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ISSUE 13
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CONTENTS
L I S T O F F E AT U R E D A R T I S T S
SUBMIT
Both emerging and established artists are
welcome to apply with works in any medium:
painting, sculpture, textile, collage, drawing,
photography, mixed media.
TOP PICK FROM THE BLOG —
JAMES KIRWAN
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August 2016 guest curator —
Director and Founder,
Causey Contemporary, NYC —
Tracy Causey Jeffery
Please visit our website for more details:
www.freshpaintmagazine.com/for-artists
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MARTINE JOHANNA
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We welcome announcements and reviews of
your current and upcoming exhibitions.
GET YOUR COPY
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Wo m en ’s em p owerm en t i n t o da y’s
w o rld thro u g h the p ain tin g s o f t h e
artist
O b serve the p ro c ess o f p e rs o n a l
ref lec tio n , u n ravellin g and h o n o r i n g
c o m p lex so c ial an d m en t a l s t r u c t u re s i n
the w o rk s o f the artist
GALLERIES AND
MUSEUMS
Please send installation views and existing
photos of the artist’s work
as well as other relevant images,
via [email protected]
to be featured on our website
and promoted through our social media.
K E L LY R E E M T S E N
I nvitatio n s in to sec ret, f or g o tte n a n d
im ag in ed p lac es, p lac es w h e re n a t u re
ru n s w ild an d p eo p le live a t t h e ve r y
ed g es o f life — ex p ressed i n t h e a r t i s t ’s
w o rk
FreshPaintMagazine invites a panel of artists,
critics and curators to select
up-and-coming artists for each issue.
Please contact us via
[email protected]
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DEAN MELBOURNE
CONTRIBUTE
We are grateful for the contribution that art
specialists/curators/critics have made
by suggesting emerging talent.
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Cu rated selec tio n o f artw o r k s
b y Reb ec c a Wilso n , Chie f C u ra t o r a t
S aatc hi A rt
H O L LY F R E A N
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M u lti- im ag e w o rk sty le o f t h e a r t i s t
w ith the p lay f u l an d hu m o r o u s h i n t s o f
n arratives
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10 PROACTIVE THINGS YOU
C A N D O T O TA K E Y O U R
C R E AT I V I T Y & A R T C A R E E R
TO THE NEXT LEVEL
THIS YEAR
By B rid g ette M ayer, B rid g e tte Ma ye r
A rt Ad viso rs, B rid g ette M a ye r G a l l e r y
T I P S A N D I N S P I R AT I O N
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Fro m p revio u sly p u b lishe d a r t i s t s
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C U R AT E D S E L E C T I O N O F
A R T W O R K S b y Reb ec c a Wi l s o n
CALL FOR ART
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Au g u st 2 0 1 6 : G u est c u rat o r —
Trac y Cau sey Jef fery, Dire c t o r a n d
Fo u n d er, Cau sey Co n tempo ra r y, NYC
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O N THE COVER
Martine Johanna
Control 1
CON TRI BUTORS
Publishers, editors-in-chief
Ekaterina Popova
Maria Zemtsova
Associate Editor
Amanda Shrawder
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Ariel Lockshaw
Live Bait
acrylic, enamel, airbrush on panel
42 x 42 inches
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Editorial Assistant
Janet Ashworth
Guest Curator
Rebecca Wilson
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F E AT U R E D A R T I S T S
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C U R AT E D
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SELECTION
BY
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REBECCA
WILSON
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WILLIAM ARVIN
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MICHAEL AZGOUR
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KAROLINA ALBRICHT 42
ALLI ANDERSON 43
BLANDINE BARDEAU
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CHARLOTTE BRISLAND
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N ATA L I A B L A C K 46
CLAIRE BREWSTER
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HELEN BROUGH 50
LEAH BULLEN 51
ANNA BUCKNER
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MICHELLE TRAHAN CARSON
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LAURA DENZER
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ANDREA CASTRO
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LAURIE CLOSE
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GINA COCHRAN
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CAROLINE COLLOM
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MADELEINE FINLEY
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CARA GURI
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KYLE HACKETT
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MINAS HALAJ
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MARC HENRY
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MORNA HINTON
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TYLER KLINE
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JULIETTE PAULL
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MANON LABROSSE
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OLHA PRYYMAK
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XIAOXUAN LIU
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ARIEL LOCKSHAW
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TERRY MACK
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H E AT H E R M E R C K L E 83
GEORG ÓSKAR
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CHARLIE MASSON L A U R E N M AT S U M OTO ERIC MAVKO
JOHN-MICHAEL METELERKAMP
ALESSANDRO PALMIGIANI
GEORGIA NOBLE
RUSS NOTO
JAIME POBLETE ARAVENA
ANNE RYNEARSON
DIANA ROIG
M AT T S C H A E F E R CORY SEWELSON
SARAH SHAW KYUNG HWA SHON
K AT I E D A R B Y S L AT E R PA M E L A S TA K E R M AT H E W T U C K E R DIANA TREMAINE
MARTIN WEBB
D E B O R A H W E S T M A N C O AT DAVID WILLBURN
KEN WOOD
HIEJIN YOO
YVONNE ZAGO ADRIAN ZAVALA
JAEYEON YOO
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EDITO RIAL
We are pleased to present the thirteenth edition of FreshPaintMagazine.
This early summer issue is bursting with a vibrant array of stunning
images carefully crafted by artists from all over the world.
We are delighted to have worked with Rebecca Wilson, who is Chief
Curator and VP, Art Advisory at Saatchi Art, an online gallery connecting
artists and art lovers in more than 100 countries. Rebecca has selected
the works of 58 emerging talents from those who submitted. Her
preferences enable us to share a very diverse, conceptual and relevant
range of the work of artists with extraordinary experiences.
We hope you enjoy the fascinating interviews with our guest artists
from Los Angeles, England and Holland. They talk about their strong art
careers, processes of work and sources of inspiration.
In addition, we can all learn so much from Bridgette Mayer’s piece on
what we can do to take our creativity and art careers to the next level.
Concerned about deadlines? Check out the tips from our previously
published artists who have wise words to share on this matter.
We would also like to bring our blog to your attention. The best blog
submission will be featured in our print issues every two months. So, get
in touch for a great opportunity to be published online and in print. Help
us to introduce your work to a wider circle of art lovers.
Finally, once again we are grateful to our contributors, artists and readers
for your support, interest and effort. Such collaboration enriches our
publication and enables us to team up with art lovers around the world.
We at FreshPaint will continue to promote and create opportunities
for emerging and under represented artists, while offering insight and
connection to the fascinating and stimulating world of contemporary art.
Ekaterina Popova and Maria Zemtsova,
editors-in-chief
FIND US O NL INE
www.freshpaintmagazine.com
facebook.com/freshpaintmagazine
instagram.com/freshpaintmag
twitter.com/freshpaintmag
pinterest.com/freshpaintmag
CO NTACT
GENERAL ENQUIRIES:
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Hiejin Yoo
Relationship in Red
oil on canvas
40 x 44 inches
TOP PICK FROM THE BLOG
JAMES KIRWAN
I am a visual artist from Ireland, I paint and make
sculptures, sometimes combining the two. I begin
by collecting imagery, be it from old National
Geographic magazines, the internet or photographs
I take myself. With my paintings I piece different
elements together in a collage-like style, borrowing
a landscape from one place and an object or figure
from somewhere else. I mostly use acrylic paint on
wood for these paintings and they can take a long
time to create from start to finish. In contrast to
them, I have recently started experimenting with
loose colourful abstract pieces. I enjoy exploring
and collecting found objects from the places I go
and from these I create sculptural pieces. All these
James Kirwan
Beyond the back of beyond
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different sides of my work accompany each other
and are linked by similar colours and themes. I am
inspired by landscapes and colour and the work is
about wanderlust and my desire to travel. I see my
work as a way of travelling to new places in my mind.
I lived many years in Dublin and over two years ago I
decided to move to Westport, on the wild west coast
of Ireland where myself and my work developed
hugely. Recently, I decided to move to Porto, in
Portugal where I am currently doing a residency for
a few months but hope to stay longer to see where
this place takes me and my work further.
James Kirwan
It looked inviting so I just went in
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James Kirwan
Pilgrims don’t go there anymore, for obvious reasons
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James Kirwan
Cookin up small
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Kelly Reemtsen, On Top ,36 x 36”, 2015
K E L LY
REEMTSEN
Kelly Reemtsen, Sharp Minded, 30x30”, 2014
FP: We first saw your work at De Buck
Gallery in New York and fell in love. Tell us
a little bit about your background.
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KR: I studied fashion design but I found I was
much more interested in making objects and
painting. By the time I was out of University I
knew I wanted to pursue something in the
arts. Being in a big city like Los Angeles made
it easy for me to find like minded people. I
started working in an art gallery and taking
classes with a painter that I admired. I slowly
developed my own style.
FP: When did you first get the idea to create
the juxtaposition of glamorous women
holding power tools?
KR: I saw a survey from a 1950s Better Homes
& Gardens with a beautifully dressed woman
holding a gardening hose that asked “Should
women be able to water the lawn?” I thought
it was so funny and absurd especially the
way the word ‘should’ was used. The more
I thought about it ...it was a great theme to
build upon. Should a woman be able to cut
down a tree or be the boss or run a country. I
think you get it.
FP: We love both the technical, painterly
elements of your work as well as its rich
content. How has your work evolved over
the years?
KR: It’s evolved both in terms of style and
in subject matter. I’ve developed a heavier
handling of paint over time. I feel the
more paint I use the more aggressive the
message. Many of my earlier paintings are still
life — furniture, pills etc., and even within
womanhood, the themes have changed. For
instance, my most recent works deal with the
idea of breaking through the metaphorical
glass ceiling and often include a figure literally
climbing on a ladder or chair and holding
sledge hammers (and other things that
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“I saw a survey from a 1950s Better Homes &
Gardens with a beautifully dressed woman
holding a gardening hose that asked “Should
women be able to water the lawn?” I thought
it was so funny and absurd especially the
way the word ‘should’ was used. The more
I thought about it ...it was a great theme to
build upon. Should a woman be able to cut
d o w n a t r e e o r b e t h e b o s s o r r u n a c o u n t r y.
I t h i n k y o u g e t i t .”
- Kelly Reemsten
FP: What story do you hope to convey to the viewer
through your paintings?
KR: My paintings explore women’s empowerment and the
fact that women can do anything today. I like the term “use
every tool” …to get the job done. It is a broad interpretation
but I feel the tools really send a message of hard work.
FP: How are your sculptures different from your
paintings?
KR: They are a very different medium, size, and execution.
But they relate to the paintings in that they are accessories
(lipstick/pills etc.) in the same way that the figure’s tools and
jewelry are accessories. I see them as an extension of the
tool. A pill can be just a tool to get you through your day,
just like an axe or a computer. It is really the same thought
process.
FP: What is a typical day in your studio like? Explain your
creative process.
painting towards mid-afternoon and work until 2am or so.
I also really like the technical nature of printmaking. I am
always working on a print project. Right now it is two, a
woodcut project out of my studio (I have a great press)
and a silkscreen project to be printed at Serio Press in Los
Angeles.
Process in short: First I find dresses and tools that I like.
I have friends model for me for a few hours. I will take
hundreds of photos from the shoot from which a couple of
paintings will emerge. I have to use photographs because
it would be very hard for the model / friend to hold a 10
pound chainsaw for an entire day. I do a very detailed
drawing that can take several days. In the end, I paint in
a very spontaneous heavy handed ‘almost ignoring the
drawing’ way.
FP: What upcoming projects or exhibitions should we
be aware of?
KR: I have an exhibition opening at David Klein Gallery in
Detroit in September. I will also be a visiting artist at Flying
Horse Editions in September.
KR: I tend to work later in the day, so I will often begin
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Kelly Reemtsen, To the top, 60x60” 2015
break glass). I am also always integrating new dresses and
accessories into the paintings.
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Kelly Reemtsen, Smashing, 56x48”, 2015
Kelly Reemtsen, Me Time, 44x44”, 2014
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DEAN
MELBOURNE
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FP: Tell us a little bit about your background. When
did you decide to dedicate your life to painting?
DM: I grew up in a suburban bit of the Black Country,
an area in the Midlands that is historically famed for
being the engine room of the Industrial Revolution.
I was an only child and followed most of the clichés
of being good in my own company and a bit of a
dreamer.
At Art College my tutor took me to a little private view
of his work. I had never seen a room devoted to one
person’s vision in that way before. They were beautiful
expressive gardens with Greek sculpture and full of
symbolism. The atmosphere of that evening gave me
a vision of how artists could create a world of their
own and take the viewer along with them.
DM: Michael Wolff the designer talks about the
three ‘rooms’ of a creative career. The first is the
‘room of imitation’ where we copy, respond to and
are shaped by the masters we are drawn to. For
me in those very early days there were a few really
important artists. All figurative painters and although
I think about them less now they can be seen in
what I do. Edvard Munch with his intense emotional
drama and curved world, Gustav Klimt with his
sinuous and delicate erotic drawings and Edward
Hopper with his ambiguous atmosphere and the
questions he posed for the viewer.
My early work was about my relationship to femininity
and was gloss work in the style of Gary Hume.
FP: We are mesmerised by the theme of myths
in your paintings. How do you create a scene for
each work? Do you do a lot of historical research or
is each painting based on your own mythological
philosophy?
DM: My research isn’t particularly scholarly,
I read, a lot, and I read widely. I read classic works
like Beowulf, Dante’s Inferno as well as more
contemporary things that reference or riff off these
classic themes. I also read nature writing and this
informs the way I think about place and setting.
I think about settings.
Ideas for scenes come at different stages of the
process, sometimes I have a vision of what I want
very early on, other times it is only working with
the model and props that something comes. In
some cases looking back at images a long time after
creating them I start to see potential for them.
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Dean Melbourne, Consider Her Ways, oil and gloss on canvas, 110 x 110 cm, 2015
FP: What was your first work like, and how did you
find your artistic voice?
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Dean Melbourne, High Tea, oil on canvas, 110 x 110 cm, 2015
Dean Melbourne, The Hex, oil and gloss on canvas, 120 x 100 cm, 2016
DM: Working with models as opposed to found images
is a new process for me and I am still figuring out ways of
finding people to work with. I worked with two models for
‘This Myth’. One I met in a local café. I could instantly see
how her presence would work. The other was a fantastic
life model, she was so patient with me. She even modelled
outside at night in February as the ground froze beneath her
feet for a short film that was made about my process.
FP: Do you reveal the character of each of your subjects?
How does your interaction with the model evolve from
the initial encounter to the realisation of a painting?
DM: As I said, this is new for me however I can already
see that there is a trust that develops. The shoot is pretty
intense and quite intimate. I want the models to feel very
safe to allow an element of their selves out that they might
not usually.
I’m keen to develop this further but yes, the intention is to
allow the models to express something of their inner selves
that perhaps they don’t in any other circumstance. It’s a
chance to find an inner ‘animal’. The model never really
poses for shots but takes on a character and acts a scenario.
Hopefully this means they become less conscious of the
camera and the character becomes real for them.
FP: The inky background, blackness and playful
brushstrokes bring something truly mysterious and
theatrical to each of your works. Tell us a little bit more
about your painting style. Explain the technical process
of your work.
DM: I suppose there are stylistic things that have developed
in different ways and come together in a schizophrenic
way. The layering of black oil, gloss and ink comes from
experiments with gloss when I was working in a Gary Hume
style. I love the liquid and the opacity. It is uncontrollable
and does what it wants to at times. The fast rhythmic
brushwork I think comes from a love of Matisse and that
early modernism. I tend to paint at speed and when things
slow down it can all get a bit heavy for me.
FP: How do you hope the viewers respond to your work
and what is the most important thing they should take
away?
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DM: I suppose I want them to feel that the work is a
permission for them to remember their darker selves and
remember there is magic and joy in accessing our more
animal selves.
I’m not demanding anything particularly, I would like it
if they went home remembering that the world can be
romantic, gothic and magical if you remember to look at it
in that way.
FP: Do you feel your work is evolving in any way, if so
how?
DM: The process of working with collaborators, models,
performance artists is something that I am very keen to see
evolve more. The resulting paintings will reflect that I hope.
There are still some fundamental questions about picture
making that I am arguing with myself about in the work and
resolving those questions is part of my journey.
FP: Do you have any suggestions for how an artist can
go about discovering what he/she really wants to say
through art?
DM: I think this is different for all of us. Some people
naturally find this happens early on but for me it’s taken 20
years to start to come together.
I once heard that a mentor had told a fellow artist about an
idea that there is a certain amount of work or ideas that just
have to be worked through that are inward looking. When
you get through them, the artists then start to turn outwards
to talk to the world.
I think there is some truth in that. You just have to get that
stuff out. Make bad work, get lost down dead ends of
thought, make derivative work, copy, steal etc. While you
are doing this keep demanding a little bit more of yourself.
Push hard. Improve critically, practically, and materially.
This is a life long journey of striving to be half decent before
time is up. I would ask artists what the 10 year old version of
them would have been excited about making and tell them
to start there as it’s probably not too far from the mark.
Lastly I would say to get a mentor. My mentors have had
massive impacts on my progress.
Dean Melbourne, The Fate of the Puffers, oil and gloss on canvas, 100 x 80cm 2016
FP: Who are the figures in your paintings? How do you
find your models?
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COVER ARTIST
MARTINE
JOHANNA
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FP: Where did you receive your training?
MJ: I’ve studied art at the ArtEZ Academy in Arnhem, Holland,
however, that study was more fashion oriented. I just started out
a couple of years back, so my techniques are self taught, which
is both a strength and a struggle.
Martine Johanna, Control 2, acrylics on wood, 60 x 80cm, 2016
FP: How would you say your early work was different from
your current pieces?
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MJ: I used to draw a lot and paint rarely, so that’s a major
difference, also my earlier paintings were very quick and raw
and I was not yet fully aware of how to express myself like I did in
my drawing. In 2014 though, I realized you need to spend time
and prolonged energy on several works at once or in a series to
really get a feel for the material and what you want to express
and how to express it. Still though, I’m always grasping for what
is out of reach, technically and mentally always obsessively
attracted to the unobtainable images in my head. That thing
that people sometimes say, “you’re very talented” can get on
my nerves; I might have been born with something that helps
me steer my hand and make a translation from what’s in my
head. But without the hard work and tireless effort, none of the
good artists I know would be where they are today. It’s work,
and time spent.
FP: What was an essential moment for progressing your
career and beginning to exhibit your work internationally?
MJ: I can’t really say which exact moment, it all goes very
organically, but the internet is a big helper in getting exposure
and being seen. I was lucky ‘til now to have very wonderful and
professional people contact me through that exposure who
fell for what I have to say because they feel it has presence and
urgency. What more can I ask for?
FP: Who are the figures in your work? Are they people you
know or fictional characters?
MJ: My models are friends and people I know and admire
or find interesting, sometimes though I mess up the faces
and mix up features that then start to resemble imaginary
people or real ones. I do that sometimes when I have dreamt
something strange like film stills of a mix of images I’ve
seen that I try to catch on canvas. I guess that familiarity is
what people sometimes look for, something they recognize
themselves, friends or famous people, it’s an interesting side
effect.
FP: The figures are often depicted in a pensive, dreamlike state. What emotions or moods do you strive to
communicate through your work?
MJ: There is so much more behind a person’s facade, there is a
history of experiences, thoughts, trauma maybe, hurt, love and
imagination. I have my personal struggles and ideals to draw
from as well as humanity in general. People are so interesting,
their social structures, relationships and behavior especially in
the early years and young adulthood. Mankind makes up rules
to have ourselves measured by in certain times, but that’s all
they are, made up, made up by morals, politics, angst, ideals,
time, it’s a wondrous well of inspiration. Also to me it’s a process
of personal reflection, unravelling and honoring those complex
social and mental structures, making me both observer and
participant.
FP: The color in your recent work is stunning. Where do you
get inspiration for your palette?
MJ: I am drawn by colors like a kid who sees their own first
rainbow, flower or physical toy. Besides that, color also is a
manifestation of the above, a trigger or expression of mental
states. In that sense it helps me convey the complexity of my
subject matter, there are no greys or blacks in my work.
FP: Who are your favorite living artists?
MJ: Ouf..many, what mostly triggers me is people doing their
own thing, not the copycats. Also it’s not a direct influence on
what I make, but more an influence of spirit so to say. People
that have a loving obsession for their work and a drive to put
something genuine out there and have something strongly
connected to this day and age. I can’t name them all, but if I can
name a few that stood out lately it’s people like painter Janine
van Oene, Justin Mortimer, Emilio Villalba, Ulf Puder, Alex the
Beck, Brent Wadden and more recently I have to say Jean Paul
Mallozzi, his work is so radiant and sensitive. I could write out a
whole list though and just mentioning names doesn’t quite do
them justice either.
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Martine Johanna, Happy Days, acrylics on belgian linen, 48,5 x 73 inches, 2016
Martine Johanna, Arsenic Blues, acrylics on linen, 60 x 80 cm, 2014
H O L LY
FREAN
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FP: How
would you
describe your
original style
in only three
words?
HF: It smells
good.
Holly Frean, Hockney In His Studio, oil on canvas, 155 x 155 cm
FP: What inspired you to become an artist? What is your
background and education?
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HF: I began training as an architect but painting soon took
over. I grew up crawling around on the floor of my parents’
textile design studio where there were always designers and
artists and jobs I could help with – drawing, tracing, cutting,
sticking, arranging… I would pore over design manuals and
art books and remember feeling strangely smug that I knew
how to change a nozzle on a can of spray mount or a scalpel
knife blade before any of my friends knew what one was.
FP: We loved your multi-image work style with the playful
and humorous hints of narratives. Tell us a little bit more
about your approach of story telling through the series
of these paintings.
HF: It is pure conjecture! Everything is loosely based on
what I’ve read in books or seen on the walls of galleries. It’s
not historical facts and narratives I’m interested in repeating
in my own work; I am visualising how an artist’s day is spent
or how a sculpture was made or what a studio crit might be
like with them. Painting it out makes it real and concrete. The
paintings are a sequence of glimpses into the daily life of
these people, mundane moments and momentous ones
alike. I’m also looking at process and decision-making and I
confront Matisse about this very thing in Conversations with
Matisse, but that’s another story.
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Holly Frean, Sixty Four Artists Painting Self Portraits, oil on canvas, 125 x 125 cm
Holly Frean, A Day In The Life Of Edouard Vuillard
Holly Frean, Lucien Freud Paints The Queen, oil on canvas, 125 x 125 cm
Holly Frean, Woman and Cat Stretching, after Edouard Manet’s Woman With A Cat of 1880
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FP: You show a lot of famous artists’ lives through your
work. Who are your biggest influences? Explain how
they affected your work.
HF: I’ve got stacks on the drawings and paintings of
Picasso, Velasquez, Warhol, Rembrandt, Balthus, Freud...
I look at Matisse, Vuillard and Dufy for color and pattern.
Chantal Joffe and Alex Katz are current favourites with their
distinct wet-on-wet techniques. I love Sean Scully and
Baselitz for their beefy machismo. Gary Hume never fails
to seduce. George Condo, David Shrigley, Grayson Perry
and John Currin all win joint first prize for their dark sense
of humour.
FP: The compositions of your paintings are truly simple,
yet they hold a lot of meaning. What is the most
important thing the viewers should take away from your
work?
HF: On the face of it, being an artist is an insanely indulgent
way to spend your time. However, it is the best (and only)
way for me to work through my internal wonderings
effectively and satisfy a mental itch. I am also addicted to
the smell of turps. When a painting turns out right, it’s the
best feeling in the world. If I can make people smile, great.
If I can make them think, even better. I want them to access
their humanity. You can’t ask for more than that.
FP: Tell us a little about your creative process. How
do you begin a new piece — with an image in mind
or a particular idea? When do you know a painting is
finished?
FP: How would you describe your original style in only
three words?
HF: I divide the support into a grid and work from top
left to bottom right. I used to use individual miniature
canvases, then invested a lot of time grouping them
together and now I paint on a single big canvas. This is a
better discipline as it forces me to think about the overall
impact of a piece of work from the start. I celebrate a new
body of work by starting a new palette. In the past I had a
largish hand held palette and religiously cleaned it every
night but now I always have a giant piece of hard board
on the go, knobbly with paint skins and rags. It’s a good
feeling squeezing out a generous rainbow of paint blobs.
It’s important to be generous.
FP: Do you have a motto, inspirational phrase?
HF: It smells good.
HF: Philip Guston painted a phrase out of Dickens and had
it pinned to his studio wall: “I hold my inventive capacity on
the stern condition that it must master my whole life, often
have complete possession of me, make its own demands
on me, and sometimes for months together put everything
else away from me… Whoever is devoted to an art must
be content to deliver himself wholly up to it and to find his
recompense in it”. It basically boils down to ‘work hard’
which is good advice for any artist.
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DREAM BIG
Without dreams life is not worth living! Ask
yourself in your wildest dreams what you
would love to see happen in your art career
this year. Do you want to meet Oprah?
Make enough money to only make your
creativity your full-time work? Travel the
world on a fully paid residency? Don’t hold
back and listen to anything that pops into
your head. I set some wild dreams my first
year and most of them came true.
H AV E A P L A N O R P U T A
P L A N I N TO P L AC E
1 0 P R OAC T I V E T H I N G S YO U C A N D O
TO TA K E YO U R C R E AT I V I T Y & A R T
C A R E E R TO T H E N E X T L E V E L T H I S Y E A R
By Bridgette Mayer, Bridgette Mayer Art Advisors, Bridgette Mayer Gallery
Bridgette Mayer is the owner of an art
gallery in Philadelphia and an art consulting
firm based in Los Angeles, CA. Her gallery
business has been featured on CNN’s
Anderson Cooper 360 as a small business
“On the Rise” and was recognized as a
recommended Philadelphia arts destination
in The New York Times Magazine. Recently,
Mayer was named one of the top 500
Galleries in the world by Boulin ArtInfo, and
was also featured online in the Tory Burch
Foundation’s “Women To Watch” series.
Mayer was a recent award winner of the
Philadelphia Business Journal’s “40 Under
40” Award. Mayer has a memoir coming
out this June with Lioncrest Publishing
titled, “The Art Cure – A Memoir of Abuse &
Fortune” highlighting her story from foster
care and abuse to thriving and succeeding
in the art world.
My life changed dramatically in 2003. At
the time I was a struggling art gallery owner
who had gotten through a recession with a
new business that had just opened in 2001.
People were not buying a lot of art, let alone
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from a twenty eight year old who looked
just shy of twenty.
I was getting frustrated and wanted to keep my
passion for being in the arts a reality and also
prove to my parents that I would make a living
in the art world.
Things were not happening for me and one
day I decided that I needed to take control
of my destiny. I picked up a copy of Tony
Robbins, “Awaken the Giant Within” and read
it cover to cover. I decided since Tony seemed
so confident in how things could happen
should I (or anyone else for that matter) follow
his advice in the book, I had nothing to lose
and would go for it.
I had never thought about my goals until
reading that book and it started so much
for me.
I set several scary and audacious goals for
myself with a six and twelve month deadline,
wrote everything down on paper and got to
work. Within a six month period, I eliminated
and paid off 30K in student loan and credit
card debt, was featured on Anderson Cooper
as a “Business Owner on the Rise” and was
invited to NYC to be a part of a panel for CNN
on businesses doing unique things. In addition
I was profiled in two other magazines about
my story and was invited by my college to give
several public lectures on campus. Within a
year I had tripled my income, had two dozen
new clients that were spending money on art
and I was poised to purchase the building that
I was operating in on a beautiful historical park
in Philadelphia.
Flash forward to the present, sixteen years
after opening my gallery and I have built up
some incredible wins and successes. I have
talents and skills that I have utilized to help me
in building my creativity and success. Now I
want to share these skills to help other creative
types, especially the artists who may have
bought into the “starving artist” syndrome as
I know that does not have to be the story and
my career is proof of that.
Here are the top ten things I have learned and
done in my career to build a business from
zero clients and money to a multi-million dollar
business that keeps growing for me each year:
Once you identify your big dreams and
your other goals in between, put them
down on paper and read them at least
once a day. The repetition of reading them
will cement them into your subconscious
mind (which is like a sponge). Ever hear
of “fake it ‘til you make it”? The mind
does not know what is true or false and
will line up your energy to have all your
plans come to fruition. When I got the call
from CNN asking if they could come film
and shadow me for the day I almost hung
up the phone thinking it was a prank call.
I had put down on paper that I wanted to be
featured in the media in a large way and that
was the first thing that showed up for me!
Be prepared to be amazed.
C H A N G E YO U R
MINDSET
I realized through setting new goals and
focusing on them that I had been focusing
on the wrong things for several years. I was
in a constant state of fear around paying
my rent and bills and my thoughts were on
what was not happening. With focusing
on what I wanted to happen vs. what was
not happening things shifted immediately.
I started waking up with an excitement for
what the day would bring and what I could
create. I started to feel grateful for the
positive things that were happening and to
say thank you numerous times a day. That
energy brought more positivity and more
things that I wanted!
P U T YO U R S E L F O U T
THERE AND MEET
PEOPLE, ALL KINDS OF
PEOPLE
Keep an open mind about who you might
be attracting into your life or bumping into
that could lead you to more success. I have
a love of people and knowing who they are
and what their personal story is. One of my
big clients told me he had gone into several
galleries and walked right out the door as
no one spoke to him. He came into mine
prepared for a similar experience and was
floored when I spent an hour talking to him
about his life and interest in art. He became
one of my most loyal clients and still is to this
day. He loved the experience! You never
know who you are meeting and that is why
I try not to judge anyone by their outward
appearance. I made a commitment to going
to various events and things happening in
the city I was operating in and met some
incredible people just by being vulnerable
and curious.
S E L L YO U R S E L F F I R ST
A N D T H E N W H AT YO U
ARE DOING
In a creative business it can feel awkward
to ‘sell yourself’ however most people
do want to know what makes you unique.
Everyone has a special story to tell about
their life. I was really shy starting out and
it took me years to start sharing who I
was. When I did it opened up all kinds of
opportunities and relationships.
I F YO U A R E R E J E C T E D
O R FA I L , G E T U P A N D
T H E N G E T U P AG A I N
A big part of many people’s stories to
success are the failures along the way. I
got rejected a lot in my first few years of
business in selling art and I still get rejected.
I have gotten comfortable with rejection as
I know the ‘No’ I am receiving today could
be the ‘Yes’ at the end of the day tomorrow
or even in my next conversation. I took the
rejection in my industry and even within the
community I was operating in and turned it
into a multi-million dollar business.
B E E N V I O U S O F OT H E R
A R T I STS O R C R E AT I V E
P E O P L E YO U A D M I R E
Oftentimes when we are envious or jealous
we turn away from what we envy. We don’t
want to confront it or it makes us angry. I
have learned that the people I feel that way
about can often be my greatest teachers.
Questioning what I was envious about
would lead me to realize it was because
I wanted to do something similar or felt I
could do it better and someone had beat
me to it. This helped light a fire for me and
I was open to learning what made other
people successful. I took inspired actions in
these areas that led me to more results. It is
wonderful to be inspired by those around us!
DON’T LIVE AN
‘A L M O ST ’ L I F E O R
CAREER
There were things I wanted to do in
my business like bring new artists from
overseas into the United States and to set
up residencies for them. I kept putting this
and other things off and I realized one day
that was holding me back energetically
and I was not operating in full integrity
with myself. I am not someone to give
a half attempt or to not follow through.
When I started taking actions and keeping
commitments to myself, my career really
took off. I was making my dreams a reality
and people were noticing which led to
more success.
H AV E F U N A N D G E T
H A P P Y W I T H YO U R S E L F
N OW A N D D O N ’ T WA I T
U N T I L YO U A R E I N
YO U R 70 S O R L AT E R I N
LIFE
Most creative types can be really hard on
themselves and have a lot to prove. I had
a year where it was always about, “When
this happens I will be happy.” It was often
tied into finances as I was afraid of failing. It
has taken me a lot of time along my journey
to realize that loving myself and the things I
have accomplished today are great for my
confidence. Sometimes I just need to be
my own coach and tell myself what a great
person I am or what a great job I have done
or that I am proud of myself. Don’t wait for
validation from others - you can love, accept
and validate yourself today. Having fun along
the way opens your energy up to more
opportunity as you will be in receptive mode.
B E PAT I E N T, A N
ART CAREER IS A
M A R AT H O N A N D N OT
A SPRINT
I was in it for the long haul with my business
as I was committed to my vision. I had been
a long distance runner in college and had
also done several marathons and used
the experience of that as my metaphor
in life and work. A business can take time
to build and evolve. I was not making any
large sums of money for three years and
things took time to build. I had a vision, a
plan and I was going to work hard and see
it through. I had faith that it would build at
the right time. My patience over the years
and my optimism have been rewarded time
and time again!
For any artists interested in learning more
about taking their career to the next
level, Bridgette will be offering private
coaching and group coaching and will
have an upcoming course out online this
July created specifically for artists. Please
visit her websites or email her for more
information: www.bridgettemayergallery.
com, www.bridgettemayerartadvisors.com
as well as a book being published this June
2016. Please email her direct at: bmayer@
bmayerart.com for more information.
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T I P S A N D I N S P I R AT I O N F R O M P R E V I O U S LY P U B L I S H E D A R T I S T S
Do you feel that deadlines put unwanted pressure on your work, or that, instead, it
adds to your drive and boosts your creativity?
“I’ve experienced both
scenarios and known them
both to be true, actually.
Occasionally, serious pressure
squeezes and presses on my
freedom of thought and drives
my painting into the ground.
But sometimes the pressure can
release a valve I didn’t know
needed releasing and suddenly
new possibilities emerge in the
work. You just hope that this is
how it will typically go, because
it is my belief that the best work
happens when we are in a
somewhat peaceful state. Not
always, of course. Agitation
has certainly motivated many
amazing paintings, but I
personally achieve better results
when I’m in a calm state of mind
free from pressure.”
“I always meet deadlines,
however I prefer not to work
towards them, creativity can
be suppressed with such
constraints.
Without deadlines I am able
to take creative risks and allow
myself to wander into unknown
territories.”
Lisa Wright, Issue 11
Joshua Huyser, Issue 11
“Deadlines give you an
incentive and resourcefulness
that you would not utilize
otherwise. They force you to
make instinctive decisions
and respond to situations with
an urgency that can lead to
new approaches in your work
making you better as an artist.”
“My work has to be planned
- because of the layers I use, I
have to think backwards from
my desired end result in order
to work out how to achieve the
effect I want. Knowing when I
need to finish something allows
me to plan the work, allowing
for drying time. However, a lot
of the time things don’t quite
go to plan (!) and a looming
deadline can be both a source
of stress, as well as causing me
to think more creatively in order
to solve a problem. As with
everything in life balance seems
to be the key. It’s good to be
professional and give yourself
deadlines, but you also need
time to play!”
Pippa Young, Issue 12
Henry Hussey, Issue 12
Greg Harris, Issue 12
C U R AT E D S E L E C T I O N
BY REBECCA WILSON
“I think it’s helpful to have a date
when a project or painting is to
be finished or near completion.
The thought of a deadline is
not a negative or creatively
intrusive issue for me, perhaps
due to my years of experience
in couture design where target
dates are a routine aspect of
making and presenting visual
material. Adopting a similar
approach when necessary
helps to get the paintings
painted, while managing other
studio and promotional tasks.
And life always contains some
distractions and unscheduled
activities and situations!
Deadlines help keep me
focused and use time most
productively.”
Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern, Issue 12
“Deadlines, for me, are a
both good and bad thing. It
might be stressful, especially
when painting, to watch an
approaching deadline not
knowing if the layers on my
paintings will dry in time;
However, they can also be a
curious catalyst for me to be
more immediate in my painting
process and to procrastinate
less over whether a painting is
finished or not.”
Matthieu Leger, Issue 12
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“For me as a sole trader,
deadlines put wanted pressure
on me and my work as needed
structure to my calendar. I
always plan a year in advance
and never agree to deadlines I
can’t meet - it’s about discipline
and time management for the
best productivity.”
Natalia Black
Portaferry
acrylic on board
30 x 40 cm
WILLIAM ARVIN
w w w.w i l l i a m a r v i n . c o m
Born: Sonora, CA, April 24, 1985.
Currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA.
Education:
2004-2007, MJC, Modesto, CA.
2008-2009, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA.
2009-2010, City College of San Francisco, San Francsico, CA.
The language of cinema is one that is universally understood, culturally
pervasive and deeply ingrained in the modern psyche. Elements such
as lighting, props, wardrobe, cropping and camera angles, to name a
few, inform the viewer of narrative in ways that dialogue and the written
William Arvin
Tailgunner I
oil on canvas
20 x 24 inches
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word could never achieve. In addition, the roots of many individual and
national social identities can be found in cinematic archetypes, images
and moments of which have become cultural milestones, defining our
realities as well as the fantasies through which we escape them.
Using my own photography, designing and creating costume and
wardrobe and establishing somewhat original though heavily informed
narrative content allow me an opportunity to replicate cinematic form
without relying on appropriated material and pre-existing film stills.
My paintings aim, with a single image and sometimes text which
summons this universal language, to steer the viewer’s mind in a narrative
direction that evokes the familiar concepts and archetypes of classic and
contemporary cinema, and in doing so, encapsulates the fleeting nature
of cinematic experience in a single, immutable object.
William Arvin
The Rebel 1
oil on canvas
20 x 36 inches
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Michael Azgour is an actively exhibiting artist whose work explores the ubiquity of photography in contemporary
culture and the changing role this has played on the individual experience. Azgour’s award winning paintings have
been exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe, including solo shows at Art Museum of
Los Gatos and Robert Green Fine Arts in California, as well as Art Fairs such as artMRKT San Francisco, Silicon Valley
Art Fair and Los Angeles Art Show. His work is part of dozens of collections, including a recent commission by
Stanford’s Packard Children’s Hospital. Michael is a part-time faculty member at Stanford University.
I refer to images as a way to peer into our collective experience in a fast-paced digital world. My process of
composing works and layering paint calls attention to the divergent paths painting and photography have taken in
the past century. Some of the themes I work with are: references to digital photography and video, representation
of memory as a fleeting recollection, the process of painting as a subject in itself, and the use of paint to mirror
aspects of contemporary life. The concepts and subject matter of my work rely considerably on my travels and
experience as an outsider in a foreign country. I regularly look to my paintings to resolve contradictions that I
encounter between my home state of California and my assumed home in Krakow, Poland.
MICHAEL AZGOUR
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Michael Azgour
Church on the Rock, Fragmented
oil and acrylic on canvas 47 x 59 inches
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Michael Azgour
Krakow: Girl in a Park
oil on canvas
59 x 47 inches
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KAROLINA ALBRICHT
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ALLI
ANDERSON
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Karolina Albricht was born in Cracow, Poland in 1983. She
completed High School of Art in Cracow and studied at the
Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow 2003-2008. She was also granted
a Socrates-Erasmus scholarship at ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in
Arnhem, Holland in 2007.
In 2008 she was awarded a Masters Degree from the Jan Matejko
Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. After graduation she moved to
London where she has worked until the present day.
She has shown her work across Europe and has been shortlisted for
various awards.
Karolina Albricht
The Jump
oil on canvas
50 x 60 cm
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‘The Unknown Land’ is my imaginary journey into the unknown,
presenting wild and often threatening aspects. The primitive
aspect of the series- raw and malignant is placed in a context of a
landscape and shifts into something new; something disturbing
and transfixing. The reappearance of a monkey is another key
element of the series. It places its context in a more personal space
and uncovers our basic quest for the purer, simpler world.
Alli Anderson is a recent BFA graduate of the California State University
Long Beach drawing and painting and completed the Tyler School of Arts
Summer Painting and Sculpture Intensive. In 2014 she was recognized
by the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and New American
Paintings as a leading emerging artist. She is currently living and working
in Long Beach, California with her princess kitty named Bell. When
the big earthquake finally hits she would grab her special collectors
edition “Clueless” DVD, all the various pink colored oil paints and most
importantly Princess Bell.
Dusk and dawn are the times of day when I feel at ease, thus making the
blending of the atmospherical color the grounds of my paintings. Finding
my palette inspires me first. I find my palette while driving around Long
Beach early in the mornings when most people aren’t even up and the
air is still crisp. I find my palette in the waves of the beaches I grew up on.
Lastly, I find my palette while driving home along the 405 Freeway to a
house that is covered in ivy. Color is the only element that comes naturally
to me. Drawing has always been a struggle.
Though drawing constantly challenges me, it did however allow me
to break free. It was through doing hundreds of drawings and making
dozens of mistakes that I found my new way of working. Making mistakes
in the drawings became extremely crucial to my process. The drawings
were done quickly and then tossed aside to be reviewed at the end
of the day. Most mistakes were painfully awkward. By reflecting on
these awkward lines my mark making slowly became more refined in its
simplicity.
Alli Anderson
Untitled #1
Oil on canvas
12 x 9 inches
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Blandine Bardeau
Beauty Spot
coloured pencil, acrylic, varnish, plastic tubes,
paper cut out, glitter, magazine cut out and
archival pen on paper mounted on canvas
50 x 45 x 4.5 cm
Blandine Bardeau
Blue Bee
acrylic, coloured pencil, paper cut out and
archival pen on paper mounted on canvas
45 x 50 x 4.5 cm
CHARLOTTE
BRISLAND
Charlotte Brisland studied painting at the Royal College of Art in London and has exhibited in Japan, Europe and New York.
Brisland has travelled extensively, integrating herself deep into cultures as a way of informing her painting. She now lives and
works in her birth town of Portsmouth, UK.
The paintings I make are always of the landscape, placid and distant. The brushstrokes are sometimes broad and visceral
balancing precariously into photorealism. What is depicted figuratively within the composition is often a single building or
piece of street furniture. Why are we looking at this house or this building or this tree? There is never a real response to that,
nor do I want there to be. There is a building, that is all. But there is more, there is the sense from the viewer, their own ideas,
the possible ideas of the artist and how it is positioned in contemporary dialogue.
The work has always been inspired from seeking new landscapes, placing myself in unknown environments, cultures and
countries such as Japan, France, Berlin and Switzerland. It was never enough to simply visit these places, I lived and worked
and engaged fully within all of these places. Only through that whole experience did I begin to see the strange and forgotten
corners and spaces. Overlooked and secondary those spaces became important to me for that very reason.
BLANDINE BARDEAU
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Charlotte Brisland
Corner
acrylic on canvas
120 x 100 cm
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N ATA L I A B L A C K
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Natalia Black was born in 1974 in Slovakia. She studied to be an Art
and English teacher at the Comenius University in Bratislava graduating
in 1996. In 1999 she left Slovakia to go and live in Paris for a year, then
London and subsequently Northern Ireland. In 2003 she started to
exhibit her work and since then she has enjoyed moderate public and
critical acclaim. Last year she was made an Associate of the Royal Ulster
Academy.
My statement is my paintings. I paint because I am interested and
excited by the impact on the senses created by the purely visual. I want
my paintings to be about visual pleasure, with an emphasis on colour. I
would prefer my paintings to be enjoyed as a direct experience for the
viewer, aside from the process of analysis.
I like to think of my work as visual haiku. It abstracts what is figurative
in nature, particularly in scenes of the coast. However, rather than only
Natalia Black
White Park Bay
acrylic on board
50 x 40 cm
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representing the sea or the dunes, the work attempts to shift the focus
onto the motion of the waves… or capture the rhythm created by the tall,
thin lines of Marram grass and the shadows they cast.
I have aimed to make my paintings beautiful, substantial, intricate, lush
and almost monotonous in their richness. Working with thick layers of
multicolour paint, I build up animated surfaces, continually overlaying
one decision with another in the search for balance – until a painting
‘works’. Although I generally have an initial idea what I want a painting to
look like, it is not planned in advance and may go through many changes
in its evolution. I try to remain open to the possibility of surprise; hoping
chance will work in my favour.
My intention is that my paintings invite the viewer to gaze into them as
one would stare meditatively into a fire, extending the pauses between
thoughts until even the thoughts themselves become wordless.
Natalia Black
Winter Atlantic Low Tide
acrylic on board
26 x 32 cm
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CLAIRE BREWSTER
Claire Brewster was born in Lincolnshire and currently
lives and works in London. Brewster’s work has featured in
numerous exhibitions including: ‘Avarium’, Diehl Gallery;
‘The First Cut’, Manchester Art Gallery; ‘ Mind the Map’,
London Transport Museum; ‘Ghosts of Gone Birds’,
London. Her work is in collections around the world, most
notably, Villa La Scale, Capri; the Twitter Art Collection,
the Corinthia Hotel in London and the Caledonian
Hotel, Edinburgh. She has been featured in numerous
publications, including, Elle Decoration; Vogue, World
of Interiors; Paper: Tear, Fold, Rip, Crease, Cut (Black Dog
Publishing); London Underground Maps: Art Design and
Cartography, Claire Dobbin (Lund Humphries).
Claire Brewster’s work is about retrieving the discarded,
celebrating the unwanted and giving new life to the
obsolete. Claire uses old and out of date maps and atlases
as her fabric with which to create her intricate, delicate and
detailed paper sculptures.
Nature is ever present even in the most urban of
environments, taking over wherever we neglect. Claire
creates entomological installations of flora and fauna
from imagined locations. Her birds, insects and flowers
transcend borders and pass freely between countries
with scant regard for rules of immigration or the effects of
biodiversity.
The paper sculptures are pinned either directly on to the
wall as a large scale installation or captured in box frames.
w w w. c l a i r e b r e w s t e r. c o m
Claire Brewster
Dreamy
hand cut geological map of British Isles, pins
60 x 80 cm
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Claire Brewster
English Rose
hand cut vintage maps of the British Isles
55 x 70 cm
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HELEN BROUGH
“My paintings are slithers of time. A moment in a day that silences the chaos,
stills the mind and enables some kind of introspective thought.”
In December 2007, a solo exhibition was held at SCOPE, Art Basel Miami,
with the Allen Gallery.
Helen Brough is a British artist, educated at Chelsea School of Art in London,
achieving BA Honours First Class and an MA in Sculpture.
In May 2008, she held a solo show with the Allen Gallery , NY, and two
group shows: ‘Nature Interrupted’ at the Chelsea Art Museum, NY, and
‘Curious and Curiouser’ at Rebecca Kormind in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Awards include the Prix de Rome at the British School in Rome, and the
Prince Charles travel scholarship. The Soros foundation has funded her
exhibitions in Romania and Hungary and she has received funding from the
Pollock/Krasner Foundation and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.
In 2003 she held her first solo show in New York City at Kristen Frederickson
Contemporary Art. In 2004 she was awarded a Triangle residency for 6
months in Dumbo, NY and selected for the Triangle workshop .
In May 2006 the permanent sculpture commission ‘Emulated Flora’ opened
at 70 Washington Street, Dumbo, NY. In November 2006, a solo exhibition
was held at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska.
In 2010 her solo show ‘Deliriously Urbane’ was held at the Coningsby
Gallery, London and in 2011 her second solo show ‘Luminous’ at the
Coningsby Gallery, and the completion of a series of sculptures for the
Richard Rodgers building at 88 Wood Street, London.
In 2015 she exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Show and with Mayson
Gallery , NYC.
She presently divides her time between London and New York.
LEAH BULLEN
Leah Bullen is currently a PhD candidate at the Australian National University.
Since completing her undergraduate degree in 2005, she has exhibited
regularly, both locally and nationally. Over the past two years she has held
exhibitions with Sydney based artist, Sara Roberts, continuing an ongoing
dialogue between their work, and the relationship between painting and
photography. Bullen was recently awarded ‘highly commended’ in the
Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award, as well as being a selected finalist in the
Fremantle Arts Centre Print Award, Hutchins Art Award and the Redlands
Konica Minolta Art Prize.
pictorial space, as well as representation and abstraction. In a theoretical
context, I am engaged with a ‘translation of meaning’. This translation
is both physical and temporal. Using photographs as source material, I
collage together multiple viewpoints to reinvent spaces, which are then
translated into paintings. Representation and abstraction exist equally in
these images, as do multiple vanishing and focal points. This is an attempt
to make explicit the visual adjustments we experience when looking; and
highlight the mutability of our visual system, processing and reassembling
information in unexpected ways.
Her career has seen her the recipient of many awards, including the CAPO
Singapore Airlines travel grant; artsACT new work grant; the Parker Financial
Award; KPMG Acquisition; and the Henry Ergas Acquisition.
My source material comes from sites that recreate nature, aquariums,
dioramas etc. These venues act as a ‘theatre of the real’ where we can
experience an approximation of nature. These locations are conceptually
linked to the act of representational painting itself, which reimagines the
world through illusion.
I am fascinated by the translation between painting and photography.
Photography allows me to explore new associations between time and
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Helen Brough
Central Park - Spring
oil on aluminium
70 x 120 cm
Leah Bullen
Vivarium
watercolour, gouache and monotype on paper
76 x 114 cm
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ANNA BUCKNER
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Raised in North Carolina, Anna Buckner received her BFA in
painting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in
2012. After graduating, Anna moved to Sikkim, India, where she
completed an apprenticeship in Buddhist Thangka painting. She
is currently an MFA candidate in painting at the Henry Radford
Hope School of Fine Arts at Indiana University, Bloomington
and has exhibited work in New York, Indiana, Ohio and North
Carolina. Recently her work was selected to appear in the 125th
edition of ‘New American Paintings’.
Liminality is soft. It is malleable, compliant, acquiescent and
supple. At its worst it is impressionable, submissive, gullible and
feeble. At its best it yields empathy and patience. I find strength in
liminality – in vulnerability.
My work explores vulnerability through materials. Soft, it exists
somewhere in between piecework and painting. I select stretchy
fabrics that have a high potential for change when pulled over
a support. The elasticity of materials such as spandex and knits
Anna Buckner
Amelia Briggs
Holladay
‘Pony Mail’,
type
of media
pieced
fabric
on stretcher
00 x 00 inches
40 x 30 inches
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references skin, and pulling these fabrics over a support causes
them to swell like the body. I piece the fabric scraps together
forming a quilt top that is then stretched on a support. The initial
design of the piecework is compromised through stretching,
causing the material to warp. The support of the painting is
therefore a tool for transformation, revealing the potential of the
materials, and pushing them into roles for which they are not
traditionally used.
The soft colors in my work are similarly defined by their potential
for transformation. They are often difficult to name, and in eluding
specific identification, they too exist in a liminal state. Low
saturated hues are more easily influenced by adjacent colors, and
thus have a higher potential for change. In this sense, softness
embraces connection through the relativity of color.
The balance of existing in a liminal state is precarious. This
unpredictability creates space for transformation, encouraging
growth and expansion.
Anna Buckner
The Places that Scare You
pieced fabric on stretcher, fishing line
36 x 36 inches
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LAURA
DENZER
Laura Denzer received her BFA from the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently based
in Gainesville, Florida, USA where she is pursuing
an MFA in painting.
MICHELLE TRAHAN
CARSON
My work is inspired by a life-long love of history. When
I was a teenager, my grandfather became interested in
genealogy and traced our family back hundreds of years.
The rich story of my heritage fascinated me, but what
really turned me into a history junkie was seeing copies
of old family documents. It was through these preserved
remnants of everyday life, such as the sale of a cow, or
the record of a death, that I felt a connection to those that
came before me and to my grandfather.
I am a mixed-media artist working primarily with encaustic
beeswax, collage, and paint. I use color, texture, and
mark-making to create multi-layered pieces, working in the
studio with a general concept, but substantially informed
by intuition. I love the process of cutting and pasting
papers, melting beeswax, brushing it onto the substrate,
fusing, scraping back to earlier layers, incising, and doing
it all over again. I think about the passage of time as
expressed in the layers, with each choice covering over the
past but still leaving it faintly visible. It is in this way that the
history of the piece is created.
These paintings are influenced by my research on
projective drawings, a psychoanalytical technique
meant to record psychomotor activities, Surrealist
automatism, and the gendering of domestic
spaces particularly in terms of the feminine. I am
interested in strategies of decoration and façade
in relation to the performance and propagation
of identity through values enforcing ideas of
correctness, taste, and conformity, and how
these values are actively maintained in order to
perpetuate certain institutional agendas. I am
concerned with how the internalization of these
values is reflected through certain sensibilities
particularly in terms of mark making and design.
I organize space on the canvas, having identified
two alternating ways of doing so. The first
referencing patterning and the grid, and the
second, a less logical, more fractured space. I am
interested in these ‘opposing’ spaces and what
they mean formally and in relation to the issues
stated.
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michelletrahancarson.com
Michelle Trahan Carson
For Private Use
encaustic, oil, and collage on birch
10 x 10 inches
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Laura Denzer
Grad School Painting No.1
oil on linen
48 x 36 inches
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ANDREA CASTRO
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If you were to ask Spanish artist Andrea Castro what she does,
she would tell you she’s learning a new language through art, a
language that questions our daily life, a language that amplifies
our desires and fears. Castro uses paintings as hammers to
destroy those internal barriers that prevent us from speaking
out, from understanding ourselves. Andrea transforms the
surroundings she explores into little stories and emotions
to then translate them into a more personal idiom. She first
discovered her passion for painting when she was 11 years
old; then, at 14 began taking art lessons with various artists of
Majorca. She started painting full time in 2015 and since then,
her art has had an outstanding reception, being published in
numerous online and printed magazines. Her art is owned by
several collectors all around the world.
Andrea Castro
Boiling point
oil on canvas
65 x81cm
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Andrea Castro
The Last Straw
oil on canvas
73 x 60 cm
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LAURIE CLOSE
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My work investigates notions of depth and space as it pertains
to the painted surface. There is a dependency on opposing
positions finding the right balance, a struggle between
order and chaos. Hard edges and flat space are met with
atmospheric illusion. By challenging the visual structure
tension is created. Uncertainty is embraced to transcend to
openness.
Laurie Close
Intersecting Planes
acrylic on wood
30 x 40 inches
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Laurie Close
Undercurrents
acrylic on wood
30 x 40 inches
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Human behavior fascinates me.
My background is in Mental Health
Counseling and Applied Behavior
Analysis. What compels us to do
the things we do? More importantly,
why do we do some things only once
and others repeatedly? It’s about
taking in whatever is presented to us,
processing it in the most functional
way for us at that moment, and then
responding to the original stimulus. I
feel that I approach my work the same
way. My work is a visual representation
of an emotional response to the things
I experience on any ordinary day. It
comes from a place of resolution,
gratitude and ultimately happiness.
There’s no deep social or political
commentary to my work, nor am I
trying to emulate one of the greats or
to match a sofa, it’s simply a series of
reactions.
I often begin a piece with text written
in charcoal, the seed from which
the piece will grow. That text is then
mostly covered with collaged shapes,
weight, lightness, darkness, and
color. It is then finally brought to a
more expressive, gestural energy with
paint and ink. I work in many layers,
often tucking things in or masking
something out, sometimes repeating
the entire process. It’s completely
process driven, an energetic dialogue
of responses and reactions. The
resulting surfaces are thick, marred and
textured, riddled with secrets.
An Alabama native, Gina currently
lives in rural northern VA with her
husband and son. She is a self-taught
artist working in mixed media as well
as encaustic. She has been exhibiting
her work since 2003. Her work is
in private and corporate collections
throughout the US.
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GINA COCHRAN
Gina Cochran
You’re Under No Obligation to Drink the Kool-Aid
mixed media on canvas
24 x 24 inches
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Gina Cochran
How to Keep the Holidays Low Key
mixed media on canvas
40 x 30 inches
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CAROLINE COLLOM
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Caroline Collom is from Kent, UK and started her art
education at Wimbledon College of Arts, University of
the Arts, London and then went on to do her Bachelor of
Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, University
of Melbourne, graduating in 2014. Collom spent the
second year of her degree at Massachusetts College
of Art, Boston. Since graduating, Collom has had two
solo exhibitions in Melbourne: ‘Between the Lines’ at
Five Walls Projects and ‘A Pinch of Tinct’ at Red Gallery.
Collom‘s work is also part of the Justin Art House Museum
collection. Collom has also been curated into numerous
group exhibitions including: ‘Crossing Paths’ at MassArt
Gallery, Boston (2013); 3D Painting at VCA Gallery,
Melbourne; Majlis Travelling Scholarship at Margaret
Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne (2014) and ‘A Space That
Holds’ at Chapman and Bailey Gallery, Melbourne (2016).
Collom is now back in the UK while still maintaining a
strong link to Australia and is working on a new body of
work to show.
Caroline Collom
Hazy Moments
oil paint and sand on stretched canvas
168 x 122 cm
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Painting and its multi-dimensional nature is at the forefront
of my practice. Whether this is with a brush on canvas
or other materials such as metal, wood or glass, I am
heavily aware of the post-medium condition within which I
practise. Tangible spatiality through expression of objects
in space or forms within a painted ground is my primary
creative focus. I hope to expose an inward and outward
trajectory of multiple forms through intersecting planes
that reveal subtle differences in the illusion of depth. This
engages physical interaction as the viewer moves in and
out of the work to look for the detail.
Abstraction takes abstracts from the existing, and this is
the premise for my work and source of my imagery. Taking
these shapes and isolating them in a space encourages a
dialogue of form that might have once been overlooked:
abstract imagery that stands for itself.
I propose to create a space that holds and dominates the
room through the means of colour, line and shape.
Caroline Collom
Cockatoo Island
oil paint and metal dust on stretched canvas
30 x 40 inches
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MADELEINE
FINLEY
Madeleine Finley, b.1991 San Francisco
CA, received her BFA from The School
of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since
graduating she has had two solo
exhibitions: ‘Concave’ in San Juan,
Puerto Rico, and ‘Dissolving Margins’ in
Washington DC.
My current direction — best reflected
by the pieces ‘Joan Mitchell Sketch’
and ‘Io Mi’ in my portfolio — is a hybrid
of narrative and abstraction. I work
with the idea that everything you’ve
built and made, could collapse at any
second by circumstances beyond your
control. Societies in tectonic settings
fascinate me, perhaps because I am
from San Francisco, perhaps because
I am entranced with Southern Italian
civilizations such as Pompeii and Ischia,
but the idea of building a society and
having it all destroyed is terrifying and
thrilling. I begin with a concrete narrative
and deliberately dismantle it, to embody
the idea of everything you’ve worked for
slipping away.
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Madeleine Finley
Le Mani en la Pasta
oil on canvas
60 x 50 inches
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Madeleine Finley
Leaving Pietro
Oil and chalk pastel on canvas
32 x 44 inches
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KYLE
HACKETT
My work is rooted in the need for empathy and a
historical desire for connection and feeling.
Cara Guri
Headpiece
oil on panel
20 x 20 inches
Cara Guri
The Three Graces
oil on panel
18 x 24 inches
Manipulating the authority of representational
portraiture, I deconstruct historical ideas of secure
identity and fixed-painting techniques. I highlight
the tension between self and the constructed
image as I attempt to clarify my contemporary
hopes, fears and insecurities about racial and
socioeconomic progress.
Kyle Hackett is based in Washington, DC. He
earned his MFA in Painting from the Hoffberger
School of Painting at Maryland Institute College
of Art and his BFA in Fine Arts, as a McNair
Scholar from the University of Delaware. Hackett
has completed multiple residencies including:
The League Residency in NY as recipient of the
Ruth Katzman Scholarship, Contemporary Artists
Center, NY and Vermont Studio Center, where
he was the recipient of the Civil Society Institute
Fellowship. Hackett has received numerous
honors and awards, including Best in Show Award
at the 2014 Bethesda Painting Awards Exhibition,
making him the youngest winner in the contest’s
history. His work has been featured and written
about in the Washington Post and distinguished
within ‘Ten Memorable Paintings of 2014’ in
the Huffington Post. Additionally, Hackett was a
semifinalist for the 2016 BP Portrait Award at the
National Portrait Gallery in London, UK. Hackett’s
work is notably supported and collected by
Ethan Cohen New York, Wangechi Mutu Studio
and University of Delaware’s Museum of African
American Art. He has exhibited work in Maryland,
Delaware, Massachusetts, Florida (Miami Art Fair),
Washington, DC and New York.
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CARA GURI
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Kyle Hackett
After Ammoloration
oil on steel
24 x 12 in
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MINAS HALAJ
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“You can discuss and argue about art forever. To me,
everything is abstract and interchangeable. It’s all about
how you look at things. I love light, life, shadow, line, and
color, where the world of an artist begins, trying to sink into
art, being drawn into emotion. It helps me to understand
the tragedy and the happiness of the reality of life itself. I
consider myself the luckiest of all to have been given the gift
of creation and I live and work through the appreciation of
the divinity of art.”
Minas Halaj
Girl From Wall Street
oil, emulsion, textile, mixed media on wood
24 × 24 inches
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Minas Halaj incorporates elements of classical education
with contemporary influences, Halaj’s art manifests itself by
way of a symphony of graphics, sculptures, collages and
figurative compositions. His works are oil-and-mixed-media
that are attracting the attention of global art collectors. Halaj
uses a variety of recycled material including tar as part of
the background and pieces of pre-Victorian dresses to add
texture and dimension making his work deeply complex.
The Floral Minds collection is vibrant and reminiscent of the
old world masters.
Minas Halaj
Floral Mind #10
oil, emulsion, textile, mixed media on wood
40 × 36 in
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MARC
HENRY
Marc Henry is a 19 year old Munichbased artist who derived from street
art graffiti and now paints large-scaled
canvases and photographs using oil,
acrylic and spray paint. His current series
includes ‘The Kids are not Alright’ and
‘Waterhoes - a Reflection on Beauty and
Love in a Society of Selfies and Tinder’.
The Kids are not alright. I feel bad for
people who still feel. Who keep up the
illusion of a world which was lost a long
time ago, or never existed. I wanted to
de-mask those people. Show what they
are really like. How they really feel. As I
painted these Kids I tried to upend their
innermost part, tearing it out of their souls
and paint their faces with it. I don’t paint
portraits I paint souls. And it makes me
sick. Close your eyes to see what will be
left of you when your time has come. Life
seems so Kafkaesque lately.
Waterhoes: how come that painters
like Waterhouse or Alma-Tadema seem
more avant-garde than ever nowadays?
I got the feeling that people were very
different in the past. At least society
was. And we lost it all. I wanted to
bring them back, to reflect their ghosts
in my paintings, breathing life into the
inanimate Waterhoes I knew. I don’t
know if I’ve made it. If I will ever make
it. I’m dying of thirst. Do you think the
universe fights for souls to fuck together?
Born in Munich in 1996 Marc Henry
spent his childhood in the gallery
district Bogenhausen and later on in the
suburbia of Munich, where he would
find lots of free walls when he started
spray-painting at the age of 14. The urge
to create something everlasting was
burned early into his mind and should
influence his work which has always
been dominated by the fascination of
the human face, as well as the power
of words. At the age of 16 he moved
from the streets onto canvases. Current
and upcoming exhibitions include the
Waterhoes Series at Home Munich and
Kölner Liste 2016 – side event of Art
Cologne.
Marc Henry
Pursuit of Unhappiness
oil on canvas
130 x 170 x 4cm
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MORNA HINTON
Morna Hinton grew up in Windsor and followed an
Art Foundation course at Bath Academy of Art before
completing a degree in History of Art at University College
London and teacher training at the Institute of Education
London. She taught Art and Design in a secondary school
before pursuing a career in museum education at the Victoria
& Albert Museum. In 2014 she left the V&A to pursue
painting full-time. She lives, paints and exhibits in London.
I am a painter working in watercolour, acrylic and mixed
media. As an artist, I take the external world as my starting
point, but I am also interested in the more abstract, formal
and emotional qualities that characterise paintings. Recently,
my interest in the structured and cultivated nature of gardens
and parks has led to a focus on London’s South Bank. I have
taken particular inspiration from the Olivier Terrace – a richly
planted outdoor space on the upper levels of the National
Theatre. This location allows me to explore the contrast
between organic forms and the monumental, Brutalist
architecture of the theatre complex. I find this type of public
space both comforting and slightly melancholy and have
tried to convey something of these emotions through
close-up views and a restrained palette. In my paintings the
theatre’s large plate-glass windows frame and reflect plants
and clouds and offer glimpses of the inside, blurring exterior
and interior in a deliberately ambiguous way. A certain
oddness and complexity has entered these most recent
acrylics, which is something that I am continuing to develop.
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Morna Hinton
National Theatre Window No.2’
acrylic on canvas
35 cm x 45 cm
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TYLER KLINE
h t t p : / / i n l i q u i d . o r g / c o m p l e t e - a r t i s t - l i s t / k l i n e - t y l e r/
Tyler Kline grew up in Stone Mountain, GA, studied
Architecture and Painting at the Savannah College of Art and
Design and received a BA in Anthropology and Sculpture
from Portland State University. Tyler earned an MFA from the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2011. A founding
curatorial member of Little Berlin, he is a firm believer in the
role of the arts as catalyst for social change, opening up
dialog, and rejuvenating communities. Tyler currently lives in
Philadelphia with his wife and children.
commute, the puzzle of the sphinx, events from the past and
visions of the future; the marks we make as we pass through
this life, a type of obscured cryptography to be pondered
and deciphered by a later generation.
Time marks the movement of the hand, light marks the
movements of the body, maps show us where we are and
where we are headed. These tools help us explore or
surroundings. The mind moves the flesh through a labyrinth
of possibilities.
The hour hand’s steady march, the view from the train during
Tyler Kline
Zing Q-11
oil and spray paint on canvas
24 x 18 inches
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Tyler Kline
Betwixt Burberry and Spruce
oil and spray paint on canvas
24 x 18 inches
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J U L I E T T E PAU L L
I am most influenced by immersive subjects, musical
composition, nature, and everyday life alongside personal
narratives. My work explores a continuously unfolding visual,
spatial and psychological experience.
Within my paintings I re-evaluate the complexity of
visual representation and physical experience through a
combination of layering, fragmentation and movement. I
explore the constant flux, transformations and cycles that
exist internally and externally.
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Juliette Paull
Floresco
oil on canvas
130 x 140 cm
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Juliette Paull
Vivace
oil on canvas
168 x 198 cm
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MANON LABROSSE
Manon Labrosse is a visual artist from Northern Ontario,
Canada, currently residing in a small rural town in the
province of Quebec. In 2014 and 2015 she was awarded
two visual art prizes and a project grant for the completion
of various projects, as well as two creative residencies
which she completed in the summer of 2015. Her latest
exhibition titled “SASAJEWUN LAKE (part I)” presented
at Gallery 3 in Ottawa, Ontario was chosen as a must
see exhibition by national art publication, Canadian Art
magazine.
The work presented here is the result of a creative
residency in Algonquin Park, a well known provincial
park in the province of Ontario, Canada. The residency
consisted of creating experiences in the wilderness, while
documenting moments and things that stood out : a neon
pink ribbon in the middle of the forest provided inspiration
for an unusually high contrast composition, while
hanging my bathing suit on a rope between two trees
after a morning swim acted as a nostalgic connection to a
childhood memory of summers at the cottage. The neon
like colors highlight these elements while providing a more
contemporary feel to a theme that is rather traditional, the
Canadian Landscape.
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Manon Labrosse
Chit Lake Trail
acrylic and spray paint on wood panel
84 x 88
OLHA PRYYMAK
Olha Pryymak is a Ukrainian-born painter based in London.
As an initiate into the traditional practice of herbalism, she
employs herbalist iconography and the sensuous medium
of oil paint for her current body of work. She interprets its
key symbols and rituals to question the images’ ability to
transform and heal.
The act of painting, as a form of a ritual, was employed by
the prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies. By these means,
the use of figurative painting assumes historical continuity
and pushes itself forward into the present consciousness.
In her practice, Olha explores the ability of a painted
image to transform and heal by the means of sympathetic
magic and mythological associative thinking. The rituals,
depicted in shades of gold, are designed to evoke a
hope for transformation and relate to the historic forms of
seeking change.
A tangent string of work – the Icons series - represents
creative ways of healing war-induced stress. It continues
the Surrealists’ educated embrace of the magical, who
produced a deck of tarot cards in which they nominated
their own heroes to represent the faces of cards. Olha is
applying similar means to portray the current cultural icons’
creative ways of grappling with reality.
Olha is currently on a year-long residency at the Florence
Trust, London. Her next show is in April at Tom’s Etching
Studio in Hackney Wick. Previously Olha has shown at the
National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy in London
and throughout galleries in Ukraine, Italy and the UK,
including a solo show at Krilova Stelfox in London and RA
gallery in Kyiv.
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Olha Pryymak
Nominate your own hero I, To Bring to Pass series
oil on board
70 x 90 cm
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XIAOXUAN LIU
Xiaoxuan Liu (Born 1994) is from Beijing,
China. In 2012, she went to the University of
Michigan and later transferred to the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 2016), where
she started her art practice as a painter. She is
inspired by many gestural and colorist painters
such as de Kooning, Amy Sillman and Sue
Williams. By using a range of gestural marks
and applying layers of glaze, Xiaoxuan brings
light into her paintings. The artist frequently
paints with bold impasto; at the same time,
she approaches her paintings with cloth,
and even bare hands, wiping off paints to
reveal the formerly hidden layers. Through
these additive and deductive processes, the
surface is made vivid with multiple textures.
Xiaoxuan’s paintings are both an outcome of
an exploration, and a peek into her different
stages of the creation process. Xiaoxuan is
also drawn to literature; a sense of anecdote
is shown in both her works and the titles of
her works. When she paints a coffee cup for
example, it keeps a recognizable container
shape; however, it is reformed into “a different
kind of thing”, sometimes even figurative.
She uses bright colors and transparent glaze
in her paintings, creating space in them while
making a range of marks to create a rich
surface. Her paintings are dynamic and free,
yet balancing between the abstraction and
narratives. Audiences can relate to the formal
qualities, and to complete the stories told
using their own imagination.
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Xiaoxuan Liu
She, Typing
oil on canvas
48 x 72 inches
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Xiaoxuan Liu
A Conversation among Containers
oil on canvas
60 x 48 inches
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Ariel Lockshaw is a California native and second year
graduate student in Painting & Drawing at the University of
Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art, where she teaches
both Beginning Painting and Beginning Drawing. She is
also a Community and Facilities Manager at Four Athens,
a non-profit organization that supports community
technological advancement and tech start-ups, where she
is also managing a community art mural.
My work is a visual exploration of how urban landscapes,
and the uncomfortable shapes and colors of industrial
encroachment are depicted by a slow, comfortable
ooze of homogenized capitalistic dominance, both
good and bad, right and left, black and white. Utilizing
imagery derived from memory and everyday encounters
A R I E L LO C KS H AW
Ariel Lockshaw
Umbrella Dwellers
acrylic, enamel, aerosol on panel
48 x 60 inches
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with the environment, I interpret and deliver a sense of
place and non-place as an experience thick with the
comforting smoke of engine exhaust, the urgent scent
of molten metal, collapsing concrete and crumbling
careers, and heavy with emotions ranging between
tranquility and regret, the unexpected and uncanny,
and a sense of nostalgia that is sometimes desperate,
sometimes joyful, but always gripping. I find the hard
lines of industrial structure/infrastructure against natural
landscapes simultaneously beautiful and disturbing. My
work demonstrates the excitement and tension of this
partnership by manipulating exaggerated forms and rich
colors.
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Ariel Lockshaw
Broke Ass Chair
acrylic and airbrush on panel
42 x 42 inches
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TERRY MACK
I am a California based graphic artist and designer
perpetually amused and intrigued by technology, gaming,
Internet culture, as well as the modern lifestyle in the digital
age. Having been glued to the screen and plugged into
the Internet as a child in the late nineties, it was only natural
for me to tackle such subjects. In addition to exploring
these ideas in my personal work, I collaborate with indie
game developers, Internet personalities, as well as other
artists. I use traditional mediums, hand drawing and
lettering, printmaking, and painting, in tandem with their
digital counterparts, focusing in particular on the power
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of combining text and image, as well as employing text as
image.
Recently I have become very interested in the changes in
the landscape of human interaction as new technologies
are conceived and introduced into our society. Distraction,
shortened attention spans, and an ever growing need to
share and overshare, as well as interact remotely all become
elements of my work. Ultimately, I seek to create visualizations
of our unconscious routines in relation to our favorite devices
and social media through painting, print, and digital media.
H E AT H E R M E R C K L E
Heather Merckle lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her
undergraduate studies began at the University of Cincinnati in
2000. In 2003 Heather was awarded a Benjamin A. Gilman
International Scholarship and studied at The Slade School of
Fine Art in London, England. She completed her degree with a
BFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. Since
2006 Heather has been in several selected group exhibitions
including, ‘No Parking’ with Galleria Ca’ D’Oro and the (un)
SCENE art fair during Armory Arts Week, NYC 2015. Most
recently, Heather’s work has been acquired by Park Towne Place
in Philadelphia, PA for inclusion in their permanent collection.
Her work has also been featured in publications including New
American Paintings Issues 77 and 83, Studio Visit magazine
Volume 7, and FreshPaint Magazine Issue 10.
HLWA (How to live with Asteroids) is a new series of paintings
depicting when asteroids descend and how to live with them,
illustrating real life situations of their presence. Additionally,
the asteroids act as metaphors for dark matter/the bigger
issue, ideas that we simply do not interact with, or avoid in our
everyday existence. They become the main focus, they take
up space, ultimately obstructing our line of vision and invading
our personal space. These new paintings are part of a larger
series of work on ‘How to build your own universe’. Merging art
and science through metaphor and visual experience my work
includes drawings, sculpture, and small illuminated paintings.
‘How to build your own universe’ can only happen if you first
try to understand the one that you live in. By breaking down the
universe you live in now and preparing for the one that you want
to be a part of, you can really see what you need to equip yourself
with in order to be successful. ‘Understanding how to live with
Asteroids’ is one example.
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Terry Mack
I Can’t Stay Here
acrylic on canvas
122 x 122 cm
82
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Heather Merckle
HLWA1: At the pool
acrylic on panel
24 x 20 inches
83
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GEORG ÓSKAR
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I find it very satisfying and fulfilling to dig into the
subconscious part of us by the methods art has to offer.
There are so many hidden sides of life which can´t be
reached by other means. The present day world insists
constantly that we pay attention to the big, noisy,
phenomena of the advertising industry. There is no poetry
in such things. Looking beyond that leads us to simplicity,
poetry and new experiences of simple, daily things.
Georg Óskar
The Human Grasshopper
oil on canvas
195 x 200 cm
84
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Georg Óskar
The Boy Who Had Two Moms
oil on canvas
190 x 155 cm
85
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CHARLIE MASSON
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Charlie Masson (b.1987 in New York) currently lives
and works in New York City. He received his MFA
from Camberwell College of Arts in London and his
BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 2010 Masson was granted a scholarship at the
Royal Drawing School (formerly The Prince’s Drawing
School) in London. Masson has exhibited in New
York, Chicago, Miami, Milan, Paris and London. Work
by the artist is represented in international private
collections.
The phenomena and cognizance of self-created online
personas are the focus of Charlie Masson’s Avatar
series. The artist seeks to immortalize his friends’
intangible virtual profile pictures as intimate portrait
keepsakes. Self-expression and the addictive quality of
Charlie Masson
Avatar (XXIV)
oil on board
6 x 6 inches
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modern day voyeurism are encouraged through social
media. The pleasure of creating a virtual ‘reality‘ while
looking into another’s life has become accepted as the
norm. Strangers become peers, and the psychological
distance is shortened although what is felt may stray
from reality. Masson brings to light the implications of
the lack of physical contact or palpable relationships.
He follows the age-old practice of painting to
effectively communicate the present. Purposefully
using oil as the medium to present this series, Masson
reinvigorates still life using social media as the new live
model. In stark contrast to how easy and quick it is to
upload a photo onto the internet, Masson’s painting
practice is a deliberate and more reflective process.
Charlie Masson
Avatar (II)
oil on board
6 x 6 inches
87
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Lauren Matsumoto is a Brooklyn-based painter whose work
explores how we relate to nature. She is best known for her
use of a hybrid form of painting, drawing, and collage. She
has exhibited her artwork across the United States in over
50 exhibitions. Internationally, her work was presented in
a solo show at Fabrik Gallery in Hong Kong, and in group
shows at the Art Complex Gallery in Tokyo and the United
States Embassy in Oman. Matsumoto has an international
collector base, including works held by the Fontaine
Collection and the Morean Arts Center in the US. She
received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts and BA in
Painting from Yale University.
collage functions as a metaphor for the continual cycle of
decay and regeneration on Earth. I carefully build each
work’s history as layers of paint, hand-drawn and printed
vintage ephemera, toile, Victorian weaving patterns,
barnacles, lichens, webs and other natural elements
develop into an eclectic composition. Fauna and flora are
protagonists interacting with what humans leave behind in
the environment– ranging from a Louis XV chair to a muscle
car or vintage radio. The paper scraps and fragments
of what we leave behind as a civilization address the
transience of our era. Old and new come together in my
work, celebrating nature, memory and the cycle of life.
Nature and how we relate to it is the central theme of my
work. In this series, a hybrid form of painting, drawing and
L A U R E N M AT S U M O T O
Lauren Matsumoto
In the Vines
oil, acrylic and paper on canvas
36 x 36 inches
88
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Lauren Matsumoto
Something Old, Something New
acrylic, ink and paper on canvas
36 x 36 inches
89
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E R I C M AV KO
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Eric Mavko received his MFA from the New
York Academy of Art in 2005, and since
then has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY.
In 2013 he was an artist in residence with
One-Sided-Story at Halle 14, Spinnerei, in
Leipzig, Germany. He has exhibited regularly,
both in New York and abroad, notably at
Halle 14; HDLU Ring Gallery, Zagreb; Norte
Maar, Brooklyn; MomentaArt, Brooklyn; 500x
Gallery, Dallas, TX, and most recently at New
Hope Arts Center, New Hope, PA.
This work is a the result of an ongoing interest
in the narrative structure of memory and
experience. In defining the current state of
ourselves we are bound to look backwards;
Eric Mavko
Janus (Is this where we began, I can’t remember)
oil and enamel on canvas
44 x 66 inches
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to arrange and rearrange glimpses of
ourselves as we see fit, perhaps to invent new
viewpoints, and force some to disappear.
In these works the mind is perhaps trapped
inside an austere, undefined architectural
space; or the mind IS the space, and there
is no escaping but rather an unfolding,
re-folding, re-configuring. The spaces
we experience function as models for our
consciousness, and painting becomes a tool
for exploration. Phenomenological oddity
belies an intelligently edited precision, with
the resulting images evoking the simulacral
atmosphere of memories or dreams.
Eric Mavko
Ascend (Interior)
oil and graphite on canvas
65 x 84 inches
91
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Top
Alessandro Palmigiani
Urban Eden 1
digital art
60 x45 cm
JOHN-MICHAEL
METELERKAMP
Alessandro Palmigiani
Urban Eden 2
digital art
60 x 45 cm
Ten years of absence along the Garden Route has resulted in
Metelerkamp feverishly expressing himself through painting,
since 2013.
In a manner of chaos he tries to make sense of the world he
finds himself in.
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John-Michael Metelerkamp
Keepers
acrylic on paper
2 x 1.3 meters
92
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ALESSANDRO
PA L M I G I A N I
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GEORGIA NOBLE
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Whilst being at university I exhibited in multiple locations
in Manchester, including MadLabs in the Northern Quarter
and Federation House, a space represented by Castlefield
Gallery. After graduating I was part of the ‘Northern
Graduates’ exhibition at the Curwen Gallery in London and
also exhibited in Blackpool as part of ‘Test:bed’ which was
a show in association with ARTCOP21 Paris. I have recently
been featured on Saatchi Art as part of their ‘Invest in Art’
initiative and have also been invited to exhibit at the Marzia
Frozen gallery in Berlin as part of their upcoming show
‘Equinox’ in occasion of the Berlin Biennale 2016.
a varied palette to allude to the natural environment in an
attempt to capture and represent the energies and forms it
possesses. Familiarities found within the paintings provide
the viewer with a sense of stability and recognition with
the world they are accustomed to, while the more abstract
formations deliver a sense of escapism.
‘In my practice I aim to transcend the conventions of
traditional landscape painting in order to present the viewer
with a sense of space that, through both expressive mark
making and the thin layering of oil paint, goes beyond the
physical and real to evoke a sense of somewhere ‘other’.
The paintings themselves are made in response to my own
experiences and relationship with the natural environment
and, painting impulsively, I let this be the source that I
work from and build my compositions through methods of
abstraction to create a final image that is free from formal
structure and is open to interpretation.’
It is my aim that the work provokes questions of the
metaphysical and hints at the sublime, challenging
preconceptions of our existence within nature and
addressing our inferiority and mortality in relation to it.
Through the omission of a clear structure and horizon line, I
use both suggestive and expressive marks, combined with
Georgia Noble
Meteorites Permeate the Ocean
oil on canvas
90 x 200 cm
94
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Georgia Noble
Everyone Leaves
oil on canvas
153 x 153 cm
95
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RUSS NOTO
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My work is an absurd construction of
dialogue. My intention is to take the
traditional, often figurative and romantic
notions in painting and isolate them as
separate materials. It is, for example, the
illogical and absurd space between a painting
of my dog’s mouth, and tennis balls that I’m
currently interested in.
*A note on the text.
The text is an opportunity for the viewer to
become part of a work. The ‘reader’ performs
the work and is therefore intertwined with the
composition. This relationship also serves as
the figurative element in a lot of my work.
Russ Noto
Always Smiling, Always
acrylic, insulation foam, plaster and oil on canvas and wood
65.5 x 74.5 inches
96
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Russ Noto was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania
and remained in the greater area until 2009
when he received a BFA from Keystone
College. Shortly after, he entered the
Savannah College of Art and Design’s MFA
Painting Program. During this time he planted
his feet in large works and developed a studio
practice that led to national and international
exhibitions. In 2012 Russ Noto received an
MFA from the Savannah College of Art and
Design and remains as a working artist today.
Russ Noto
Untitled
oil on canvas and duct tape
5.75 x 7 inches
97
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JAIME POBLETE
A R AV E N A
Jaime was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1981. He lives and works in Erba
(Como, Italy).
He studied Scenic Design and History of Art at the University of Chile.
In 2000 he started working as a scenic designer for various theatre
companies in Santiago. He began his pictorial activity at the Artefacto
Atelier - the atelier of the Chilean artist Francisco Gonzalez - where he
later worked as a Professor of Painting.
Between 2002 and 2007 Jaime worked as a restorer at the Museum of
Contemporary Art (MAC) in Santiago. From 2008 to 2010 he lived and
worked in Valencia, Spain, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts
at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
He has participated in group exhibitions in Chile, Spain and Italy. His
works are located in several private collections in Chile, Spain, the
United States and Italy.
Jaime’s pictorial poetics is mainly gestural; the themes he addresses
deal with identity, tying the individual space to the territorial one. In
parallel to painting, he has also experienced other graphic techniques,
including lithography and engraving, as well as performance and
theatre as body language.
ANNE RYNEARSON
My paintings mingle representation and abstraction, placing
significance on an intimate experience of the rural landscape.
Rather than depicting romanticized vistas, my compositions are
fractured, multi-layered amalgamations that celebrate and examine
the natural features and man-made constructs in a local rural
setting combined with family and local historical narratives. I am
interested in the relationship between the natural environment and
its use/misuse through settlement, farming and social-economic
changes reflected in global issues of environmental change,
inherited wealth, and inequality. The formation of the work begins
with photographs that I have taken of the fields, river and woods
which are then manipulated through photoshop, projection and
the process of painting. I also refer to historical and contemporary
plats, satellite maps and archival material about the area to inform
my concepts and amplify visual patterns in the imagery. The
process of painting becomes most important to the resolution of
the pieces, absorbing the collected information, drawn forms, and
layers of colors and patterns into an independent, invented image.
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Jaime Poblete Aravena
Memento
mixed media on canvas
250 x 135 cm
98
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Anne Rynearson
Epoch in Fast Forward
acrylic and metallic media on canvas
84 x 60 inches
99
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DIANA ROIG
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Diana Roig was born in 1982 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
Currently she is based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands,
where she has received her BA in Fine Arts from the Willem
de Kooning Art Academy. She emigrated from Argentina to
Holland at the age of eight, gaining a second nationality and
becoming a ‘new Dutch’. Contemplating with this duality
of heritage has played a significant part throughout her life
and practice.
My collective work is a study of the transformative nature
within the process of painting. It is nurtured and driven by
personal experiences, altered states of consciousness and an
urge to communicate by the act of painting, translated into a
Diana Roig
The Velvette
oil on canvas
200 x 165 cm
100
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language of abstraction, colour and form. It is also influenced
by natural growth, biological processes and fractals with
a great fascination for evolution, survival of the fittest, new
species, transformations and perception.
Each painting, in a way, tells its own story and becomes
a framework for perceptual faculties that address our
associative mind. I strive to blur the lines between abstraction
and figuration by subconsciously suggesting forms and
primordial organic shapes. I invite the viewers to make their
own images; a unique experience distilled from their own
frames of reference; to create a new world of their own.
Diana Roig
With Kaleidoscope Eyes
oil on canvas
200 x 165 cm
101
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M AT T S C H A E F E R
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Matt Schaefer (b.1979) is a painter living in
Rapid City, South Dakota. Schaefer exhibits
internationally, most recently in Matera, Italy,
as part of the ‘Art Out of Category’ exhibition.
Matt has been featured in numerous museum
exhibitions as well as publications. Matt
actively participates as a guest artist and
lecturer at regional universities.
Fluxus and Neo-Dada energy permeate my
artistic world. Working with unusual materials,
I combine a refined sense of design with
found objects and surfaces. Cardboard,
Matt Schaefer
Ldr7-63Nn-Pqc9
mixed media
48 x 48 inches
102
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house paint, mixing trays, notebook paper,
metallic and transparent papers are combined
in an amalgam of support surfaces. Smaller
canvases are joined together with the visual
divisions of the canvas’s edges playing a
compositional role. Form is continually
deconstructed and revisited into sequential
images. Cool and warm variations of the same
color splashes are juxtaposed with deliberate
strokes and marks, mingling the intentional
with the accidental.
Matt Schaefer
G4E-43NL-TD3C
mixed media
48 x 48 inches
103
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SA R A H S H AW
CORY SEWELSON
Cory Sewelson, a Los Angeles native, currently works
and resides in Altadena, California. He earned a Bachelor
of Fine Arts degree from California State University,
Northridge.
Sewelson has shown his work extensively in California and
also in Europe. He is included in corporate and private
collections both in the US and abroad.
In addition to his studies in art and ongoing studio
practice, there have been other strong influences on his
artwork. Earlier studies in biology and science, a day job
involving the design of animal habitats for theme parks,
and a life-long love of the outdoors have all contributed to
the concepts and subjects found in Sewelson’s paintings.
He subscribes to a view that architecture is our human
response to nature. For many years, his work has explored
the ways in which we relate to the world through our use of
constructed architecture.
Sewelson’s paintings are done on panel. He uses a
process of collage and layering to create the imagery and
composition in his paintings. Hand sketching is combined
with digital artwork in this collage process. He sees
the layering of imagery and the application of paint as
analogous to the process of constructing a building.
Sarah graduated in 1999 from Falmouth College of Art with a BA (First
Class Hons) in Fine Art. She lives and works in Brighton, UK.
which gives us the sense of our surroundings, but to which we tend to
not pay attention.
I feel that I am in a constant state of redefining my process and aims
as a painter. At the heart of my work there is a fascination with the
endless possibilities within paint, how to transform a two dimensional
space into something with narrative or the possibility to transport
the viewer – but the most important part of painting for myself is to
get caught up in the process and allow a conversation to happen
between myself and the painting. The most successful paintings
always retain some sense of this dialogue, the often long painterly
journey that has meandered its way through endless emotions.
Some of the works’ imagery is determined through the making
process whilst other work explores specific metaphorical or symbolic
images, barriers, passages to explore ideas around time passing, but
also very human emotions, frustrations, hopes and desires.
The work often hovers in a place between figuration and
abstraction which allows the viewers the space to impose their own
interpretation. I’m fascinated by the notion of trying to represent time;
past, present and future, and also ‘periphery’ - that part of our vision
During the process of painting there is a building up and stripping
down of imagery, and an exploration of different painterly languages,
eventually being reduced down to the lowest denominator where
an edgy quietness falls. They are not whole images, but snatches of
images, sounds and thoughts, forming into coherence briefly, like a
painterly slideshow of memory. Ultimately the paintings speak of a
belief in the enduring vitality of painting as a primary form of visceral
and visual communication.
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Cory Sewelson
Crocus Messenger
acrylic, oil on panel
42 x 36 inches
104
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Sarah Shaw
Search
oil on canvas
136 x 153 cm
105
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KYUNG HWA SHON
Kyung Hwa Shon (born 1983) lives and works in London and Seoul.
She is currently studying for a PhD in Painting at the Royal College
of Art. She was a Starr Scholar at the Royal Academy of Arts in
London, UK.
Shon has shown her work internationally at the Royal Academy
of Arts (UK), Saatchi Gallery (UK); Seoul Olympic Museum of Art;
Posco Art Museum, Alternative Space Loop and SeoungNam Arts
Centre (Korea); Korean Cultural Service New York (USA); University
of Porto (Portugal) and Korean Cultural Centre (UK).
My artwork explores the reciprocal relationship between a city
and the imagination through the eyes of a city phantom, ‘Stillman’.
The uncovered invisible remnants, ungraspable fragments,
and evanescent vestiges of ‘Stillman’ make the city a field of
excavation where everything is buried, hidden, and remaining
undiscovered. Through chasing his traces, the city is transformed
into an enormous surrealistic theatrical space for exploration of
the feeling of newness and psychic ambivalence. A number of
unanticipated experiences in everyday life unfold into extensions of
imagination that oscillate between virtuality and actuality. Ruffles of
the imagination heighten the sense of unpredictability, excitability
and disorientation in the city. It opens out a space for the possibility
of experiencing a rapid transition of both spatiality and temporality,
as well as sensory experiences of fragmentation.
My art practice focuses on the rediscovery of psychological
heteromorphic identification, the presence of invisible substance,
and fantastic visual experiences emanating from serendipitous
moments of glitch in the city. The work implies the opening of
the urban landscape to a distinct poetics of the city in which
mythology, sign, symbol, voice, text, and trace occurs.
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Kyung Hwa Shon
Chicago City Maze
acrylic paint, pen, tape, copper wire, nail, graphite powder on wood
dimensions variable
K AT I E D A R B Y
S L AT E R
Last spring I received my MFA in Painting from the Rhode
Island School of Design. I am creating abstractions out of
quotidian life, paintings that find harmony through color,
line, shape and light. Prior to RISD, I received my BFA in
Painting from Auburn University in 2011. After Auburn, I
was the recipient of fellowships to attend artist in residence
programs at the Art Students League of New York-Vytlacil
Campus, Vermont Studio Center, and Pebble Hill Center
for Arts and Humanities. My work has been exhibited at
the Western Exhibitions in Chicago, IL, MX Gallery in New
York, NY, and the Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus,
GA, among other places. I am currently living and working
in New London, CT.
My work captures the nostalgic feeling of a place, as
opposed to rendering it literally. The images occupy
middle ground between abstraction and description: part
dreamy memory, part flat arrangement of color and shape.
They bridge the gap between the ideal and the every
day, while functioning as externalizations of emotion and
knowledge derived from observation and inventiveness.
Some are about light hitting a certain spot on the floor
and reflecting on to the wall while others describe the
color-memory of palm trees next to the ocean or shadows
created by moonlight beaming into a bedroom at night. I
determine which objects are worthy of being painted by
experimenting with the details I remember after leaving
their presence.
Recently, I have been working to create paintings that
reveal something about the world that goes beyond
surfaces and interacts with the constant changing of reality.
Only through capturing a moment of rare stillness can one
appreciate the sublime ensconced within the mundane.
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Katie Darby Slater
Ocean Waves and Submarines
oil on panel
12 x 12 inches
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M AT H E W T U C K E R
P A M E L A S TA K E R
Pamela Staker is a Chicago based abstract painter with a
concentration in large-scale paintings, mixed media works
on paper, and commissioned artworks. Her work/live
space is in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood and she shares
the studio with her German Shepherd Dog and 2 cats — all
rescue animals. Staker received her BFA in painting from
the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign and has
received several grants and awards including an Illinois
Arts Council Fellowship and a CAAP Individual Artist Grant
from the City of Chicago, Department of Cultural Affairs.
She was recently featured in a Chicago Tribune article from
July 27, 2014 by Rick Kogan “Painting put artist’s life back
on track” and in an artist interview with Saatchi Art. Pamela
is represented by Moberg Gallery in Des Moines, Iowa and
has works in numerous private and corporate collections.
At their core Pamela Staker’s paintings and works on paper
are about a search for beauty and joy in process. They are a
performance of sorts — spontaneously choreographed —
playful and sensitive — free-flowing within the bounds
of carefully constructed compositions. Using landscape,
nature and architecture to underpin her compositions,
Staker advances the work by allowing herself a great
deal of freedom in her paint handling - applying her
marks quickly and with a confidence that is intuitive and
decidedly unfussy.
Born in Harpenden, UK, Mathew was brought up and
educated in UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, St. Lucia and England.
He studied Art and Design at West Surrey College of Art
and Design and at London College of Printing (London
Institute). He lived and worked in London for 10 years,
working largely in the telecommunications and business
sector before moving to Ireland in 2006 to teach surfing
and study for BA (Hons) in Fine Art at Sligo Institute of
Technology. He moved to New York in 2014 to study an
MFA at Hunter College as a painter, graduating in May
2016.
As a painter, I am interested in the built environment and
the forms, shapes and perimeters of the spaces, places
and non-places we define. There are numerous formal,
material and compositional elements that inform my
work but mostly it is an attempt to unearth some kind
of understanding of myself and my sense of place. As
someone who travelled extensively as a child my sense of
home has always been very fixed to an internal sense of
familiarity and never to a physical location as defined on a
map. As such, my paintings are a way for me to question
my surroundings and the definition of space that we
collectively impose on ourselves. I am most interested
in spaces that might be considered non-places or that
are fairly utilitarian like subway stations or gateways and
barriers that divide space and either refuse or control
access. These spaces are usually transient in nature and
serve as connecting blocks and also barriers to other
places.
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Pamela Staker
The Rally
oil on canvas
60 x 72 inches
108
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Mathew Tucker
Gas Facility
oil on canvas
188 x 249 cm
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DIANA TREMAINE
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Diana Tremaine, born in New York City, lived in Los Angeles
for 14 years after getting her Fine Art degree at the University
of California. She taught painting and drawing at Taft College
and Chino’s Men’s State Prison in California before moving to
Bozeman, Montana, where she continues to teach from her own
studio looking out over the Gallatin Mountains. In addition to
her inclusion in numerous gallery exhibits across the country,
Diana’s work resides in public and private collections from Japan
to Switzerland to exclusive mountain resort areas.
to me until the final brushstroke. In this way the process itself,
the act of discovering what is and is not important, is the
ultimate ‘subject’. I am interested in creating and preserving
surface tension through the use of opaque paint passages that
sit in front of transparent passages, crisp edges that sit in front
of soft edges. But I’m also interested in maintaining those small
windows that reveal the very first marks on the canvas, left like
ticks on a clock, to echo the history of a painting. In so doing I
reveal a universal history of truth, reflected in subjective beauty.
My work is moved by a search for truth – it could be a sliver that
slides across my vision or a sublime shadow of a swing on a
summer afternoon. I’m interested in elevating the beauty of a
moment. In this age of sensationalism and social media I want to
produce work that connects us to our humanity.
Ultimately I explore the relationship of the real and the
intangible in ways that entice me back to the studio. The conflict
of image and abstraction, light and yearning, equal parts joy
and loss, is the most powerful form of expression for me. Beauty
is the thing that reminds us we are human. It transforms us and it
holds us together.
My process involves developing and obliterating different
passages in each painting repeatedly. The outcome is unknown
Diana Tremaine
Patriarchal Punch
oil on canvas
40 x 40 inches
110
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Diana Tremaine
Long Summer Shadow
oil on canvas
48 x 48 inches
111
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My work comes from thoughts about people, places, and home; about
age, time, and timelessness, permanence and impermanence; about
movement, migration, and belonging. People and places are depicted
in images and objects that combine simple representations, layered
abstractions, and plain-spoken materials.
This group of paintings started with night photographs of houses in my
neighborhood and of abandoned cabins in the Sierras. I became intrigued
by the way that familiar scenes are transformed by darkness and stark
artificial light. I’m fascinated by people’s relationship with the land and time,
how the natural and man-made landscape records people’s movements
and stories, and in particular the way that things we regard as solid and
permanent are actually temporary, in flux, and part of a continuum much
larger than ourselves.
MARTIN WEBB
Martin Webb
Balancing Act
mixed media on wood panel
36 x 48 inches
112
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Martin Webb
One Time At Sundown
mixed media on wood panel
48 x 36 inches
113
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DEBORAH
W E S T M A N C O AT
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Deborah Westmancoat is a painter based in Somerset, UK
working with ink and collected waters. She was selected
for Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2014 and is a
current Royal West of England Artist Network member.
Her work is exhibited frequently throughout the UK and
internationally and has been featured in many publications,
including Internationale Kunst Heute 2016 and Subasta de
Arte Britanico Contemporaneo 2015 — Morton Casa de
Subastas, New Mexico.
My interest lies in understanding the British landscape and
our place within it. Samples of site and weather specific
waters are collected and combined with pigment to record
the peculiarities, mysteries and attitudes of water held within
the land.
Particular virtues and qualities of light observed within
streams, icicles, hoar frost and hailstorms became the
catalyst for a series of recent works. ‘White Field and
Hailstorm 6’ (2015) was made using collected hailstones
in an attempt to see if their energy, dynamism and stark
beauty would become manifest within the work. ‘The
World Without Us’ (2016) uses the dark water of a frozen
puddle to capture the silence of ‘Dead Woman’s Ditch’,
an atmospheric earthwork in the Quantock Hills. ‘Surface
2’ (2013) is an experiment in understanding the nature of
immersion, how to lose oneself in the work and absent
oneself from the outcome. As part of the making process,
the panel was repeatedly immersed in black writing ink and
local flood waters. Each time the previous story was washed
away and a new story ‘written’ upon the surface.
Deborah Westmancoat
Surface 2
black writing ink, snowmelt (collected from Longrun Meadows, Taunton), jojoba and beeswax on board
120 x 79 x 3 cm
114
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Deborah Westmancoat
The World Without Us
black writing ink, Indian ink and a frozen puddle collected from Dead Woman’s Ditch, Quantock Hills, Somerset on board
35 x 28 x 4.5 cm
115
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DAV I D W I L L B U R N
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I make drawings — often of items and spaces in my own home and imbued with sentimentality —
where abstraction is used to strip objects of their subjective influence. For me, the process of
drawing is about building with fragments; individual marks connect and unify the whole. I’m
interested in the line, how it can activate things, and how it inhabits and changes a space — fabric,
paper, wall, or room. I combine this interest with the use of painting, sculpture, and craft media as a
way of employing domestic ritual, and as a way of rethinking social, gender, and cultural convention.
The subjects are not political; the process might be.
Born in Fort Stockton, Texas, David Willburn lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas. He earned an
MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts (Montpelier, VT). His work has been shown nationally and
internationally at venues including Dallas Contemporary (Dallas, Texas); Helmuth Projects (San
Diego, CA); University of Art and Design (Helsinki, Finland); Museum of Arts and Design (New York,
NY); Union Gallery at University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, WI) and Museum of Contemporary Craft
(Portland, Oregon).
David Willburn
The Neon Lagoon
acrylic, graphite, embroidery on muslin
11 x11 x 1.5 inches
116
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David Willburn
Barrel-Vaulted, Bleeding Red
acrylic, graphite, embroidery on muslin
11 x 11 x 1.5 inches
117
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HIEJIN YOO
KEN WOOD
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Ken Wood’s recent solo exhibitions include ‘Scripta Volant‘ (Written Words Fly) at the Print Center Philadelphia and ‘Each
to Other’ at Beverly in St Louis. He has shown his work at the International Print Center New York; the Luminary in St Louis;
the Sidney Larson Gallery in Columbia, MO; Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati; Big Medium Gallery in Austin; Flatbed Press and
Gallery in Austin; the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, and the Aqua Art Fair in Miami. His work is included in the
collections of Twitter, STL Venture Works, and Rice University.
S.O.S. explores the relationship of line to line and color to color. The suite of 26 monoprints was created from six
interchangeable plates, printed in different combinations and orientations. Each plate consists of a simple distilled gesture;
this singularity quickly builds up to complexity as the marks are printed on top of each other in different colors and in varying
degrees of opacity.
Ken Wood
SOS “D”
unique relief print
28 x 28 inches
118
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I was born in 1987 in Germany and lived there for 7 years. I moved to
South Korea and grew up there until 2011. I went to art school in Korea,
but I transferred my major to English Literature and was awarded a BA
degree in 2011. After graduation I came to the US to keep studying
painting. I studied painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago from 2012 to 2014. I spent two years in undergraduate at
SAIC and undertook a Post Baccalaureate program at SAIC in 2014
and now I am a MFA candidate in University of California Los Angeles. I
currently live and work in Los Angeles with beautiful weather.
My painting is an intimate journal. Since the moments have been
so strongly etched on my consciousness, ordinary moments of life
become an event and personal history as soon as I express my daily
life as a painting. The memories are telling me something about what
I remember in my life when I work and interact with them. I start to
paint with reflections of the memories, bridging with the scenes that
I remember. I reinterpret my memories and experiences with colors,
reminding me of my feelings in that moment. The ambience of a specific
space in a specific time is the key to start my painting.
The traces of my memories show that I have enjoyed a remarkable life.
I strive to make each of my paintings a reflection of my perception of
the moment. The subject matter of each painting is filled with infinite
mundane elements, but I personalize them to convey the unique
qualities that I perceive. I observe an object to find its representational
imagery, extract an abstraction from it, and then create an imaginative
space with brush marks and colors.
I begin to believe that my impromptu energies will allow me to walk into
the canvas right away with my brushes. I do not create sketches before
I paint, so the colors come from intuition. This almost irresistible way
of painting continues to be one of my strongest interests. My paintings
represent the visible world that other people have never seen before,
and my work is not only about painting but also about myself.
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Hiejin Yoo
Driver’s knee in LA
oil on canvas
40 x 50 inches
119
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YVONNE ZAGO
instagram.com/yvonnezago
Yvonne Alexandra Zago (born 1980) is an Australian artist. After completing a BA in Visual Arts (hons)
in 2003 at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), she has exhibited in both
group and solo shows since her first in 2008. She has been a finalist in numerous awards and her
work is held in public and private collections within Australia and overseas.
Yvonne currently lives in a semi-rural location on the outskirts of Perth, a place which provides much
of the reference material for her paintings.
Driven by a strong curiosity of the natural world I create paintings that draw on familiar figurative
imagery and combine fragments gathered from various places to create dreamlike scapes that
enthrall; escapist and inherently feminine, familiar and yet ‘other’ ; the paradox of being unable to
escape to a place that never really felt like home.
While containing identifying Australian flora and fauna and figures that are trespassers, these
landscapes remain unidentified in time and space, providing a moment that is intimately imbued with
emotion, opening up a texturally imaginative world.
Yvonne Zago
You Are My Heartstrings
oil and synthetic polymer on canvas
122 x 122 cm
120
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Yvonne Zago
A Late Light
oil and synthetic polymer on canvas
92 x 123 cm
121
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A D R I A N Z AVA L A
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Adrian Zavala
Hex Portrait 03
oil on panel
36 x 36 inches
122
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My art is about people, the representation
of every single one of them. My art project
shows the personality of people through a
“Consciousness’ Map”, a six sided figure
that represents the Soul, Body, Higher
Consciousness, Emotion, Will and Instinct.
The design inside shows the connections
among these six elements: IT’S THE
FINGERPRINT OF OUR SOULS.
galleries. He began his artistic activities under
the tutelage of master painter Carlos Navarro,
and has been painting ever since.
Adrian Zavala is an artist, painter, illustrator
and art director based in Chicago, whose
current project is HEXBYADR. The collection
of paintings and drawings.
Adrian has a bachelor’s degree in Digital and
Art Design from the University of New Mexico.
He also studied part of his degree in Mexico
at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México).
A painter with almost 30 years of experience,
Adrian has been featured in several exhibitions
in museums in Mexico and independent
His art is represented nationally by Artman
gallery located in California.
Adrian has won various accolades for his
work. He won the Chicago Latino Film Festival
poster design two years in a row. He also won
first place in the Tenth International Biennial
Poster Contest in Mexico.
Adrian Zavala
Hex Portrait 4
oil on panel
36 x 36 inches
123
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JAEYEON YOO
The central concern of my research is to determine how the personal imaginary world has been constructed in the real world
in order to escape from inauthentic reality - how is it enacted or embodied? I am interested in discovering ideas based on the
activity of escapism especially in the use of painting, childhood memories, personal fantasy, and everyday life which represent
the organizational contradiction of society and home. In other words, I articulate the differences between subtle memories
of tender age and the reality in nowadays as a visual language. My main work method is paintings, drawings, books, and
installations which can be a proof-object of my fictional stories.
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Jaeyeon Yoo
Wedding March
oil on canvas
193.9 x 132 cm
124
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Image courtesy of Kelly Reemtsen