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CIRCLE QUARTERLY ART REVIEW 4
Published by CFA Press
146 pages - Full color - 115 gram paper
Glossy Cover - Full color - 200 gram
Perfectly bound
Regular Size is 8.3 x 11.7 in. or 21.0 x 29.7 cm
Small Size is 5.8 x 8.3 in. or 14.8 x 21.0 cm
“’The Blessing of the Animals’ is an homage to the presence of animals, family, and spiritual support in my life, plus to the techniques, composition and art traditions of the Primitive Flemish Masters. Like all my work, it is created entirely by hand with no mechanical means. Painted on mahogany board and though almost 60 centimeters wide, it is basically a miniature and was eight years in the making.”
“I appreciate nature not just with my eyes, I perceive it with my whole body and allow it to transform the inner me into motion. My wish is to have a positive effect, be heard somehow, awaken a desire, recall the knowing, that we are a part of nature… Perhaps the painting could be a door to whatever is behind the apparition of things, even if I paint this apparition itself.”
“I predominately work with wood as my base medium, due to its strength, dimension and organic nature. The inherent texture of wood combined with paint and other man-made materials allow me to explore the concepts of old and young, worn versus new, organic versus man-made and the past versus the present and future. I look to capture a sense of time in my work and often combine the feeling of different eras within a single piece. I see this as a direct parallel with human life, as we too grow older and interact with other generations, both younger and older.”
“Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take risks.”
– Mark Rothko
“My artwork focuses on images of individual animals, in relationship to each other and within the context of various types of environments. The work is expressive while maintaining structural accuracy in animal forms. Environments depict a moment in time, where the viewer and the creature cross paths in a brief encounter. Some of my artworks are about admiring the color and patterns in the natural environment, others present a deeper view of the nuanced relationships that exist between animal and environment, or predator and prey. These meetings or moments in time may also be viewed as a reflection of dark spaces, and predator/prey relations found within the recesses of human nature. In some of my latest works, I have focused on animals and their vulnerability for survival due to the results of climate change, pollution and other contemporary environmental threats. At this point in time, I believe that these are the greatest concerns for humans and animals alike.”
“For many years my art included theatrical projects, together with 22 solos and 34 shared exhibitions in Europe, England, and the USA. In Art School and Academy of Art, I received instruction on techniques, styles, and finer points. However, I think amongst the most important things are creativity, original thought and a deeper understanding coming from infinity, God and whispers of immortality. The idea behind artworks is important to me.”
“Visual reality is an ever-shifting experience. What one sees reflects our emotional state and a synthesis of light, color, movement, and space. My dimensional photographs recreate the perceptual experience, with its dynamic nature and hidden complexities. I use a single image printed on aluminum and acrylic. The resulting visual phenomenon infuses the image with a sense of dimensionality, and fluidity affected by the viewing angle and ever-changing changing light.”
“It is a style without style. Every material is useful, every technique is good until it leads to the goal. In the end, only the process is important.”
“My focus is on photography with extreme digital editing processing. This means that I create pictures and graphics from architectural, natural and abstract subjects with often surreal components. My favorite themes are frontal facades of modern buildings or parts of them, which I digitally edit and finally changing into abstract digital compositions. For me, art is a form of expression that allows the artist to express and represent their preferences, their condition, their thinking and their feelings. The viewer will then love the artwork for similar reasons.”
“I have always been interested in the human body and different forms of intimacy. It is personal and private for the individual, but at the same time, a universal experience. The desire of getting close to someone, to belong to someone, is the same across countries and cultures. With highly saturated colors, the viewers will have a chance to peek into their unconscious desire and fantasy.”
“I am a creative and conservation artist, who absolutely enjoys producing pleasing artworks. My aim is to help improve the well-being of people and inspire them to incorporate art into their lives. Imagination and creativity are part of me which goes with a deep respect for our natural environment. I often experiment with different shapes, tools, locations, and materials to create textures and show imagined motions.”
“My work deals with man, with all their facets, the existential question, the mystery of the human being. The strongest driving force for my work is the blatant discrepancy between my wishful thinking of a desirable world in harmony, beauty, and innocence and the often found reality in the form of violence, alienation, and abuse. Inspired by myths, fairy tales as well as ideological or “pseudo-religious” ideas, this creates visual languages of indirect meaning.”
“Iron ore. The rusty red strata that run through the earth as veins of blood. For centuries, it has been smelted into usable iron. Later it was used for industrial purposes, including creating instruments of violence and war. Through heating the metal of guns and forging it, altering the material’s molecular structure, I am, in essence, setting the metal free through transforming these weapons of violence into something new.”
“I discovered my ability to transfer my thoughts and sensitivity into painting and started to focus on abstract work. This journey of discovery was most exciting to me. My paintings are created spontaneously; my expression of personal interpretation of those structures, such as wood, stone, metal, concrete and most importantly “Freedom”, are incorporated in my work in a liberated manner, free from conventional norms.”
“I was born (1949) and work near Eindhoven in the south of The Netherlands. As an autodidact, I have learned the techniques of classical painting since 1983. My oil on panel works depict realistic representations of daily scenes in a lifesize scale. I create mostly still-lifes with representations of fruit and other objects placed on a dark background and creating a somewhat mystical atmosphere which allows me to maximize the effect of light.”
“The Buddha sits in one place and travels all over the world. In my studio, I also travel all over the world. I painted this piece while the monsoons were very active here in Southern Arizona. However, after completing the painting the mountains didn’t look like those in the great Sonoran Desert and I found I had painted the Tianzi Mountains in China. I realized once more that as serious as I am about painting, ‘humor’ is hard-wired into my being and my art.”
“These portraits are part of a series that I have been working on since 2009. They are a form of tribute to French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ sketch work… with a twist, a twist I’m afraid the painter may have most likely strongly disapproved. As for most of my work, this endeavor has become a journey into my own shadow, a world where numerous simmering characters await for the light. Every new creation is the strange discovery of a piece that already exists. I don’t create these beings but reveal them and every new apparition transforms me.”
According to Webster’s 20th Century Unabridged Dictionary:
• X is the 24th letter of the English Alphabet • A mark shaped like X is used to represent the signature of a person who cannot write • To indicate a particular point on a map, diagram, etc. • As a symbol for a kiss in letters, etc. • A person or thing unknown or unrevealed • The Roman numeral 10 • Christ: used also in combination as in Xmas • In chemistry, the symbol for Xenon • In mathematics, an unknown quantity • A sign of multiplication • An abscissa
“The series ‘Horizons’ belongs to the exhibition cycle ‘Baltic Symphony,’ which is growing since 2016. The main focus is on personal remembrance sequences that connect with each other at multiple levels. Among other things, the horizon serves as a synonym for impressions of vastness, infinity, loneliness, grief, yearning, search or hope. The individual works fluctuate in the field of tension between abstract and non-abstract representation, but always remain objective in their perception.”
“I’m inspired by an inner muse that stops me in my tracks and compels me to create an image of whats before me. My work harkens to a dreamlike sense of recollection. Images float across the picture plane with the ephemeral sense of how life is a series of fleeting moments stored only in memory. My intention is to bring the viewer to my intimate space of observation.”
“Dreams are there to imagine a different world. Sometimes you just want to be on an island, away from reality. ‘If you are not afraid of your dreams, they are not big enough,’ someone said. My works emerge from within through thoughts and perceptions. In doing so, I allow myself the freedom to make it into a statement with the imagination.”
“Liminal space… the world in between – between a world I live in and a world I listen to, that has always been what has driven my imagery. For 56 years, since I read Edna St Vincent Millay’s poem ‘Renascence’, the place in between life’s state of being and how we treat the other has been an internal focus.”
“Each component has its own meaning. Sometimes audiences may not have a full understanding of the artist’s thoughts. When you make changes in the composition, audiences give new meanings to the artwork.”
“My work is an examination of the space in between our waking minds and the subconscious. The moment in time captured in my paintings should have an ambiguous tension that leaves the viewer unsure of the outcome. Some of my subjects are beautiful, others horrible or frightening. My goal is to inspire the viewer to find the border between structure and disorder in themselves and awaken their imagination.”
“My passion is to create beautiful images, often inspired by fashion and beauty. To me, art is a sort of research, something that makes you think about life and problems in a different way. The purpose of art today is to let people be able to communicate in every form and language and to connect similar souls.”
“My painting compositions could also be called ‘generators of light’ or ‘catchers of light.’ By saying that I am a ‘painter of the light’, I want to emphasize that, for my expression and communication with the observer, I do not need the material world because my fundamental topic – the painting motif – is the light itself.”
“As a youth, I became intrigued and influenced by the art of Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, and Georges Seurat. My exposure to these artists and my own personal quest for integrating spirituality and mythology in my drawings and paintings laid the foundation and ever since I have been weaving conflict, dreams, and humor into my art along with a skewed perception of contemporary society.”
“My art is inspired by the effects of geological processes on man- made structures sitting alone in the surrounding landscape. Its the juxtaposition of the natural environment and the deteriorating object that I find beautiful. The language of my art reflects this idea using a combination of bold, organizational marks within a more random, even messy composition.”
“The ‘stiLife’ series is an exploration of our consciousness and space which is a theme that seems to come to my mind often. Here as a basis, I am starting with a blank canvas. I have explored the perception of space in other series, but with a different basis. For example, in ‘S_pace’ series I built a set with two spaces and a diving wall. In the ‘allONE’ series, I took the familiar theme of a coffee-shop bar and built a set in my studio. What all series have in common is that they offer the viewer a way to question what we call reality.”
“I work from memories of charismatic encounters with people, animals and landscapes, in Africa, Flanders, the Cairngorms, North Yorkshire or Sussex. I grew up in Africa before being “tamed” at a boarding school in England, where I learned from observing our Art Master working. At university two fellow students persuaded me to change from Modern Languages to Architecture. That took over my life for nearly 40 years.”
“I am interested in the re-presentation of the real through abstraction that allows for different interpretations to be made by the viewer. The root of the image may come from observation but equally, it can also be a discourse between form, line, and texture. The way in which the image is ordered, how all the elements are combined and arranged, clearly becomes the driving force. Art, to me, is about evoking a response to our world and sharing that vision.”
“Closing my eye on the beach. Who is looking through my eyes? Am I the light?”
“My characters carry a natural, special beauty. I love to display the facial mimicry that I spice with natural charm. I like dreamy childish themes that are both visionary and realistic, facile, more cheerful. It is a fictional fantasy world where anything can happen, we can be anyone and we can go anywhere because nothing is impossible. I work in a pop surrealistic style.”
“My work is influenced by a variety of interests and diverse sources including but not limited to German/ Austrian Expressionism, antiquity, graphic novels, speculative fiction, Symbolism, Existentialism and history. Recently, I have been interested in the concept of creation and destruction within the artistic process, which I am exploring through the initiation of figurative forms which are then “destroyed” by distortion and abstraction. I create my work by digital painting, digital collage and/or photo manipulation, which I often combine with other elements I’ve made using traditional mediums, such as acrylic paint, watercolor, ink, etc. as well as with non-traditional elements such as tape, torn paper and coffee stains. I combine these various elements together through digital means to compose a final image.
“It is what I can achieve with only the camera that touches me the most about photography (Photoshop only used as a darkroom). I am using one long exposure, time and movement to create my own magic. This technique with many variables makes it impossible to repeat the same motif more than once, a quality I greatly appreciate. Through working non-figuratively, I want to give more room for the viewer’s own imagination.”
“Light and time are the centre of my work. I explore the way light brings out the depth and atmosphere of spaces and I use it to create a sense of silence and solitude. The shimmer of lights and shades reveal or obscure space and emphasize patterns. And patterns capture. Observing the patterns one can get distracted, lose oneself or quite contrary, experience moments of awareness and forget about time.”
“Color and texture are central; thread is the constant in every piece. Discarded materials are the surprise. Stradivarius is a collection of strings gathered to provide a quiet symphony of color. From the moment of their creation, these Tyvek envelope pieces commanded special treatment. As the concertmaster, I attempted to encase their magic inside the single, wrapped, encompassing line. The shadows immediately echoed with the encore performance.”
“I do not limit what I paint. My art is a reflection of life itself and my subject matter varies. Sometimes I deal with current events; things that weigh heavily on my mind have to come out on canvas. The same holds true for a beautiful location or an interesting person, I will want to paint that landscape, that person. Sometimes I will create a visual poem for a whimsical story. Art takes us places in our minds where we might not venture otherwise. It enriches our experience.”
“Inspired by events, architecture, nature and the people met during my voyages my art centers around a variety of topics that stem from these experiences. Ranging from human relationships and emotions to gender, religion and pop-up culture my art varies from silently showing moments of privacy from the perspective of a voyeur to provoking thought and inspire or even just be, art being just art and nothing else.”
“In my quest for peace in the past 25 years, I have drawn my creative nourishment from the ancient philosophical text ‘Brihadaranyaka Upanishad’ and particularly the concepts regarding three duties that each individual must perform. These duties are Datta Dayadvam Damyata meaning give, compassion and control. This is my mantra of peace and serenity in this world of unrest.”
“I work with brushes and acrylic colors on linen or cardboard, in both large and small sizes. My fascination with artistic action stems from the desire to utilize the push of positive energy, to paint pictures in a very personal style and to produce expressive and dynamic atmospheres. My abstract paintings arise without conceptional submission, inspired by nature and the elements, they are the result of my intuition.”
“I work to reveal the paradoxes within images, considering their equivocal nature and their ambiguities. I like to draw upon the confusion between the various codes of representation associated with painting, photography, and drawing, but also with photocopied, documentary and scenographic media. The resulting images raise issues of authenticity, realism and illusion.”
“I am an evolving artist on every level, and my home is not simply geography but how I see and then communicate my vision. My mission is to bring upscale fine art to a wide variety of viewers in a comfortable uplifting atmosphere with the belief that beautiful environments raise the level of thought and health while igniting the heart — thus making a positive difference in the bigger vision.”
“My work is about extremes and the tension that is created when opposites are thrust together. Black and white is the backbone of each piece. It represents the constant struggle of good and bad, life and death, control, and rigidity. Color is entirely about emotions. If one does not trust them, they can have a profoundly negative effect. To embrace them leads to a positive integration into one’s self.”
“Art is remedy poking and prodding the narcissism of censorship and the status quo of “accepted” thought. My paintings are discovery allowing my intuition to dominate. The pertinence is embracing something beyond an intellectual understanding yet using my reason to push the work to new boundaries. An improvisational musician for many years, I have now emerged as a storyteller extemporizing with paint, new media, color, texture, line and idea.”
“This collection of drawings investigates the fiction of identity through its performance in cerebral spaces that demonstrate a willingness to project and construct meaning. Death is our silent companion through life and these images are our shadows. This mortal awareness is our witness to childhood fantasies and adult realities. While these sentimental figures are absorbed with their own pre-constructed identities, they are still compelled to subvert conventional roles and relationships.”
“I am interested in nature. Flowers represent beauty and the mathematical in nature, through the number of petals, the arrangement of seeds with the Fibonacci sequence and so on. It is a mysterious connection to universal rules. As an Eastern myself, the Lotus flower is especially meaningful. It symbolises spirituality. In many ways we as humans can learn from flowers. This is why I love to produce images of flowers.”
“Capturing the moment of transience and preserving the beauty of the imperfect – that is the purpose of my work.”
“Ravens and crows are associated with wisdom, intelligence, magic as well as death and the dream of shoes which enable men to fly, were the inspiration for my sculpture. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg once said, “He, who has eyes to see, sees everything in everything.” Art is my way to see and to create a new vision.”
“I am combining realism with abstract expressionism (color field) where large fields of flat solid color are used. The realism in ‘Pinup #2’ was comprised of reflected images of these color blocks with a figurative representation of the model based on 1950s pinup art created by artists like Alberto Vargas. I have included a reflection of myself taking photos with reference to the Diego Velazquez painting ‘Las Meninas.’ Also, ‘Pinup #2’ satirizes this type of art with the slang reference to attractive women in the 1950s as “cupcakes.” The shopping bag (from an actual clothing store) gives an ironical twist to what the model is not wearing.”
My work is inspired by my love of nature; nature that surrounds and connects me deeper to my soul’s yearning, healing, and awakening. These images touch on my personal journey of my soul’s awakening. There is a simplicity to life I yearn to be able to re-awaken in myself through my photography using primarily found natural objects. My hope is to evoke through my images a sense of recognizing the beautiful sacred dance of life and death and all that comes in between.”
“My painting is an act of transmission, the expression of my inner music, a composition mixing sounds and silence, colors and tonal hues, movements and rhythms. This inner pulse, transmitted by the hand, then becomes visible material: the quintessence of my being. My paintings are my joy and my sadness, my memories and my dreams, my laughter and my tears, my serenity and my pain.”
“I am a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I currently live and work. My drawings, sculptures, and installations are inspired by alchemy, cultural aesthetics, and ecological systems. My work involves exploration of diverse cultural relationships with the environment, reflective of my Greek and Syrian roots. Educated in both craft and sculpture media, I embrace the visual field through a sensitivity to touch. My exhibitions have traversed these two traditions. Seeking spiritual commonality in our post-modern culture, my work is meant to re-sensualize an increasingly mechanized, computerized, and mass-produced world.”
“My name is Haimeng Cao, a Chinese concept artist and visual development artist who works in Los Angeles. As an alumnus of ArtCenter College of Design, one of the top industrial design schools in the USA, I have worked for clients include Blizzard Entertainment, Framestore, NetEase, Titmouse, etc. My expertise of science-fictional city landscape design is serving for major projects in game, animation and film industries.”
“My aspiration is to express passion and the range of emotions I experience while painting. Interaction with my viewers gives me confidence to trust my artistic instincts. It gives me permission to create without limits. It is important that my audience, in a very simple way, draw satisfaction and pure pleasure looking at and living with my art. This is the power of art: to overcome the problems and realities of everyday life, offering a hopeful view.”
“Uzbek Miniature Art is one of the most interesting genres in the centuries-old history of Oriental Art. Painting in miniature traces its use in poetry books where artists depicted scenes described in the books. The tradition of Miniatures in Central Asia dates back to the reign of Tamerlane (1370-1405). By the early 1700s, City Bukhara was noted as the center of Miniature painting. Miniature painting is one of the traditional fine arts of Uzbekistan which is mostly represented on paper but also on some materials such as leather, dried pumpkins, lacquer boxes, and jewelry. Owing to preserved works, historians were able to describe many of the details of life in the country happening 5-10 centuries ago. I have been engaging in miniature art, calligraphy and carving since the age of 16. Throughout years of my studies and work in this field, I learned about and analyzed works of old-time master miniaturists. As one of the leading Oriental miniaturists, I took part in restoration of ancient books of Bukhara from the 15-19 centuries, which are stored in the state museum of Bukhara.”
“Painting is a conscious experiment under the influence of our subconscious mind shaped by our life and environment, exerting influence from the depths of our being. Nothing is certain.”
“My practice is process led. Currently, I am exploring drawing in its broadest sense using recycled materials to create sculptural drawing forms. The edges whether ripped torn or cut are vital to these installations acting as the drawn line. These pieces are works in progress leading to a central piece containing MULTIPLES, exploring placement relationship and location. These works allow for interpretation, conversation, and dialogue.”
“ I am an admirer of nature and its behavior; its colors, lights, reflections and movements. Its beauty and how it emits a sensation of peace make me a witness to a moment I want to share. I paint with mixed modern and classic compositions using different acrylic painting techniques, experimenting with colors, and acrylic mixes using gold, silver leaf to reveal the harmony and the beauty of nature.”
“I try to remove the pure form from the object by starting only by looking at it. I call this “the art of seeing”. Realism is not realistic painting but a way to let the painter communicate with the object and at which point, I am giving the object its soul back, meaning it has to be painted perfectly.”
“I strive for my art to uplift the spirit and to inspire appreciation for the beauty of life.”
“ The ‘Majolica’ half bust is a symbolic, stylized figure of a woman. It is a metaphor to achieve its end through the molding of clay, forged with water and fire, of spiritual and seductive colors. It tells of intimate things, describes inner pain, the spasmodic search for hope, the evolution in the search of the light for excellence… A cut represented with a red line describes the wound and cuts the figure in two parts.”
“I am a sculptor, painter, performer, art curator, and costume designer, born in Milan in 1973, where I currently work and live. My work focuses on connections between us and nature. My latest research is titled “The folds of the soul as a landscape.” I explore the sense of place analyzing the idea of the soul as a place of internal and external tension of the self and how the idea of the soul can be translated and integrated with the external environment. In particular, I focus on how we can relate to each other thanks to the “profound silence” of nature, truly connecting us to its natural order.”
“My paintings synthesize realism and abstraction. The still-life window scenes focus on documenting the play of exterior light upon interior objects. The glass panes distort reality, bending and twisting the light around rendering each glass pane and bottle into its own little abstract painting. However, when the viewer steps back, what he or she observes is the window’s framework structuring and organizing the composition into a realist perspective of an exterior window scene.”
“My perception of the world is enlivened by exaggerating nature’s beauty. I balance classical realism with contemporary art to create paintings that are imaginative, not strictly lifelike. I want people to engage rather than simply view— to feel as if they can wrap their hands around a piece, sink into it and still be held up. My artistic interpretation reflects seemingly oppositional features of nature by infusing powerful, almost graphic qualities, with elements of femininity, softness, and sensuality.”
“Abstract art is a reality that does not exist, a product of thought, momentary feelings, and music melody… all that could be my inspiration to create. Artists’ works are often inseparable from their cultural background. I’m no different. Eastern influences constantly guide my path. I use the rhythm of calligraphy and color strokes to create my work.”
“I want to put you into the scene – have you explore its spaces, and feel like you are actually there. I want you to smell the desert flora and feel the crunch of the sand under your boots – everywhere you look, there’s something new to discover. The tight detail and glazing makes this possible. With looser more ‘painterly’ work, you are stopped at the surface of the painting.”
“Although we have grown up, our inner child has never once left us, its needs, the damages and deficiencies in our grown-up environment, our emotional projections… these have always been a part of ourselves. And they have been waiting for us to discover them, comfort them, let them help us become a better person who understands oneself better or should you continue hiding their existence until you forget and lose yourself? This is the question I would like to bring out to the audience.”
“I painted this work just after the terrorist attacks in France and wanted to depict the violence using the warm colors that soften the image. My aim is to draw thoughts and feelings of everyday life. I paint current events in their beauty as well as in their darkness, creating constantly new themes and paths.”
“I like to express my emotions through my illustrations, using digital media. For me, every illustration is a final point in something that turns around in my head. Some of these works appear in my best moments, and others, in the worst of them. My influences are a mix of psychology and other digital artists like Loish and DestinyBlue.”
“My work focuses on contemporary prints and illustrations with an emphasis on shapes, minimal lines, colors, and monochromatic combinations. Some of my sources of inspiration are Yayoi Kusama, Kumi Sugai, Ikko Tanaka, Sol LeWitt. As my love for art has grown, I have decided I don’t have to limit my appreciation for art to one style/period.”
“My painting, ‘TWO FIGURES’ incorporates several visual subtexts. Essentially a figurative composition, it is also an aggregate of compartmentalized spaces incorporating still life motifs. Referencing our current environmental crisis is the Horseshoe Crab and Red Knot, mutually dependent and threatened species. This composition, reflective of the classical, Greco-Roman tradition, as found in the wall paintings of Pompeii, is handled in a modernist yet painterly manner. A subtle yet noteworthy moment is the pentimenti of the third hand. The painting expresses my sensibilities and interests, in art history and natural history, merged in the creative process.”
“My photographs are a digitally manipulated exploration of color, movement, and depth. The original concept is influenced by post-impressionism and surrealism as well as my subject. The subject’s personality and my mood play a big part in completing the photo. I add color, texture, movement and depth using dodging and burning, healing, cloning and drawing tools.”
“I am a daydreamer prioritizing spending time in nature to allow my mind to wander. Walking by the lake near my home, I feel connected to the unseen energy that surrounds us all regardless of species, race, gender, size or background. I absorb the colors, patterns, sounds, and textures of the lake and its surrounds going deeper into the natural world to find my place.”
“Capitalism is accelerating climate change through its inequity, patriarchy and dominance thinking, where violence grows and resources are scarce. This stress influences us in everything we do and see. This work calls for consideration of new approaches, new perceptions, new ways of talking about and meeting the challenges of our time.”
“I question humanity and try to convey my feelings and emotions through abstraction. The working process inspires me a lot. I paint on several canvases on the floor one after another and do not stick to any certain rule. I have been interested in old movies and music lately as a theme for my works. The naming of my works carries a message which plays an important role for the viewer in understanding my thoughts and intentions.”
“To give soul and emotion to my paintings is before all that I look for. I paint with my heart, I put what I feel and beyond realism, I try to have this something that will make it more than a photo. The work of eyes and light fascinates me. The eyes reflect the soul and cannot lie. Light allows me to give dimension and strength. I work hair by hair, so that the details and the realism are crying of truth and my paintings can deliver the subjects’ messages, their emotions.”
“My involvement with photography started when I was in high school. It continued with my military service where I was fortunate enough to become a Photographers Mate in the Navy. I had the opportunity to work in a variety of formats in both black and white and color. My first love though has always been the expressive images obtainable with black and white film. I also like the fact that black and white negatives retain their sharpness for such a great length of time that I will be able to pass on my negatives to my children and grandchildren.”
“My watercolors are created as spontaneous splashes of color in which I begin to delineate shapes and add detail. They are predominantly colorful semi-abstract florals which are considered ‘healing’ by critics as they definitely lift one’s spirits and bring a smile to most folks’ faces. I paint on paper, canvas and also on clay board. I have had numerous group and solo shows and garnered some awards in the process. Two of my paintings were in the 2019 London Biennale. Painting is an integral part of my life. It is an expression of my joy in everything I see.”
“The moth is to the butterfly as the female artist is to the male… often overlooked for their traditionally celebrated counterparts in modern pop culture and throughout history. This parallel is being explored in my series, ‘BREAKthru: Art Herstory and the Moth.’ My work has evolved in recent years from traditional charcoal portraiture to the inclusion of colorful mixed media components from pastels and paints to paper and photo elements.”
“I feel I am useless as an artist when I am happy. Pain is what creates my artwork. The painful experiences that people go through as they journey through life in the world around us from childhood to adulthood which in many ways is full of chaos and hardship are what sparks and motivates myself to possess my objectives to make purposeful artwork that hopefully, generates meaningful and fulfilling empathetic connections to people. As I observe and interpret the world around me combined with creating my artwork, I discover time and time again that true beauty lies within darkness and that sometimes nightmares are the birthplace of some of the best creative ideas for an artist.”
“I use figurative images that have associative meaning. Significant gesture, the relationship of nameable objects, juxtaposed in sometimes unexpected ways, asks for the viewer’s interaction. An enigmatic element that defies the tyranny of a single meaning stands at the forefront. Painting, like poetry, allows for the simultaneity of meaning. The portrayed image, the viewer’s history, and inference create the experience.”
“As a fledgling illustrator in Brooklyn during the 1980s, I took on any project thrown my way. I refer to that time as my “snack or famine days.” Eventually, I zeroed in on editorial work and soon scored assignments at publications like The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Village Voice (primarily covers). Since the early 2000s, I’ve concentrated on gallery work with an editorial, satirical slant… essentially larger oil paintings with conceptual content reminiscent
of my illustration years. Lampooning politicians, pundits or spiritual leaders who specialize in alternative facts, manufactured outrage, false equivalents, convoluted conspiracy theories and tunnel-visioned tribalism (whew) is my form of protest and provides a satisfying outlet.”
“Dare to be Different. I hope you enjoy my image as much as I enjoyed creating it. I just let go of any fear and experiment with colors, shapes and patterns. What defines normal, anyway? Is it in the way we look or what we say? I don’t care if you think I’m a freak. I’d prefer to say, I’m eccentric, quirky, and unique in every way!”
My paintings feature factory pipes, faceless children, waterfalls, and tangled lines to express my repressed behavior from school supervisors, my cultural barrier, and the absence of family. The process of creating images about my childhood allows me to keep asking questions. I go back to my past and stare at my young self. And then, I open my mind and accept everything I felt. Finally, I find the peace inside me.
“In personal moods, I take photos and choose to paint them. The image is mostly unidentifiable, it’s fading into disappearance, has minor details, has no personal involvement, it is general and distanced. It brings more of a state of mind than a physical image becoming very personal and involved altogether. Choosing a limited color scale, surprisingly, brought me and my works a sense of expression and freedom.”
“To me, this piece displays how small events in our lives can sometimes be cheerful and sorrowful but collectively, they are what gives us hope to keep moving forward. This piece is made of an arrangement of colors that in the end show us the big picture of our existence.”
“To tell stories is my profession, as an actress, an author or photographer. My father Dr. Walter Boje was a famous photographer, whom I learned a lot from. Themes in my work include dance, architecture (demolition/erection), portraits, trees, flowers…”
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