mixed media – Circle Foundation for the Arts

Born in England, Nasia Houvarda was raised in Greece and today splits her time between Greece and Canada. In 2001 a car accident became a life-changing experience which made Nasia discover her artistic side.

“A car accident left me with extreme burn injuries on my body, but at the same time extreme determination to survive. While struggling to find ways to use my injured hands again, and with my mother’s help and guidance, I challenged myself with embroidery, mosaic and painting. I have been painting ever since my injuries and although creating was hurting me physically, it was the only thing that soothed me mentally and helped me go through most of my dark moments when life was hard and the pain unbearable. I am a self-taught artist with a passion to bring life to blank canvases, using my emotions and love for nature.

Trees fascinate me for all the similarities they share with humans. On some of my paintings, you will find materials like real bark or pieces of wood to represent life, and metal pieces to represent strength. My humble burning desire is to share my passion for life; my love for the world and my optimism for the future.”

Rhea Standke

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Rhea Standke was born 1972 in Dresden, Germany and studied Painting (1996-2002) at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany under the supervision of Peter Dreher, Ernst Caramelle, and Günther Umberg. Following she also studied Painting (2002-6) at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria under Prof. Wolfgang Herzig and Prof. Johanna Kandl. In 2004, Standke completed a 6-month artist residency inChina (Dalian, Qingdao, Beijing, and Huangzhou) within the framework of an artistic program (scholarship). Between 2010-2016 she completed studies of Independent Painting at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf (Kunstakademie), Class of Herbert Brandl and in 2015 she was nominated for her Master's by Prof. Herbert Brandl and in 2016 she completed her degree.

Anna-Maija Rissanen

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Anna-Maija Rissanen is a Belgian-Finnish landscape painter who focuses mainly on painting poetic inner meditative landscapes of water and rock, between western and eastern representation, between abstract and figurative. Her work focuses on searching a balance between fragility and power through mixed perspectives and layers. She uses mainly mixed media that includes among others watercolors, acrylic, Chinese ink, and collage.

Born 1983, in Järvenpää, Finland, Rissanen lived from 1995 to 2009 in Brussels, Belgium. She graduated in 2009 with an MA in Fine Arts from the Royal Fine-Arts Academy of Brussels and also certified as an art teacher. In 2009 she won the first prize of Godecharle of 5,000 € awarded by the Godecharle foundation that gave her the opportunity to continue her studies in China. During 2012-2013 Rissanen studied techniques of traditional Chinese painting at the China Art Academy in Hangzhou (one of the best art academies in China).

Since 2009, Rissanen has taken part in several personal and group exhibitions in Europe and China. She has held exhibitions including in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Helsinki, London, Mannheim, Guangzhou, Beijing, Arnheim, Viljandi just to mention some. In Finland the prominent Finnish art gallery in Helsinki, Galleria Bronda represents her. In autumn 2016 she organized her third big solo exhibition with great success, it had more than thousand visitors. Between 2009 and 2018 she has had 15 solo exhibitions and taken part in more than 40 group shows that include art fairs and competitions both international than Finnish.

Sally Lywood

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“I am British and live in Norway. I have always drawn and painted from a child but serious artistic activity began with a one year stay on the Cook Islands, South Pacific in 1997/98. When I came back to Norway I continued doing art professionally and have continued ever since. I am part of an artist's cooperative. My work at present is mainly in collage and textile.”

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

Varatun gård, Sandnes, Norway 2016/17

Anne's Gallery, Sandnes, Norway 2013

Galleri X-IA, Sandnes, Norway 2005

The Crossroad Gallery,Sandnes, Norway 2004

Painted Penguin Gallery, Caldbeck, Cumbris, England 2003

"Artist of the Month", Vaux Gallery, Stavanger, Norway 2001/2

Fotland Bygdemolle, Time, Norway 2001

Tanta Molla, Stavanger, Norway 1999

National Museum, Rarotonga, Cook Islands, South Pacific 1998

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Art Nordic, Copenhagen, Denmark 2018

Florence Biennale, Italy 2017 (juried)

Art Studio, Sana Don Piave, Venice, Italy 2015(juried)

NFUK members exhibition, Oslo City Hall Gallery, Norway 2014/16 (juried)

NFUK members exhibition, Stavern, Norway 2014/17 (juried)

Galleri La Pigna, Rome, Italy 2013

Anne's Gallery, Sandnes, Norway 2013

Utstein Gallery, Norway 2012

Framers Gallery, London 2010(juried)

Nordic Pastel Forum, Finland, Denmark and Norway 2007/8/9

Bankside Gallery, London, England 2007 (juried)

Nordic Pastel Forum, Falkenburg, Sweden 2006

Gallery X-IA, Sandnes, Norway 2005-14

Gallery 18976, Kristiansand, Norway 2005

Sola Culture Hall, Sola, Norway 2004/5

Nina Hosali prize (Runner Up), Free Painters Society, London, England 2007

ARTISTIC PROJECTS

Large mural, Jan Svela Co. Ltd, Bryne, Norway 2017

Art Project for Children at the British School, Gausel, Norway 2012

"First Grade Art", Grannes School, Norway 2007

"Marks in Signs". Childrens project, Time and Aalgaard, Norway 2006

"Artists of Tomorrow", Kindergarten Art Exhibition, Gallery X-IA, Sandnes, Norway 2006

Volker Mayr

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Volker lives and works in Berlin. He was taught by his grandfather, the German painter Otto Glossmann and has been painting since his childhood. At the beginning of his art career, he started with realistic painting. Since 1985, non-figurative works predominate with references to abstract expressionism. Volker's works are mostly oil on canvas, and he also works a lot with gouache with oil crayons.

The art historian Gerhard Charles Rump said about Volker Mayr:
"Mayr's paintings in their combination of painterly gestures and visible structures of the color mass are remarkable, the colors themselves, their tones. They move in rarely explored areas, do not jump at the viewer, but require sensitive approach and a willingness to see them with patience to see all traces of nuances. Images as they are dynamic in origin and have a form of inventory, that makes a meditative element."

Volker Mayr is in the collections of German Bank, Vattenfall, Jakob-Kaiser-Stiftung and Bristol-Kempinsky.

Tina Puckett

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Master weaver Tina Puckett is a self-taught artist who has been weaving since 1981. Her imagination and sense of color have influenced her to create contemporary sculptural art forms that are indescribably dynamic and colorful. Tina is influenced by natural materials grown locally in the northwest corner of Connecticut. Her favorite is bittersweet. The character of this vine literally dictates to her what form a basket or sculpture shall take.

In addition Tina mixes her own dyes. Her strong sense of color shows in the subtle use of dyed reeds to effect a more exquisite piece. Ultimately, a bit of “love” slips into the weaving of each piece . . . never to be retrieved. Tina's works have been exhibited at museums, art galleries, libraries and craft shows — including the Slater Mill Museum in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and the Cheongju International Craft Biennale 2003 in Korea, where Tina won the Honorable Mention award in basketry. Her woven works have also been featured in magazines, newspapers and on television— including Yankee Travel, Prime Time Connecticut, Weekend in New England, The Country Magazines, the Pawtucket Times, The Slater Trader Newspapers, and the NBC PAX TV Sunday Morning Show. Much more detailed information in this regard is available under the Press link in this website.

Sony Zero

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"Themes in my work are often evocative of the human condition; reconnecting with our essence and the ancient art of telling a story. My inspiration stems from all life, from culture, from nature, from unfurling curiosity.

Working between the mediums of painting and sculpture, each piece maintains an ongoing evolution of my work. Sculptural forms emerge from within a painting and painted forms lay within the surfaces of a sculpture. I often begin an art piece from an emerging eye shape that first becomes visible in the under-layers of the material or ground. It is from this point that the composition, perspective, and idea is born rather than from a pre-existing concept."

Nath

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Indian-born (1941), Amarnath Viswanath is a German resident. After graduating with a B.Sc. Degree in Chemistry from the University of Calcutta, India, Amarnath started his ceramic career working as a trainee in a ceramic insulator company in Germany. In 1968 he completed his studies at the Ceramic College in Germany with a degree in Ceramic Engineering. Amarnath uses almost exclusively acrylic colors for his paintings. Although he started with abstract images, he tends more and more towards landscape paintings. Most of the landscape images are a remembrance of his time spent in the USA.

Amarnath has exhibited his art in working group exhibitions including the international Artist’s Organization’s „IN3ArtWorldWide“ exhibition in Tuscany Italy, Fusion Galleries Miami and Artshow in New York One of his paintings is now at the Aspen Art Gallery, Aspen as a donation to the Boys and Girls Scout at Denver. Amarnath now lives in Refrath, a small town near Cologne, Germany.

Maz Jackson

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Claudia Grimm

"To make visible or simply to make perceptible what I perceive, feel or see - and the effort of remaining authentic in art as in real life. Island of my self-risen in hundreds of hours. Rose unblown veiled in dew, decision bitter or sweet but mine."

Nasia Houvarda

"It can be the sun setting or rising... a leaf of a tree against the wind...a child laughing or an adult shedding a tear.

I would say, life inspires me because it is so precious that I just want to hold on to moments forever."

Rhea Standke

"From the microcosm of the flower new, three dimensional, baroque and ecstatic formations which escape from the material world emerge. These free themselves from the past and the future and exist in an infinite room in the present time.  Full of being or empty from everything."

Anna-Maija Rissanen

“Tensions such as visibility-invisibility and fragility-power inspire me; linking how I experience life. I tend to represent these themes through landscape scenes that lay in between eastern-western representations of figurative and abstract painting in divers supports and medias.”

Sally Lywood

"My art is definitely inspired by Norwegian nature; high mountains and deep fjords, Constantly changing light. As a material, I have been fascinated by transparent/translucent mediums like tissue paper and now tulle which give such a variation of tones and depth as the layers increase."

Volker Mayr

"I paint intuitively and emotionally: I want to trigger impulses that make the soul of the viewer vibrate. My artworks as a medium that captures the imagination of others."

Tina Puckett

"I enjoy the diversity of the act of weaving, and I look forward to my next piece of Bittersweet vine for inspiration."

Sony Zero

"I draw, paint and sculpt in various mediums. My work explores the bridge between reality and the subliminal and my passion is to reflect upon this translucent world with its unknown coalescence of images, layers, and colors."

Nath

“The ability to create an unforgettable impression of a natural landscape by experimenting with color mixing is a present a painter can give to the viewers. Although all landscapes are there, the paintings promote the viewer to develop their own imagination and thoughts.”

Maz Jackson

"I have a deep interest in traditional practices in color, line, mark-making, and edge. Imagery springs form anything that excites me: communication, laughter, touch, tension, flight, landscape, the spaces between and things sacred."

"To make visible or simply to make perceptible what I perceive, feel or see - and the effort of remaining authentic in art as in real life. Island of my self-risen in hundreds of hours. Rose unblown veiled in dew, decision bitter or sweet but mine."

"It can be the sun setting or rising... a leaf of a tree against the wind...a child laughing or an adult shedding a tear. I would say, life inspires me because it is so precious that I just want to hold on to moments forever."

"From the microcosm of the flower new, three dimensional, baroque and ecstatic formations which escape from the material world emerge. These free themselves from the past and the future and exist in an infinite room in the present time. Full of being or empty from everything."

“Tensions such as visibility-invisibility and fragility-power inspire me; linking how I experience life. I tend to represent these themes through landscape scenes that lay in between eastern-western representations of figurative and abstract painting in divers supports and medias.”

"My art is definitely inspired by Norwegian nature; high mountains and deep fjords, Constantly changing light. As a material, I have been fascinated by transparent/translucent mediums like tissue paper and now tulle which give such a variation of tones and depth as the layers increase."

"I paint intuitively and emotionally: I want to trigger impulses that make the soul of the viewer vibrate. My artworks as a medium that captures the imagination of others."

"I enjoy the diversity of the act of weaving, and I look forward to my next piece of Bittersweet vine for inspiration."

"I draw, paint and sculpt in various mediums. My work explores the bridge between reality and the subliminal and my passion is to reflect upon this translucent world with its unknown coalescence of images, layers, and colors."

“The ability to create an unforgettable impression of a natural landscape by experimenting with color mixing is a present a painter can give to the viewers. Although all landscapes are there, the paintings promote the viewer to develop their own imagination and thoughts.”

"I have a deep interest in traditional practices in color, line, mark-making, and edge. Imagery springs form anything that excites me: communication, laughter, touch, tension, flight, landscape, the spaces between and things sacred."

"It can be the sun setting or rising... a leaf of a tree against the wind...a child laughing or an adult shedding a tear.

I would say, life inspires me because it is so precious that I just want to hold on to moments forever."

"From the microcosm of the flower new, three dimensional, baroque and ecstatic formations which escape from the material world emerge. These free themselves from the past and the future and exist in an infinite room in the present time.  Full of being or empty from everything."