Artists Describing Their Art:
Lora Vannoord - I am a Florida Artist originally from a small town in Michigan, now painting in Florida. My works are original oil paintings inspired by Mother Nature. I want to communicate my love of nature to help others see and appreciate the natural environment around them. My goal is to give others a calming and imaginative experience in their homes when they contemplate my oil paintings. I enjoy the creative composing of my landscapes using my store of images and my imagination. I combine my sketchbook images and photos to form my imaginary landscape. I then feel excited and fulfilled when my work goes well. Even as a child my happiest times were when I was creating art or attending art activities and museums. I am a member of the Tarpon Springs Art Association and NOAPS. I have been chosen to show my original oil paintings in many of their juried exhibits. I have had solo exhibits in Grand Rapids MI, Dunedin FL, Oldsmar FL and Tarpon Springs FL. I have shown oil paintings in group exhibits in Clearwater FL, Crystal Beach FL, Tarpon Springs FL, Oldsmar FL, Dunedin FL, Sarasota FL, Safety Harbor FL, Tampa FL Art Museum, Miami FL...
Michael Garr - I have been drawing and painting since Junior High. I enjoy quick art, impressionistic yet realistic, and minimal. There are interesting subjects all around us. My inspirations are architecture, people, light and shadow, the sea and boats, imagination... and the old masters. Get out and enjoy your surroundings. All my works are available as signed and numbered prints. I also do commission works, some examples of which are in the portfolio. I donate all proceeds to charity, and have recently teamed with SAVE THE BAY, a local Rhode Island eco-advocate organization, which receives 30 PER CENT of my proceeds. My opportunities for artistic expression have included drawing on napkins during airplane rides and waiting during my sons music lessons. In 2012 I took up oil painting for the first time, and my mentor is Lorena Pugh of North Kingstown. Ive done both Plein air and studio work in her presence, and am benefitting from the association. We have an informal group who meet and paint in Lorenas studio on Monday nights throughout the indoor season. I will continue to pursue art on a daily basis, and post the finished works here and on facebook for any and all to ...
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 ...
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. ...
Harry Weisburd - Harry Weisburd is an Internationally Represented Artist, including, USA, Expressions Gallery, Berkeley, California,
William Christopherson - The viewer sees a finished canvas. The artist relishes its journey of creation. A thought, a feeling, an experience, a place. These are the most essential of supplies as the artist tasks to expand, explore, and evolve along the path. All are welcome here, to view, appreciate contemplate, and possess the journeys I have made, and the journeys yet to come. Over the past several years I have explored the oil medium, borrowing technique from both historical and present day impressionism. Its a medium I love to work in, even though my wardrobe and studio surfaces have suffered immensely. Much of my work now reflects the pallet knife, and explores a prolific use of heavy colorful brush stroke. Everything continues to evolve, and thats a good thing Enjoy. William Christopherson, 2017 ...
Edem Elesh - I am interested in examining the miracle of everyday existence. I have lead a very unique life. Born in Los Angeles and educated from an early age at English boarding schools, I have been exposed to two different cultures. This gives my work an American energy with English sensibilities. I am intrigued by the interplay born of this duality: order and chaos, old and new, the conscious and unconscious, structure and freedom. Not to mention expectation and accident. I am currently working with a new form of mixed media which allows, to an even greater extent, the chances of an interplay between process and providence....
Shelly Leitheiser - Art comes from my head and my heart. I care deeply about the environment and often do artwork expressing my interest in environmental topics. I also use my art work to tell stories and uncover truths. Water and paint are sometimes used but often I will use photography and digital painting programs to get the images I envision. I am a formally trained artist in fine art, and have recently left the world of painting realism as my interest in photography grows. Why should art and photography look the same? Now I do more impressionist art and also abstracts, many of them inspired by other worlds. The realistic painting I do these days is very contemporary. Art is a lot of work but it's also very rewarding for me when someone inquires further into the meaning of my art....
Jose Freitascruz - Borneo > 2003 The tropical rainforest and tales of maritime exploration continue to be reflected in my work. Indeed, travel and displacement condition my work - the many places I lived in throughout my childhood and those others my chronic wanderlust has led me to since then have always had an impact on the choices and directions I have taken. The knowledge that a new perspective can be acquired over things we believe to be "fixed" triggers curiosity and fosters a certain degree of unconformity. The need to find and learn new ways to depict whatever it is I wish to depict keeps me on my toes and doesn't allow me to settle with the tools or the style I am already familiar with - I am constantly "on the move" and my painting is meant to be a record of the path I move along. Perceived from a distance my approach tends to be cyclic, each cycle divided into series. Progression occurs from the outside in aEUR" from the surface to the core, from a certain degree of figuration to abstraction. Upon tackling each new theme I will be struck by the outward aspect of things and charged with a strong desire ...
Geo Sipp - Geo Sipp Artist Statement: The primary emphasis of my images is to reflect our experiences as consumers of the media in the aftermath of September Eleventh. As we go about our lives the media constantly reminds us of our exposure and vulnerability. The visual perception that is promoted is of our being continuous observers of the human condition. A sense of being under threat heightens our awareness and is implicit in our roles as parents, friends and guardians. The media trivializes threats by distilling them into short, dramatic events. Meaning and emotion become codified. I create images as responses to social and political situations, but no attempt is made to editorialize the content. The work is intended to reevaluate the visual narrative to which we've become conditioned. A variety of media is used to create my work. The decision to create a drawing or a painting or a print is primarily intuitive. Yet, because they are multiples, prints reference the mass marketing of published imagery in a news cycle. The Algeria Series references the Iraq War and Middle East instability. The fact that the images are multiples printed from several plates alludes to the tradition of photojournalism and role...
Paola Di Renzo - Born in Abruzzo, I live and work in Sardinia .Pure amateur artist,I used to work with paper,mainly magazine paper,sand,acrylic and tempera.Nowadays I look for the pleasure of playing with colours with which I try to express feelings and emotions. If I was able to express in words what I try to convey with colours.......I would be a writer!...
Tom Lund-Lack - I am an experienced artist whose work uses the power of imagination to find find the essence of the subject.A It is grounded in the need to celebrate life, and to portray the subject through the transforming power of colour and light. Arrangements of shape, line, pattern and colour are brilliant at conjuringA up powerful expressions, sometimes these can be dreamlike and at peace sometimes exciting and dramatic. My work does not always represent an actual moment, place or object in time, but they areA the result of a process of reflection, recollection and reinvention, a distillation of experience. Art is a very small word having the widest possible meaning appreciation is a subjective judgement and no artist or workA can please everyone.A My aim is to please at least some of you and I am very confident that this aspiration is achievable ...
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 ...
Donna Gallant - Art is a daily routine in my life. I see, hear, taste, feel and smell the life that surrounds me and I am inspired by the simplest aspects of this world. Whether it be the way the light hits an object or the way objects or forms move in space. I find it all so fascinating and alive. I try to portray these experiences and expressions through my art making....