Artists Describing Their Art:
Philip Hallawell - I work in various media: oil, watercolor, dry pastels, pen and ink and mixed media. My work is a result of a fragmented view of the world, which gives it a surreal quality. However, my process is not surreal, because I start with a definite theme that I wish to investigate. My main area of interest is people and the human form and I am constantly investigating the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual aspects of Man. Over the years I have developed various series, which I revisit periodocally, investigating different aspects. In purely visual terms, what fascinates me is light and form and how I can use diverse visual elements in a complementary way, opposing, for instance, line and form, or rough and smooth textures. The use of diferent materials to achieve diverse expressions, either alone or as mixed media, along with alternating between a graphic representation and a painterly one, or mixing the two, is a very important aspect of the way I materialize my thinking into images. Equally important is the transition from very realistic images to a totally abstract means of expression and alternating between control and expressiveness....
George Oommen - George Oommen: The Image as the key Born in Munnar, Kerala, India, and educated in India, Mexico, and the United States, George Oommen continues to derive artistic inspiration from the lush green landscapes of his homeland. Every winter, Oommen visits Mankotta, a small island in the inland waters of Kerala in southwestern India, ten miles from Oommen's ancestral home. The weeks spent there fuel his painting year round. What follows is a series of questions and answers by Oommen about his work. The conversation took place over a series of days but reflects a lifetime of thinking about the meaning of his art. Q: What is the goal of your art? What inspires and motivates you as an artist? A: My painting is fundamentally about communicating what I see in my mind's eye. While verbal expression is the predominant form of communication, from early childhood, I have had a facility with visual expression. Painting is my vehicle for this. The specific goal of my art changes with each series I embark upon, but the general objective is always to transfer the image in my mind to the canvas There are many sources of inspiration for me--it could ...
Bessie Papazafiriou - Through my work I'm able to express reality in my own way. With a brush in hand suddenly horses can fly, the sky is ablaze, myths become reality and the world is transformed. To me, this is freedom. There is an unequaled sense of joy and satisfaction that comes from being able to express my vision and share it with others. I love it when a stranger views my work and feels a connection...suddenly we're no longer strangers. A new line of communication is open, one that transcends language....
Michal Ashkenasi - Welcome to my Portfolio! If you are wondering if this is just another floral/landscape artist,I am not! My work is abstract-figurative and ,as you see,I love color!!I work directly on the canvas and the images come out of my imagination or from my memory . I do Collages and Watercolor too , but for me , the most deep feelings come out with Oil or Acrylic.With those media I can fulfill the strong contrastes I work with , and which are part of my style....
Storm Hammond - In many of the paintings, my intention was to give the viewer a glimpse into a peaceful moment in the Italian sense of capriccio. In others, particularly those which make use of funerary statuary, one is left questioning aspects of human solitude. It has been said that a landscape does not come alive until there is a figure in it. By using sculptures of human forms, I offer the viewer an identity within the painting. As they are stone, subtly a coldness permeates and a peculiar isolation sets in emotionally. This shifts the pastoral mood to a quiet thoughtful meloncholia. This gives some observers a surrealistic impression of my work. In the architectural alleys, the viewer stands alone on the path. There is always the unseen, something more, a mystery around the corner or through the gate. I use an indirect Old Master's method of oil painting. The process begins with the application of an abstract acrylic ground. Next, an oil grisaille is painted defining the light and dark areas. Then, multiple layers of oil glazes and varnishes finish the piece. The first drawing, painted as the ground utilizes the divine geometry of the Golden Section. The divine ratio, ...
Storm Hammond -
David Larkins - Ii?1/2ve always been intrigued by the luminosity and transparencies found in watercolor, Oil and acrylic mediums. I believe an artist must experience the painting i?1/2 to absorb the surroundings, the atmosphere, to have a oneness with the subject matter before the first brush stroke is applied. My style is described as i?1/2Abstract Realismi?1/2 and my strength is found in the composition. Ii?1/2m drawn to diverse subject matter that challenges the viewer to see abstraction in the ordinary i?1/2 to meld the i?1/2reali?1/2 world with the i?1/2abstracti?1/2. ...
Paulo Medina - Para mA, el arte, ha sido como una pequeA+-a barca en donde he cruzado muchas veces el mar. Una barca frA!gil y pequeA+-a, sin embargo, capaz de cruzar hacia grandes horizontes. La barca ha sido un instrumento Aotil, pero nada mA!s... La pintura es poesAa silenciosa SimA3nides Artistic experience, as a spectator, and then, more directly, as an artist, has meant for me the possibility of transcending and reaching certain spaces that are intangible, but lived daily. As a creator, to be in front of a blank canvas or a digital image to be manipulated, is to be faced with a challenge that of translating to the language of forms, textures and colors something that has not yet been conceptualized, but that exists somewhere and that I desire to capture, expressing it through those materials and tools at my disposal. It thereby becomes a kind of game, in which time disappears and one enters into communion with the aesthetic experience with its infinity of moments, which go from pain to ecstasy. Self-taught experimentation in the field of art, has been for me one of the great pleasures of life. La experiencia artAstica ...
Ghassan Rached - I am a geoscientist. I paint, but painting is only a hobby. I paint, whenever I can spare the time, what is relaxing, touches my heart and pleasant to me for enjoyment. I love to use oil and watercolor as media to express beauty. Comments of visitors would be appreciated....
Rosalyn M. Gaier - Beauty. Meditative thought. Nuance. These are subjects of my collagraphs. They take on important implications when examined in light of today's American instant gratification culture. While convenience, speed and availability have become hallmarks of our American way of life and our society's progress, there remains a need for something more meaningful. That something is beauty. From my frame of personal artistic reference, "beauty" involves the viewer by initiating the response of taking pause, suddenly, unawares. Arousing the response from deep within, beauty disarms and fulfills at one and the same time. This elusive beauty is vital nourishment for mind and soul. Does today's American art disarm and fulfill? How well are our minds and souls being nourished? Unfortunately, Americans' appreciation and awareness of beauty are partially numbed by their frenzy experience of instant gratification. Beauty falls prey to the mindset of fast food, "Shop till you drop" and instant access to just about everything. We sacrifice refined taste, uniqueness and rewarded perseverance for what often is ephemeral and not quite satisfying. What this means for artists is that their best pieces can be easily overlooked. Unless relevance and nuance of an artwork can be realized immediately, instant ...
Rachel Schneider - Rachel Schneider is an American Photographer well received by the American artistic community. Ms. Schneider's works have been regularly exhibited in galleries throughout the state of Texas. Her academic credentials include 5 years of formal study at Sam Houston State University in Texas as well as training at the Texas School for Professional Photography. Ms. Schneider prefers to photograph in Black and White; however, she also uses color film. Her images yield a very different and crisp vantage point of life. A trained eye will find her images to be high in contrast and highly detailed. When photographing, Ms. Schneider contemplates every technical and artistic aspect of the image in her mind before she even considers pushing the shutter. She believes in finding the subject, determining the tonal values, then taking the picture that completely utilizes the negative's space. Ms. Schneider does not believe in wasting any silver on the negative, and therefore, does not crop her images during the printing process. Critics have noted that her photographic style has the characteristics of Straight Photography and Documentary Photography. Ms. Schneider's portfolio contains images from her travels around the United States, England, Singapore, Tokyo and Malaysia. Her passion ...
Keith Thrash - ABOUT THE ARTIST: CLICK ON FURTHER INFO BELOW ARTISTS STATEMENT, LEFT, FOR FULL INFO, My pictures come from direct contact with nature, rather than from imagination or preoccupation with graphic design, and scenes are depicted approximately as they are, with an economy of effort and scant technical virtuosity. I record the landscape of West-Central Alabama with a loose, expressionist drawing style, using Chinese ink-and-brush techniques developed through contact with sumi-e master Koho in New York in 1997 and study of the "Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Chinese Painting" ("The Tao of Painting," Bollingen Books, also available as an out-of-print paperback titled "The Way of Chinese Painting"). My tonal range is based on photography's Zone System, and I learned fine-art photographic printing in 1976 from George Tice at Parsons School of Design in New York. A master photographic printer chosen to print archival negatives in the Museum of Modern Art's collection, his best work is collected in "Urban Landscapes" (1976), which he designed himself while taking a course in book design at the same school. I am greatly influenced by American watercolorist Charles Burchfield and by the Barbizon painters of mid-19th...