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Arcadia Contemporar y “ The New R Af elast o Av uring
Mar y Jan Daniela Steven Darian M Agnieszka N Megan Eliz Anne-Chri and Jose Lo
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ne Ansell a Astone Lawler Mederos Nienartowicz abeth Read stine Roda p e z Ve r g a r a “Looking-Glass” Oil on Panel 30 x 30 Inches
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This exhibition w
Arcadia Contempora
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will be on view at
ar y until March 31st.
“Looking-Glass” Oil on Panel 30 x 30 Inches
Jo s é L op e z Ve r g a r a b. 1994, Mexico
Jose Lopez Vergara was born in Mexico City in 1994 and raised in Madrid, Spain. In 2003 he had an accident that permanently impaired the movement of his right arm. During a long recovery period he was encouraged to cultivate his interest in drawing and develop his innate artistic abilities. Jose spent his teenage years painting murals with spray paint and creating hyper realistic drawings with colored pencils. Having explored different creative paths, finally his interests led him to oil painting. He then went on to study classical drawing and painting from 2016 to 2021 in Florence and New York following a tradition that goes back to the Renaissance. Vergara’s work centers on the search for an idealized representation of everyday life, current events and universal emotion. He’s influenced by art of many cultures of the past and present. Although his realist technique requires a strict methodology and rational thinking, his compositions rely on subconscious impulses and demand an abstract expression. His interest in the silhouette and minimal design plays a central role in his work and continues to open many paths for exploration. Jose currently lives and works in his studio in Madrid, Spain.
The Golden Earring Oil on Linen 51” x 34”
Vendor of Masks Oil on Linen 25” x 35”
Fortuna Oil on Linen 23” x 19”
Reverence Oil on Panel 20” x 16”
Icon I
Oil on Linen 9” x 20”
Mask Necklace Oil on Linen 16” x 13”
The Wanderer Oil on Linen 9” x 12”
Rift
Oil on Linen 12” x 9”
Anne-Christine Roda b. 1974, France
Anne- Christine Roda defines a highly original interpretation of the portrait. Her paintings, in terms of the choice of pose for her models and the neutral treatment of their backgrounds are as rooted in tradition, as her subjects are sourced unequivocally from our contemporary era. Her choice of subject speaks directly to our everyday lives. Thanks to her training as a picture restorer, Anne Christine, with each meticulously applied layer of paint gradually reveals her sitters face in all its naked intimacy. The features emerge with precision and realism. The gentle hollow of a fine wrinkle, the texture of a strand of hair or even the moisture of a glistening eye: it’s in this quest for exactitude and fidelity to her subject that the individual is revealed in all its sensitivity. The choice of a neutral expression is deliberate, in so doing, leaving the portrait open to the personal interpretation of each person who stands before it.
The Green Dress Oil on Linen 58” x 38”
The Purple Cape Oil on Linen 40” x 30”
Alya II
Oil on Panel 36” x 24”
Reverie I Oil on Panel 12” x 16”
Reverie II Oil on Panel 12” x 16”
Magdalena II Oil on Panel 18” x 16”
Megan Elizabeth Read b. 1982, United States
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Megan (Mae) Elizabeth Read is an American figurative artist living and working in Charlottesville, Virginia. Largely self-taught, she began as a charcoal and pencil artist but now works almost exclusively in oil with pieces ranging from small still life to large scale figurative paintings, often featuring the female form. Since Mae began focusing on painting in 2017 her work has been exhibited internationally with galleries and museums including the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) in Barcelona, Spain, the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, WI, and Sotheby’s, NY. Her work is held in a number of collections, including the Bennett Collection of Women Realists and the permanent collection at the New Salem Museum, has been included in various publications, and has received a number of awards including 1st place for Imaginative Realism at the 2019 International Art Renewal Center Salon and Director’s Choice at the 2020 International Guild of Realism Juried Exhibition.
Evanesce Oil on Linen 24” x 18”
Orchid I Oil on Linen 6” x 6”
Orchid II Oil on Linen 6” x 6”
Inhale (Dark) Oil on Linen 6” x 6”
Agnieszka Nienartowi b. 1991, Poland
icz
Poised against dark, slightly illuminated backgrounds, the impeccably dressed women in Agnieszka Nienartowicz’s paintings are rendered in a style evocative of traditional historical European portraits. However, turning the women backwards and hiding their faces in the shadows, Nienartowicz places tattoos with religious motifs on their bare backs. In the 19th century, tattooing their bodies by women was seen as an act of emancipation, “throwing off the corset”. Today they have entered the mainstream and constitute a kind of diary - images, symbols, signs are usually carefully selected by the wearers. Following the theory of empiricism, according to which, on the day of birth, everyone is a tabula rasa - a blank blackboard, each event leaves a mark. Systems of religious beliefs, doctrines and rituals leave exceptionally deep and indelible traces. By making themselves infallible, they frame themselves firmly and indisputably. Religious belief systems are incapacitating: they leave marks and scars. The women in the Nienartowicz’s paintings do not show their faces - they are anonymous, their identity is “unworthy of attention”. Instead, the object of interest are their bodies. And so, the tattoo as a symbol of release from the corset yoke, eventually becomes a corset itself.
Immaculata Oil on Canvas 36” x 24”
A Beautiful World Oil on Canvas 40” x 28”
Dead Game Oil on Canvas 40” x 28”
Temptation Oil on Canvas 40” x 28”
Saving the Princess Oil on Canvas 36” x 24”
Da r i a n M e d e r o s b. 1992, Cuba
Cuban prodigy, Darian Mederos’ work focuses on the ubiquitous human face. Emotive and replete with meaning, our faces encompass the vast human experience, revealing everything at once or nothing at all. With the “Obscura Series”, Mederos creates something new, a photorealistic abstraction. The bubble wrap reflects light and distorts the underlying image, it is only at a distance that the works come into focus. When viewed up close the faces dissolve into bold strokes of flesh tones and painted light. The artist challenges the viewer with the “Obscura Series” in asking us to understand the core of human identity, from a respectful distance. Mederos attended his first two years of art school at Leopoldo Romañach in his hometown of Santa Clara, Cuba. Always striving to do be better, he applied and was accepted to the much-lauded, and oldest art school in the Western Hemisphere, La Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, in Havana, Cuba. Darian Mederos currently resides and works in Miami, Florida.
The Orange Second Oil on Canvas 48” x 60”
Waiting for Spring Oil on Linen 60” x 48”
Girl with Curls Oil on Canvas 48” x 36”
Dreamer Oil on Linen 28” x 22”
Looking Back Home Oil on Linen 28” x 22”
St e v e n L aw l e r b. 1968, United Kingdom
Steven Lawler (b.1968) is a English artist living and working in West Yorkshire. Originally from Manchester, Lawler grew up in a working class area of the inner city in the 1970s where his only real access to art was in the pages of old books on famous painters of the past at the local library and in the pages of comic books at his local newsagents. Gene Colan has always been a favourite comic book artist of Steven’s - particularly his work on ‘Tomb of Dracula’ in the 1970s. Colan conjured up suspenseful, dramatic and mysterious images using strong chiaroscuro lighting not unlike that used by cinematographer John Alton in the film noir movies of the 40s and 50s. Caravaggio and Rembrandt naturally then became Lawler’s favourite painters alongside Ribera, Vermeer, Lievens, Drost, Goya, Zurburan and Valentin de Boulogne. Steven Lawler paints in oils on canvas and linen and his process employs life work and reference photography combined with invention and imagination. He often changes the features of his models in order to create characters that don’t really exist. In his paintings that suggest a story the narrative is usually presented in the same way that the film stills in the movie books of his youth were - in that they are fragmented from the path of a linear plot, leaving an isolated and psychologically suggestive picture that is forever open ended.
Marlowe
Oil on Canvas 42” x 32”
The Fallen and the Saved Oil on Canvas 24” x 48”
Father with a .45 Oil on Canvas 54” x 24”
Soliloquy Oil on Canvas 30” x 30”
Love Gun Oil on Canvas 24” x 20”
Da n i e l a A s t o n e b. 1980, Italy
Daniela Astone formally began studying art at the age of 14 . After graduating in 1998 she moved to Florence to study Illustration at the international school of comix, she started to work indipendently for several editors and in the studio of illustration Inklink. At the age of 21 Daniela goes back to study art at The Florence Academy of Art under the direction of Daniel Graves. She graduated in 2004 and she continued to work as a principal teacher for the Florence Academy of art . In 2013 Daniela became the director of the intermediate program at The Florence Academy of Art , entered in the BP award in London and recived a honorable mention from the Mod Portrait award,Spain . Her work has exhibited internationally and in 2016 it became part of the permanent collection of MACS ,the Contemporary Art Museum in Sicily. In 2019 together with Gaia Grazioli she curated the Show “Corpo a Corpo” in the Museum of Villa Bardini in Florence thanks to Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze and the Art Historian Carlo Sisi.
Love
Oil on Linen 39” x 55”
Mary Jane Ansell b. 1983, United Kingdom
Mary Jane has been a finalist in the prestigious BP Portrait Award in 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2012, selected regularly for the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Exhibition and was a prize winner in the 2021 Annual ARC Salon 2021. Her works feature in private and public collections world wide including commissions for the permanent collections of The National Portrait Gallery UK, Brighton and Hove Museums and the Joe Lewis Collection where her work is installed on the super yacht Aviva. With recent selections also for the exhibition Women Painting the Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona Spain in 2021. At the 2022 LA Art Show writing for Mutual Art Michael Pearce described her as “England’s finest figurative painter” and in 2017 she was named one of the “Top 100 Figurative Painters Working Right Now” by Buzz Feed. Her work has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, American Art Collector and a number of recent novels, including New York Times bestselling author Tiffany Baker’s Gilly Salt Sisters and on Adam Ant’s recently released album: Adam Ant is The BlueBlack Hussar In Marrying The Gunners Daughter. After 25 years living near to the sea in Brighton UK she and her partner of 29 years, Richard, a musician, moved to the dramatic scenery and isolation of the Welsh borders, near Snowdonia. An area rich in ancient legend and inspiration
Antiope
Oil on Aluminum 40” x 32”
Asterales
Oil on Aluminum 30” x 30”
Hope and The Reckoning Oil on Aluminum 27” x 39”
Antheia
Oil on Aluminum 21” x 21”
Lenaia II
Oil on Aluminum 16” x 16”
Passiflora II Oil on Aluminum 15” x 15”
Eurosa
Oil on Aluminum 12” x 12”
Study for Cri de Coeur Oil on Aluminum 12” x 8”
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