Artists Describing Their Art:
Sheri Smith - For the past fifteen years, I have worked on my Capturing Culture series, a body of works on paper, drawn from the audience of live music performances. Sketched in Caran dAche crayon on suede board or with a sharp implement into scratch-board. The pieces portray the performers and often their instruments and parts of the venue. Though ultimately a visual record, the work emerges from a ritualistic creative process which serves to address my feelings about time, creative skill, and visual imagery. The fleeting nature of these performances is central to the work. It is often hard not to see the passing of time as an enemy, but in the case of my work the opposite is true. The impending end of a song, set, or evening offers a sense of freedom, allowing me to work quickly. This rapid pace also dictates my choice of materials. Caran dAche crayons or scratch-boards function best when used quickly and confidently. A darkened venue limits my color palette on the suede board to just what I can see. Additionally, a confined seating space constrains the size of my boards and therefore the number of details I can include. Performances and process ...
Isaac Brown - ISAAC S. BROWN As his day job Isaac is president and CEO of Baltic Street AEH Inc. A non-for profit agency that helps people coping with mental health issues deal with advocacy, employment and housing based in New York city. Mr. Brown has been painting for over 35 years. This self-taught artist has been previously employed in a variety of jobs including lumberjack, diamond cutter, welder and sergeant in the Israeli Defense Forces. It was during his time in the IDF as a young sergeant during periods of down time that he first picked up a brush and paints to begin to express his artistic creativity. Later in between maneuvers, during his time in the first Lebanese War, he began experimenting with whatever materials were available to a young soldier, creating sculptures and roadside art along the way from one camp to another as a release from the daily pressures and responsibly of caring for his fellow soldiers. After leaving the army he traveled the world extensively continuing painting and sculpting along the way. He spent a considerable time amount living in Europe and thus bringing to his art a unique worldwide perspective. His artwork reflects the passion...
Shoshannah Brombacher - Art makes the world within the artist visible. Classical music, poetry, Jewish and Chassidic stories, traveling, the love for people and memories of eras gone but not forgotten, cities where I lived and worked, like Amsterdam, Berlin, Jerusalem, New York, or visitedm, lie Prague and Sicily, are the main ingredients of my art. My art is like the water of the canals of my native Amsterdam, Rembrandts city, the deeper you look into it, the more you see. A reflection of a reflection of a reflection...look, what you see is not what you see. My art contains texts and letters, lets writing come alive, and reflects my deep connection with the Dutch 17th century Masters, German expressionism, Russian art and medieval miniatures. My art is also a tribute to music and the world of the great Chassidic masters of Eastern Europe. The Kotzker Rebbe listened to a Chassidic storyteller in the street and stated He told what he wanted and I heard what I needed. That is Art. ...
Marino Chanlatte - I started painting a long time before I realized it was my passion, and that I would be a painter. I felt the inner need to express through painting, in a freely and spontaneous way, my feelings, thoughts, ideas and fantasies that appeared as visions ... I use color, texture, shapes, light, and shadows to express myself. If my work communicates any emotion or feeling to the viewer, then I accomplished my purpose....
William Dick - STATEMENT My paintings record my interest in reconciling different and often estranged qualities and ideas in painting. I work through an experimental evaluation of the co-influence or confluence of organic and geometric, texture and structure, density and transparency, the sensuous history of paint and the austere tradition of minimalism. Within the context of abstraction, namely geometric and organic, I begin with the fundamental balance in painting between line and colour. I have drawn on ancient symbolic shapes from my Scottish background and I am influenced by the symbolic power of simplest forms of drawn lines such as the circles, concentric circles and spirals of Pictish and Celtic Art. Linear elements in my work derive from this source as well as from African and Aboriginal Art, Abyssinian Warrior Shields and Russian icons, and other lines and shapes that retain, in the broadest sense, some significance within culture. For colour I begin from observation of geological form and the substance of land of dust, sand, mud and rock as well as the outcrop of local street furniture architecture weather and the effects of weathering, and then of the often extreme and exotic colour of lichen, peat and mosses. My work exploits ...
John Sims - Following some thirty years working as a graphic designer and illustrator I began stone carving in 2000 and in 2002 I returned to college at Christ Church Canterbury in England to study BA Fine Art. In 2007 I went to the Cyprus College of Art to study for a Post Grad Diploma in Fine Art under the great Cypriot artist, Stass Paraskos. At the end of the course I was asked to stay on and run the Summer Schools and to be tutor on the Post Grad course. An incredible experience and an enormous influence on my work. My work now involves less stone carving more often found timber or kebab sticks My drawing in some respects has turned a full circle in the sense that prior to sculpture my illustration work was colourful but painstakingly detailed and stylised. At college I concentrated on measured observational life drawing in pencil which fed into the simple lines of my mainly figuratively based stone carvings. Whilst in Cyprus I re-discovered colour in both my drawing and sculpture. Dreams and mythology filled my waking and sleeping hours. Oil pastel and oil sticks became my favourite mediums to quickly capture these glimpses of ...
Heather Hyatt - In my work as a fine artist, I use the mediums of graphite, coloured pencil and oil, in the styles realism, photo-realism, trompe l'oeil and portraiture, Ideas come from literature, metaphors, and the real world. Rather than the imitation of appearance, my concern is with the essence of the subject. In trompe l'oeil, it is the hardness and softness of guns and lingerie, which, when mounted in shadow boxes, become real. In the series,'Dante's Divine Comedy', executed in graphite, the object was to depict the universality of his ideas as they appear today. In all of my work, realism is my focus and goal. ...
Nancy Bechtol - Artists explore and give the world a view of their personal heightened awareness. I visualize and think with keen beliefs and insights. Reflection of human and societal concerns which cross emotional boundaries-- communicating that which is unspoken. My traditional art foundations of drawing, painting and printmaking, evolved into video, digital photography and experimental media. I use digital photography and imaging to envision the concepts originating from the creative pulse.An individual artist explores and gives the world a view of their personal heightened awareness. Artists see and think with keen beliefs and insights.Reflection of human and societal concerns which cross emotional boundaries-- communicating that which is unspoken. My traditional art foundations of drawing, painting and printmaking, evolved into video, digital photography and experimental media. I use digital photography and imaging to envision the concepts originating from the creative pulse....
Stefan Fiedorowicz - The emotion in my work comes from somewhere deep down, and can speak to the inner part of each person... My work is intuitive and color is the language that I use to express an emotion. It is the interaction of colour that interests me. Painting does not come easy all the time, the more I paint the more difficult it becomes, or more exactly, the more I get stage fright. Sometimes anxiety can reach a high intensity that I get sick with it. I offer my work so that people can perhaps see some parts of themselves reflected in the work. I donaEURtmt ever stop painting in my mind.When I am lying in bed and cannot sleep I see paint moving across the ceiling and imagine it spilling and pouring as it flows through the cracks and converging in every corner. THESIS INTERVIEW WITH LYRICAL ARTIST STEFAN FIEDOROWICZ Personal Influence 1. Who are the artists both contemporary and historical that you can truly say have been a significant influence on your personal work Describe why for each artist. I would have to say that Kandinsky would be my all time inspirational artist. I have seen many exhibitions ...
Jim Lively - Whether portrayed in the abstract, realism, or somewhere in between, I am most influenced by both the beautiful and unattractive components of contemporary urban culture. Many times, one painting will reflect both components. My art tends to focus upon interesting juxtapositions of close-up images of human faces. Often, the larger images border upon realism and are caught expressing a panoply of emotions usually directed at the other images that share the canvas. Several of my recent works such as the tongue in cheek entitled "Lenin and Things" contain unlikely combinations of images such as a statue of Lenin which is dwarfed by a billboard size fashion model displaying a vacuous stare. A number of works contain both large images and interrelated small images. For example in the painting "Staring at Natalie", all the smaller images are a depiction of a collective group of voyeurs staring at a larger image of a posed fashion model. I want those viewing the painting to be the ultimate voyeur. The viewer is not only drawn initially to the larger image in its own right but also cannot help but then notice the relationship of the smaller images to the large image. Works displayed ...
Becky Soria - Subject matter in painting is merely the trigger that allows the expression of something more profound, unconscious and possibly hidden even from oneself, and therefore all inclusive, so viscerally immanent to humankind R. Alonzo Totems beyond Patriarchy May 2014 Nature has been qualified as a female organic form by most ancient cultures, but for the last millennia or so, the world has been primarily perceived and shaped by the masculine side of the species. Our recent history however has seen a trend towards a natural reversion to a feminine bias, with women becoming increasingly more crucial to all aspects of society. These works serve to remind us about these issues and others that we continue to face the world while reinventing the female figure as an emblem for current conditions and a new Totem for the future. The juxtaposition between the representations of the animals and plants in compromised an ailing conditions and the female form that seems to swallow and revive the life- infused aspects of her creation, render a sense of hope for a future in which the maternal provides a healing force to an ailing planet. Signs. Symbols. Sentinels February 2, 2013 The works of the present ...
Azhar Shemdin - I am interested in experimenting with liquid acrylic, using resist material which is anything that is placed on the surface of the painting that impedes the flow of liquid paint. When the resist is lifted, an unexpected outcome is revealed. Sometimes the outcome is not what I wanted, and I cover the surface with paint and go for a second, third or even a fourth try, until I am completely satisfied with the outcome. The end result is a wonderous world that comes from somewhere and is revealed on a canvas surface!...
Luiz Henrique Azevedo - Luiz Henrique da Rocha Azevedo born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1955 living in Petropolis city their youth; soon developed their fondness for drawing, sustained mainly by comics illustrated by Alex Raymond, Harold (Hal) Foster and Ray Moore. During the year of 1975 this fondness goes to the oil painting where their first works occurred oriented by a lovely old madam, Dona Marina, how he called her in the afternoon of their youth, among occasional colleagues. There will born their figurative painting. But their painting lost its space to professional career for more than 23 years until return to its place. Emerge the necessity to take the old painting case and just work where he feels better. Attended the course of realistic painters (Jose Geraldo Fajardo and Renato Ferrari) where learn and mature their technical skill associated, initially, to Rembrandt and Ruisdaels Flemish school, to Spanish painter Melendez and impressionist esteem . He chase for technical expertise and also for thematic identification that gives to him at the same time a private and plural sense to their works. Isn't an easy task but, in this process, retracting to a state that feels better to him: worried with lines, shadows, ...