Artists Describing Their Art:
Michelle Iglesias - As an active member of the National Association of Women Artists, Oil Painters of America and the Berkshire Art Association, Michelle Iglesias is a self-taught artist who first took to painting for its therapeutic values after being diagnosed with cancer. Her passion and perseverance has led her to become a nationally recognized award-winning artist, art instructor, and the successful business owner of Berkshire Paint and Sip. She continues to encourage and foster creativity in her students and others inspired by her art. Ms. IglesiasaEURtm paintings are influenced by family connections, nature, and travel. Consisting of the tumultuous dimensions that nature offers, portraits with personalities, and engaging exotic landscape compositions, her canvases invite viewer involvement and have been described as insightful, symbolic, and clarifying. She conveys the vision of natureaEURtms grandeur to produce artwork that is expressive, of the highest quality, and will grab the vieweraEURtms interest and attention. A Berkshire-area native, Michelle Iglesias was born in 1972 in Blandford, MA and currently resides in Dalton, MA. She entered in to the art scene in 2002 when she opened Piece of My Art Gallery and Frame Shop in Westfield, MA. Two years after opening the gallery ...
Michelle Iglesias -
Randy Sprout - I grew up in a small town in Northern Iowa, played football, coached the swimming team, and graduated from the University of Iowa with a BA in printmaking studying under Mauricio Lasansky. I then went into the Army and ended up pulling 13 months in Korea on the DMZ. Coming out of Korea I entered UCLA and earned a MA and MFA in printmaking while studying under Jan Stussy and Stanton Mac-Donald Wright. The next year after the funds dried up on my Fulbright Award to Portugal, because of the Angola War, I was lucky to get hired by USC where I taught printmaking as a junior faculty member. I also replaced professors at UCLA when they went on sabaticals, and taught one year at Pierce College. In 1977 I tried Real Estate, you know just for the summer, but by fall I had purchased Century 21 Hollywood Inc. and had a new vocation going. Now 31 years into real estate, I'm coming full circle and starting to paint little quick studies 9X12. I'm using just 1/2 inch brushes and 5 colors. I intentionally limit my time to 2 hours after which I stop and throw ...
Niloufer Wadia - There are no deep, dark secrets here, only warm, quiet moments caught from life, aiming to inspire and make you happy. Drawing ever since I can remember, in school book margins, on newspaper corners and any blank or not-so-blank surface that will accept the marks of a pen or pencil, almost invariably the doodles turned into women. A refrain I always heard growing up was, "good, but draw something besides women!" Now I wonder, "Why?!" It's what I enjoy drawing most! Though I explore various media, pencil, digital and watercolour. in these few drawings my love for the vibrancy of Acrylic paints, the human form and most especially the celebration of beauty in the female sex is obvious. An art student and an advertising professional, I have only recently re-discovered the pleasures of creating art for art's sake. My recent art a little pop-art, melding a contemporary graphic style, shape and vibrancy, with Indian themes, settings and patterns. Shapes are large, bold and in your face, themes are warm and earthy. The paintings epitomize hope, laughter and sensuality; the eyes of my figures hypnotize, the lines and the curves draw you into this celebration...
Richard Harpum - I find painting to be one of my most satisfying pastimes. Although I drew and painted as a youngster, a career in the British Army followed by many years as a senior executive in business, meant that I did not start pursuing my passion again until I was in my 50s. I am so glad that I did. Although I love the Impressionists, the engineer in me means that I have a great deal of difficulty being "loose" in my own work. Having tried and failed, I decided to take the route of being a realist artist, and recently coined "High Definition Art" as my slogan. However, I am not interested in achieving photorealism. I want people to see that my pictures are paintings, and would hate the thought that someone had to take a close look to discover that one of my paintings was not a photograph. My time-consuming technique pretty much prohibits painting en plein air, so I use photographs for reference in my studio. Consequently, I take a camera everywhere, although this drives my wife nuts! However, I deliberately avoid painting a direct copy of any of my photos. Indeed, with each new painting, I seem ...
Joanna Glazer - The inner images and bold colours Joanna Ewa Glazer incorporates in her work convey a sense of abundance, total immersion into life and optimism. In her paintings, she creates a space of beauty and paradise in the way that shows resilience and strength regardless of circumstances. Each painting is like a poem , a life affirming experience." All her work is also about sense of identity, search for it and hints as to where to find it She finds her sources in fashion magazines, newspapers, books, art reviews, and advertising. Even a simple image in everyday newspapers may awaken emotion. Joanna Ewa Glazer has travelled and lived for long periods in numerous countries: Poland, France, Italy, Japan, USA, Belgium and UK. She was born in Gdansk (Poland).. ...
Anindya Roy - Here you can see a brief about my painting , my bio- data, and some recent paintings.A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO MY RECENT PAINTINGS During the period of training my works were mostly the reflectionof the city life, the aspiration and dreams of the urban middle class living in a molt-cultural and multi-lingual society. Those days I crated the works like ' back to the city', 'nagorik' etc., by mixed media. To develop the concept I have been traveling historical, and culturally significant places and try to conceptualize the togetherness of living and non-living objects and a sense of mystery. Things and particular colour encompassed me, thus my creative mind and feelings is blend. Through I have social, ritual relation with my surroundings, I would like to search there hidden relations of mine in my works. It is known there a relation among the living and non- living beings in nature. I saw a rhythm with the costume, ornaments, happiness, sorrow and habits of the rural people, I is wonderful to me when I inhale those things then, I express my feelings of love through my visual art work. Some times ' composition ' starts from my dream, which leads to ...
Jean Yves Lemeur - First I was ingeneer student when came ill with schizophrenia and I had to change.I discovered painting in hospital and my mother liked.So years and years later I felt ok again and started really painting, now for two years. Now I really need to suprise me with new paintings, about two ones a week.Discovering other's work is great too, and I can say writing stories or poems takes a bigger place you imagine to go into paintings sooner or later. So my paintings strangely feed with research of past silent years lost. ...
Paul Cairns - Most of the time my work is rooted in an exploration of structure, by nature and the landscapes of Northern Ireland where I grew up or Essex where I now live. Structurally the handling of the materials is very physical with the stretchers frequently becoming more sculptural or sculptures becoming painterly. Painting can sometimes be seen as passively hanging on the wall out of the way so to counter this viewpoint many of my works inhabit the space much more, from heavy relief to working fully in the round. Nature and landscape is never far away from my thoughts and being part of nature is what has enabled us to develop a sense of culture, so when I paint what may at first look like a conventional portrait, you will soon see that the sitter is a part of the landscape; they have had a hand in forming each other. ...
Paul Cairns -
Colleen Balfour - Welcome to my world of Art from Africa. All my paintings are created in response to the mood of Africa, or at times, the need to escape that mood. I am a self taught artist and continue to learn each time I pick up the paint brush......
Julie Van Wyk - ARTIST STATEMENT I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED AND ADMIRED IMPRESIONIST PAINTERS OF THE PAST AND WANTED TO PAINT LIKE THEM. MY FAVORITE PAINTER IS CLAUDE MONET. I WORK IN WATERCOLOR,, ACRYLIC, OIL AND PASTEL. MY FAVORITE MEDIUM IS ACRYLIC. I LIKE TO PAINT QUICKLY SO THAT THE PAINTING RETAINS ITS FRESHNESS, AND ACRYLIC ALLOWS ME TO DO THIS ...
Francoise Issaly - Involved in the visual arts for more than twenty years, my work includes abstract painting, drawing, and occasionally installation art and photography. My approach is serial and cumulative and involves multiplication, superimposition, and/or repetition. My images, gleaned in the course of my travels and intellectual wanderings, are heterogeneous in origin (animals, artefacts, scientific literature, etc.), and I blend them in a systematic and formal way until the possible combinations have been exhausted. My works present dream-like images where the figurative and the formal are melded together; vaguely recognizable forms emerge from a ground that appears homogeneous but whose meaning eludes us. The resulting compositions can give rise to multiple interpretations. By focusing on both ambiguity and familiarity at once--and through numerous variations--I seek to create visual spaces where various realities overlap. My goal is to convey the difficulty of being in the in-between, the oscillation, the blur, and the viewer is constantly coaxed to go there. My interest in the "in-between" goes back to my teenage years when I was studying a text by the philosopher Blaise Pascal in which he writes, "Car enfin, qu'est-ce que l'homme dans la nature ? Un ...
Jan Chlpka - Jan Chlpka - naive imaginism The painter from Hlozany (Vojvodina, Serbia) Jan Chlpka (1965) belongs to our best and most original painters of naive art today. To poetics of inset imaginism tied him his increased imagination. As a result such an orientation we can find a reduced space of painting without any unnecessary details and expressed expressive stylization of shapes. He also uses colors in accordance with inter and not mimetic meaning. The most frequent themes of his painting creation are animals, which is natural while his occupation is veterinary surgeon. Here we can notice other rare component of painter's creation - humor. Vladimir Valentik, art historian...
Goran Petmil - For as long as remember I've been working on the art that makes up my world, a detailed rethinking of the stored hot inspiration within me. In 2005 I had partially withdrawn from the gallery exhibition spaces forming an opening only in his studio in Southampton. I work my art slowly, taking my time and leaving my pieces to take shape and breathe in the depths of my studio, working on my them for months I come back to them from time to time. I do not live by images, but I live for the art, I do a process of researching materials and textures, with each new layer of paint I'm opening up my own spiritual quest. Destruction, properties that disappear and matter are the primary goal and reason for my creativity, it launches my energy and ignites my spirit to star a feast of many layers, texture and color, it all comes to surface in the art. I find a rays of hope and truth in the landscapes that men ruthlessly destroys all more and more. Large formats are a great part of my excitement, many size paintings, from realistic, to abstract, and sculptures are a ...