textiles or decorating for our children’s school plays or proms. I discovered painting over ten years ago and was thrilled to find this challenging creative process trying to capture the beauty and serenity I experience in the world much of which is in my own backyard. I am grateful for all God's gifts and love sharing this joy and passion with others. I am never done learning! Profits from my work will benefit charities such as "Women of Hope" in Philadelphia and the "Children in the Between" which is an effort to help the poor in Tanzania, Africa.
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Tabas, Nancy
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Nancy Freeman Tabas loves the process of art and rejoices in every medium she works with, be it oils, acrylics, pastel, clay or any other material that will help to translate her idea. Nancy's artwork is a projection of her personality; energetic, spontaneous full of life and passion. Every painting, like every day, is new and exciting to Tabas.
Tabas's landscapes are realistic abstraction. They are an exploration of color, form and imagery. She sees the world as bright and hopeful and tries to portray this though her work.
Victoria Donohue in a July 22, 2007 review of Nancy in The Philadelphia Inquirer said "her work consistently has punch to it." Marie Fowler of the Main Line Times review of Nancy's work compares "Tabas, like French Impressionist Master Claude Monet appears to explore the same motif under different conditions of light and or seasons."
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Vicens-Rosenbusch, Nury
"My work is inspired by the tension, fragility and mystery that I see between the natural world and human nature. To express this, I enjoy experimenting with conservative and unconventional painting and drawing materials, maneuvering them and responding to their unexpected behavior; The world around me triggers my imagination; inspiration may come from a person’s gesture a natural occurrence, a memory. I allow the paint and materials I use, to interact with one another and help me bring forth the images that develop as I work."
Nury is originally from Chile and finished her Master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania. She exhibits throughout, including solo shows in Germany and Belgium. Her work has two parallel venues: the work based on the interaction of the natural world and Human nature, and her work for portrait commissions (people, pets, gardens). She also has been teaching Art for more than 20 years.
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Wallack, Susan
The things I make-- collage, assemblage, mixed media-- are hybrids, internally diverse and externally beholden to a broad range of influences, from African masks to Renaissance Madonnas to the Merzbau of modernist Kurt Schwitters. Story-like, the pieces are narrative, but broken into fragments; their subjects, often women, recognizable but not exactly real.
Unaligned with any "ism," I embrace in my work aspects of the art we call "modern." I’ve learned about color from Gauguin (post-Impressionist), Matisse (Fauvist), and Warhol's (Pop) many-hued Maos--- that old rules, no matter how "current," must be broken sometimes in the service of emotion, intention, and irony.
Like post-modern artists, I wish to make something which invites many levels of interpretation, rather than dictating a single idea. In my pieces, backgrounds are often ambiguous (black and/or abstract), suspending the image in a visual limbo, precluding fixed meaning and urging the viewer's participation. In this sense, the work is incomplete, purposely so, propelled outward as is, into the unfathomable.
Waltzer, Marylyn
When I am painting a living plant, I am completely at peace. Time stops and I am in a private world, surrounded by light, color, pattern, texture, like the organization of sound in time, this is the rhythm of my life. I strive to make a plant portrait in such a way that it reveals the character and uniqueness of the subject. By focusing my paintings on the small details in nature, I hope to inspire others to look a little closer and pause a bit longer. I want to show, through my art, the fragile, fleeting beauty of the natural world that surrounds us.
Weinstock, Hanni
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Education: Temple University B.A., M.Ed. Also studied at Tyler School of Fine Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Art and various art centers.
Because I believe it is important to stay in touch with other artists I participate in an ongoing painters' critique group.
Artists Statement: Simply put - I like to paint. I prefer organic shapes, and often base the start of paintings on plant forms. Originality is important to me, as well as the feel, the inner essence, of a subject. This tends to make the work more abstract. There are rare times when a more successful painting seems to "paint itself".
I am represented by Tyme Gallery, and exhibit mostly in the Philadelphia area.
Wolf, Ruth
I am a narrative painter.
My intent is to show the structure of the narrative, not to tell a story.
I present characters in an environment-figures in landscape.
It is the viewer who interprets the scene.
It is their story and their aesthetic experience. The image is their tool.
Just as the paint and the brush are my tools.
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Yepoyan, Armen
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Armen Yepoyan is a graduate of fine art and architecture in his native Republic of Armenia. Since permanently relocating to the U.S. in 1994, he has exhibited extensively in galleries, museums and art centers nationwide, including solo shows in New York, Washington, DC, Boston, and Montreal. His work is part of private and public collections worldwide, including several corporate commissions, and has been featured in a number of art journals and publications including Art in America, Washington Times, and World & I. Yepoyan currently teaches art at the Armenian Sisters Academy in Radnor and resides in Wynnewood, PA.
"At the bottom of their hearts, people always search for the truth, a search that never ends because the meaning of truthfulness is also endless. My search is captured on the canvases that I create."
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