Madeline Denaro, "Harem Scarem"
acrylic with polymers on canvas, 48"x48"

Madeline Denaro was born in New York, but now lives in Florida. She has been committed to painting abstraction for more than two decades. The canvases are abstract in nature although there is an underlying visual order that gradually seems to emerge. The duality of transparent layers with juicy opaque strokes and loose, intuitive drips adds a freshness to the work. The artist seems to be forever altering and adjusting the framework of some invisible reality. Through the use of her sensitive drawing, combined with layering, Denaro constantly adjusts, revisits, destroys and renews…always permitting the viewer a peek at where she has been before. She works intuitively while consciously knowing that others will enter and share in this intimate relationship -- strange but familiar; imprecise yet eloquent. There lies the poetic and the magical.

Kate Long Stevenson, "Figure Szell",
oil on canvas, 40"x30"

A native of Greensboro, North Carolina, artist Kate Long Stevenson began her painting career while a student at the University of the South. Her lifelong passion for music, history and the arts was furthered by intensive study and travel before her 2003 graduation.

Kate values brushstroke, movement, color and tempo as more important than a recognizable image. In her figurative paintings she uses the subject merely as an invitation to appreciate the rest of the piece. Her movement toward abstract expressionism marks a dismissal of subject altogether, save for the inspiration behind the paintings. Each piece is "built" while Kate listens to favorite classical music, so that the resulting painting is her literal experience of the music.