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devotion Curated by Daniel Maidman

MICHAEL ALAN NIN ANDREWS ANNA ROSE BAIN BO BARTLETT NOAH BECKER CARRIE-ANN BRACCO JOAQUIN CARTER GRACE CAVALIERI MARY CHIARAMONTE MARCO COLÍN SILVIA CURBELO ELIZABETH D’ANGELO STEPHANIE DESHPANDE JAMES GILROY

JUAN GIRALDO DAN GLUIBIZZI JAMES GURNEY ANNE HARRIS JAIME HERNANDEZ NICOLA HICKS ALEXIS HILLIARD CATHERINE HOWE LINA HSIAO DAVID JON KASSAN STANKA KORDIC JEREMY LIPKING DANIEL MAIDMAN RENEE MCGINNIS

RICHARD MEYER JENNY MORGAN SYRIE MOSKOWITZ KATIE O’HAGAN MIA PEARLMAN ISAAC PELEPKO JOSEPH PODLESNIK ELISA PRITZKER CHRIS RINI CECILIA RUIZ DAVID SALLE FARSAM SANGINI PERI SCHWARTZ ANDREW SENDOR

HERB SMITH KIKI SMITH SAMANTHA KEELY SMITH JORDAN SOKOL SHARON SPRUNG ADRIENNE STEIN BELINDA SUBRAMAN DORIAN VALLEJO JOE VELEZ CAROLINE WESTERHOUT LINDSEY WOHLMAN ZANE YORK

PoetsArtists | November 2015 | Issue #68

devotion ART by MARCO COLÍN

Curated by Daniel Maidman

Yesterday I saw a girl who looked like Melissa Carroll. She was slender and pale, dressed in black, with lank, slightly feathered black hair, and she wore big sunglasses. Melissa has been gone a while now, but she’s turning out to be the sort of person you still think you glimpse here and there.

Melissa passed away before I curated my first issue of PoetsArtists, last year.

With the help of her family, I featured one of her final paintings on the cover.

Since then, two more of the artists in that enormous issue have departed. Lori Ellison lost her own fight with cancer, and Lennart Anderson – well, he lost his fight with time, but the score wasn’t bad: he lived to be 87, and painted right up to the end. I met Lennart once, a joyful and cantankerous man. I never met Lori.

I mention them now because I loved each of them, as one artist loves another artist. The great Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős used to say that colleagues who had left mathematics had died, but that colleagues who had died were on leave. So let us say that Melissa, Lori, and Lennart are currently on leave. Their places are still held at the great table of creation, and we expect we will catch up with them again, sooner or later.

That great table was the theme of my introductory essay last year: that all good artists ought to sit at one table, not in separate cliques in different parts of the cafeteria. I tried to demonstrate with my own eclectic selections what I meant – that every branch of contemporary art, from the highest academic to the most radical abstraction, has something good, even great, to offer; and that the offering of one does not negate the offering of another. The rest of the essay traced the bitter history of cliques and negations back, in my opinion, to the Paris Salon of 1863 – the one where the embryonic avant garde got shunted into the Salon des Refusés.

This was a pretty neat bit of historical argumentation, if I do say so myself, but it provided only a contingent argument for the great table. That is, it said, “The great table broke up because of this chain of historical accidents – I believe we ought to undo these accidents and come back together, as we were meant to be.” But I slipped that “as we were meant to be” in at the end. “As we were meant to be” is not a contingent argument – it suggests that the essential nature of the art-making enterprise is that artists working in radically different idioms ought to get along and appreciate one another. I did not back up this contention last year, so let me do it now.

We turn to the concept of configuration space, or at least to my confused half-understanding of it. Configuration space is a classical physics concept, building on the simple idea of the space in a graph, to help a graph model all kinds of things.

Take a bird flying north, for example. One possible graph presents distance against time: in the y-axis we have distance north, in the x-axis we have time.

A line representing the bird moves diagonally across the graph: time increases, and distance north increases.

But let’s say we’re not so interested in graphing the bird’s position against time.

Instead, we want to graph the bird’s speed against time. So now the y-axis represents speed. Instead of a diagonal line, the bird is represented by a horizontal line: the bird’s speed is constant over time.

Which of these graphs is true? Both. Neither. They are both models of an underlying reality, a bird making its way across the sky. They use different configuration spaces to allow their makers to represent what they wish to describe about the reality of the bird.

One does not choose the features of a configuration space because they are true. One chooses them because they allow the presentation of selected properties of a system. The presentation may be true or false – the bird might be flying south, its speed might be changing – but the configuration space is merely the canvas upon which that truth is presented.

We have a model who is fairly overrepresented in this issue, named Syrie Moskowitz. She’s on the cover, in paintings and drawings by David Salle. She’s in one of the paintings by Jenny Morgan, and her photographic self-portraiture is included as well. Syrie is a professional muse, one might say, and she’s very good at it. I’ve worked with her myself; I made some drawings and paintings of her, in my usual highly-rendered classical style.

One time, I was visiting with one of Syrie’s other artists. His Syrie paintings were completely abstract, like very low-density Jackson Pollocks. This was rather startling. He and Syrie explained to me that Syrie comes over, and sort of wafts around his studio, and he makes gestures in response to the aesthetics of her movement and the feelings it inspires in him.

Now, who has the truth of it, me or this other painter? Both. Neither. We are both modeling more or less the same underlying reality, i.e. Syrie. But we have selected different configuration spaces to represent what we wish to describe about the reality of her.

My configuration space is not more valid than his, and his is not more valid than mine. They serve different purposes. Each of us is at liberty in his own configuration space to graph well or poorly, and to graph truth or lies. But the configuration space itself is not open to dispute. It’s a matter of a scientist choosing the needed tools.

I’ve been using Syrie as a handy example here, which makes the topic very clear and concrete. But of course this is overly limited. The underlying reality modeled by art is as broad as reality itself – broader even, because there is no external reality to the contents of the soul, until the profound modeling process which we call art incarnates them.

My argument that the broad table is an essential feature of the universe of artists – that we should all be sitting together, eating and talking, learning from each other and loving one another’s work – stems from the absolute non est disputandum of art as configuration space. The work may be good or bad, but it is all legitimate. No part of it is illegitimate. No analyst can reason any of it away, and no authority may rule any of it out.

If the differences between artworks are understood with the role of distinct configuration spaces in mind, I think artists can consider in a new and more forgiving light whether or not different art is a threat to their own art. It is not. Each kind of art represents a finite mode of phrasing a fundamental reality, an unbounded ur-space, which must forever elude all human attempts at capturing it.

To illustrate by means of two extreme examples: Let’s say you are a classicist and you run up to me and you say, “What about this fellow here, who sticks a single neon tube on the wall and calls it a day?”

“Well, look,” I will say to you, “I don’t like that guy’s work either. But I won’t dispute his configuration space.” Morpheme is a term for the smallest unit of language. A basic principle of linguistics is that languages require contrastive morphemes. That is, languages need distinct basic units, in order to build up meanings. But let’s say you wanted to make a language with a single morpheme. You couldn’t convey anything in particular with that morpheme, but damn, it would be a very powerful morpheme, serving as it did to hold everything you wished to convey. It would come close to that primal scream which Nietzsche claims all art is a pale imitation of. Your one morpheme would be a failure as a language, but it would be existentially expressive in a way more profound, perhaps, than any number of functional languages. This language would be as minimal as the configuration space of a neon tube taped to a wall – a zero-dimensional space, but a fundamental one.

At the other end of the spectrum, let’s say you’re a conceptual artist, and you

might come up to me and say, “What is with this fusty academic, painting allegories as if we still lived in 1640, with the tussle-haired sword-carrying heroes, and the bare-breasted blondes representing Roman virtues, and the esoteric props and locales, and the fantastical animals, and the compositions swirling with the most complicated and unlikely narratives?” And I would say to you, “Behold art set in a configuration space not of one dimension, nor two or three, but of four hundred dimensions. This artist has chosen a configuration space so vast, and so complex, that it is like a language of limitless morphemes – most of them can never be known, and those that are known, impinge on the mind like a chorus of whispers. They speak quietly, but they recount the total wisdom of history.” And you scratch your head and say to me, “But does it work?” And I say, “In the hands of this particular artist? No. The degree of refinement, of education, of intelligence, and of creativity required to make art successfully in this configuration space arises once in a century perhaps. But this does not invalidate the configuration space itself.”

In her first novel, The Secret History (1992), Donna Tartt discussed something very like this. She wrote: One’s thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an “incendium” is in its nature entirely different from the “feu” with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman “pur” that the Greeks knew, the pur that roared from the towers of Ilion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos. (p. 189) How well Tartt phrases this insight, how vividly and specifically! As artists, we all have a native tongue. I was attracted to The Secret History as a teenager because I am a partisan of the pur. But my natural allegiance does not blind me to the incendium, the feu, the aish, and the fire. It took me much longer to realize that the nature of art appreciation is precisely the same. And even once I realized it, it was a labor of years, still incomplete, in teaching myself to step outside myself, to become totally receptive, when looking at art phrased in alien configuration spaces.

This collection of artwork represents a variety of ways of making art. It has drawings, paintings, sculptures, collages, and photographs. There is an overall skew toward the representational and the figurative, because I skew that way myself. It has unusually many portrayals of small children, because I have recently come into possession of my own small child, so I am suddenly able to understand this genre in a very personal way. There is not enough abstract work, because, while I search it out, I still have trouble liking and understanding it. There is a 6% Smith rate among the artists, which we can all agree is a little high. There are suspiciously many bird pictures. This has no significance.

This collection, like the one before, represents a cross-section of the art being made today which excites me and which I love; and it also represents the best implementation I am currently capable of, of my vision of the great table, where we all sit together. Even if it fails, this failure does not invalidate the ideas in this essay. I must continue to try harder, and if I’ve persuaded you, then you must continue to try harder as well, and eventually we will struggle our way back to that table, and experience again the shining light of that amity, which flickered out so long ago. We live in a hopeful time.

Front Cover David Salle, Tangled Up, 2013, oil on canvas, acrylic and silkscreen ink on board with hand-thrown ceramic object, 44x59 Art © David Salle/Licensed by Vaga, NY, NY reproduction without permission is prohibited

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Michael Alan

Master Of Ink 2015, watercolor wash, ink wash, ink, pencil, red pen, on paper 7x9

Cumulous 2012 ink on blue paper 22x24

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Anna Rose Bain

Fledglings 2014, oil on linen 20x24

Self Portrait in the Studio 2015 oil on linen 30x36

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Bo Bartlett

Still Point 2005 oil on panel 24x24

September (Blue Sky) 2014 oil on linen 48x48

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Nin Andrews

The Woman Who Turned into a Fish Once there was a woman who turned into a fish. She thought no one noticed. That her husband would never be able to smell or taste the salt and brine on her skin and lips, that he would never catch her in the act. Or wonder where she was or why. Some women are like that. They think they can hide who they really are. That when they shake a man’s hands or press against his hips, that he won’t feel how slippery she is. He won’t see the little trail of slime she leaves behind on her finger tips, door knobs or her glass of wine.

Some nights she and her husband would be eating dinner, saying nothing and glancing off into space, and the woman’s eyes would turn glassy. Her gills would start flapping under her shirt, making squelchy noises like small, scentless farts. She would gasp for air, her lips opening and closing, no words coming out. Of course, she reasoned, couples do this. They appear to be talking when saying nothing at all. Were they any different?

The woman was good at rationalizing things. But when her tail started flipping up and down, one-two, one-two, updown, up-down, with an intimate swishing noise like a sigh, her thoughts began to swim away, far away, taking her with them. She would feel the waves washing over her again and again. She would think what every woman thinks when her body turns into a fish: I belong to the sea. Only the sea.

After a while, the woman’s skin grew scales and turned green. There were strange crustaceans growing on her elbows and knees and along the curve of her ass. She smelled of old socks and low tide and something sweet like rotten fruit. Or was it some strange man’s cologne? Her husband couldn’t bear to breathe in the same room with her anymore. They both knew (but neither said a word about this, just as couples never do) that it was only a matter of time before she left for good.

Her husband was sitting on the porch-swing, rocking back and forth, when it happened. He watched her leave. She ran for the waves just as she knew he would. It wasn’t very far after all. They lived by the ocean in Myrtle Beach.

But he couldn’t help wondering and wishing she’d at least have had the decency to say goodbye. Wasn’t he worth a single wave? A note on the kitchen table, or better yet, taped to a bottle of wine? Watching her flee as she did seemed more than a little cruel. So he watched it again and again in his mind until it cut him like a knife. But then fish are such cowards, he reasoned. And maybe she had reason to be afraid.

Just let her go, he reasoned. But he wanted to see the eddies and ripples she left in her wake. He wanted to see which waves she liked and why and how. He could almost taste the bubbles rising from her lips and hear another’s name. It irked him to think about this even more than the mess of unpaid bills and soiled clothes she left behind. What a mess she is, he told himself. Maybe that’s why he did what he always did when he needed some peace of mind. He went for a bite to eat.

He made sure no one was looking when he walked out on their tiny patch of lawn behind the white plastic fence that divided their yard from the neighbors, and took off his clothes. Naked, he stretched towards the sky and lifted his arms. Then he beat the air with his wings several times, to shake out the kinks, before spreading them wide. It felt so good to fly at last. He lifted up and glided over the waves. It made him laugh just to think about it: his shadow scissoring overhead was probably the last thing his wife would ever see. Yes, yes, he said, and he licked his lips.

Silvia Curbelo

The Road Back All she asked for was a clean shirt and quiet and a safe place to land All she asked for was a window overlooking a stream, some railroad tracks, or a road a stone’s throw from anywhere All she wanted was a good book like an island and a steaming bowl of rice, white clouds in the alley, white stone lifted from her mouth A song, a boat, a way of going All she wanted was a field, and snowmelt, and a river, and the wisdom of sparrows in the yard, their brief precarious histories like a promise no one expects to keep And all she wanted was a clean slate of sky like a freshly washed handkerchief, a brightness she could taste on her tongue, and soft dirt, and a hillside, and hands to let go

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Noah Becker

Self Portrait 2014 oil on canvas 30x24

Right Skull 2015 oil on canvas 30x24

Carrie-Ann Bracco

Following Robyn, Perito Moreno Glacier 2012 oil on canvas 32x40

Right The Ice Trek, Perito Moreno Glacier 2012 oil on panel 21x12

Joaquin Carter

Bifurcation 3 2008 digital C-print 7x12

Bifurcation 7 2009 digital C-print 18x24

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Mary Chiaramonte

The Warning 2013 acrylic on wood 24x36

These Memories too are Bound to Die 2014 acrylic on wood 32x48

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Elizabeth D'Angelo

I Am The Portal of Breath 2014 mixed media on clayboard 8x8

She Thought She Was Small and Trapped, But She Was Not 2014 mixed media on clayboard 8x8

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Stephanie Deshpande

Sleeping Child 2010 oil on canvas 24x30

Right Girl Holding Wolf 2012 oil on canvas 24x18

James Gilroy

Deconstructed Figure 5 2008 oil graphite on velum 40x26

Rome graphite on oil ground canvas 40x30

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Juan Giraldo

Cement Art, Calumet City, IL 2014 archival pigment print 40x32

Gordo, Chicago, IL 2014 archival pigment print 24x32

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Dan Gluibizzi

Inhale, exhale 2015 acrylic and watercolor on paper 30x22

Our nova 2015 acrylic and watercolor on paper 64x42

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James Gurney

Garden of Hope 1993 oil 36x24

Blockbuster 2000 oil 10x18

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Anne Harris

Self-portrait (Orange) 2006 oil and mixed media on mylar 41x30

Figuring Ground (detail) 2014 - 2015 (ongoing project) oil, acrylic and mixed media on 300 lb Arches cold press paper; installation on a 20 ft wall (west wall of my studio), 27 panels, each 30x22

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Jaime Hernandez

“Browntown�, Love and Rockets: New Stories #3 (p. 66) 2010 India ink on bristol 9x12

"Browntown", Love and Rockets: New Stories #3 (p. 67) 2010 India ink on bristol 9x12

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Nicola Hicks

Banker II 2009 Bronze 78 ¾x 36 ¾x63 edition 3 of 3 (AFG 53974)

Dressed for the Woods II (detail) 2013 plaster 78 žx 71x 71, edition of 3 (AFG 51758)

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Alexis Hilliard

Study for With The Current 2014 handmade paper collage 12x9

Air Battles 2014 handmade paper collage 62x82

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Catherine Howe

Carborundum and Silver Painting (Violet) 2014 acrylic, encaustic, carborundum grit, metal leaf on canvas 40x40

Right Reverse Carborundum Painting (Scarlet) 2015 acrylic, carborundum grit, and oil on polycarbonate 48x24

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Lina Hsiao

Self Portrait XIX mixed-media on plexi-glass in wooden box frame 19x19x12 box frame by John Fathom

Self Portrait XXVII mixed-media on plexi-glass in wooden box frame 19x19x12 box frame by John Fathom

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David Jon Kassan

Dorothy, The Wanderer 2014-15 oil on panel 22x19

Lucas at 3 and a half months 2007 graphite on plate bristol 14x10

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Stanka Kordic

Thunderbird 2015 oil on wood panel 12x12

Moving Thru 2015 mixed media on wood panel 12x18

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Jeremy Lipking

Riders Under Vermilion Cliffs 2015 oil on linen 30x40

Turquoise and Blue 2013 oil on linen 22x17

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Daniel Maidman

Solar Portrait of Sarah 2015 oil on linen 40x30

But His Wife Looked Back and Became a Pillar of Salt 2015 oil on linen 40x30

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Renee McGinnis

Fire in the Belly of the Stricken Marquessa 2011 oil on linen 41x85

Strange Cargo of the Stricken Liner 2010 oil on clayboard panel 31x61

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Richard Meyer

Anime 2014 oil on linen 36x28

Main Street 2013 oil on linen 40x34

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Jenny Morgan

DARK STAR 2015 oil on canvas 70x48

IN THE MORNING OF THE MAGICIANS 2015 oil on canvas 72x60

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Syrie Moskowitz

Untitled Self Portrait 128, Tennessee 2013 silver gelatin print 11x14

Self Portrait in light with Brunette in box, Scotland 2003 silver gelatin print 14x11

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Katie O’Hagan

Dirty Laundry 2012 oil on canvas 48x38

Aine, Death Valley 2011 oil on canvas 20x30

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Mia Pearlman

Cloudscape 2006 tempera and gesso on paper 11x14 Photo: Mia Pearlman

Havoc 2011 paper, India ink, tacks, paper clips Left wall: 13'W x 19' H, Center wall: 12.5' W x 17.5' H, Right wall: 8' W x 16' H Site specific installation at A.D. Gallery at UNC Pembroke, Pembroke, NC | Photo: Mia Pearlman

Isaac Pelepko

The Three Graces 2013 acrylic on paper mounted on masonite 60x40

Raven Standing 2011 graphite on paper 18x24

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Joseph Podlesnik

Untitled 2015 digital photograph 14.2x9.4

Right Untitled II 2015 digital photograph 9.4x13.7

Elisa Pritzker

Ulen [Selknam Shaman] 2015 hand-painted acrylic on canvas 45x16

Skull 1 2014 hand-painted permanent inks, raccoon skull, iron stand 5x 3x 7.5

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Chris Rini

Chuck Trying to Finish 2013 woodwork & stain & digital 9x9

The Engineer 2012 wood burning and stain 12x12

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Cecilia Ruiz

Natasha mixed media, from The Book of Memory Gaps Blue Rider Press 2015

Viktor mixed media, from The Book of Memory Gaps Blue Rider Press 2015

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David Salle

Untitled 2015 pencil on paper 14x11 Art Š David Salle/Licensed by Vaga, NY, NY reproduction without permission is prohibited

Parallax View 2013 oil on canvas, acrylic and silkscreen ink on metal with hand thrown ceramic object 44x58x5.5 Art Š David Salle/Licensed by Vaga, NY, NY reproduction without permission is prohibited

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Farsam Sangini

Linda Ahani 2014 oil on canvas 17.7x19.7

Sara Kooroo 2014 oil on canvas 19.7x17.7

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Peri Schwartz

Studio Self-Portrait 1996 oil on canvas 66x48

Bottles & Jars IV 2009 oil on canvas 20x32

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Andrew Sendor

From the documentary “The Tchaikovsky Effect on Fenomeno at the Geirangerfjorden, Norway�

2014 oil on panel 45x34 Courtesy of the artist and Sperone Westwater, New York

Three replicas of stills from the documentary “Interview Sessions with Plumita Lunes Nuñes: On Adversity, Resilience and Forgiveness” 2015 graphite on paper 17x13 Courtesy of the artist and Sperone Westwater, New York

Herb Smith

Finch 2015 oil on panel 24x24

Great Gray Owl 2015 oil on panel 16x12

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Kiki Smith

Mind’s Eye 2015 open edition monoprint watercolor and pencil on paper 11 1/2 x 8 photograph by Jason Mandella | courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery

Goat Moth D 2015 Edition of 17 + 8 AP etching on HahnemĂźhle paper Paper size: 12 1/2 x 14 published by the Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University photograph, Michael Frederichs | Courtesy of the artist and John Davis Gallery

Grace Cavalieri

Jacob’s Creek Road This is the perfect house for us pristine with glass near the place we used to drive on Sundays so close to the water when you walk in—well—\yes\ the purple walls will be too bright but there are hardwood floors --a little polish-and the living room opens to another \area with sweet small rooms/ each parallel to the sea line You say everywhere we look is old fashioned furniture I say we’ll pay to have it removed Look here is where the cat lay curled when we were reading the rag rug is still here I vaguely remember the hidden pantry I know/ we set/ the berries there/ before making jam Although the style is cape cod colonial It’s not what I remember as our style but we’ll fill it with art and look the children are back.

Inventing In the distance, the great structure/ where the approach is everything/ through the vibration/ of the stone walk/past the beauty/ of the poem/ against the pillow/ through the comfort of the twelve/ upon the clock/ arriving/ may be just a wish/ at this place of massive stone/ wind for windows/ heat from sun.

I discover the first passage way has a sign / How To Be Just Right/ hinting this is the first room/ The maître de whispers to ask a question/ “any question”/ I say “what do you want.”? He says “What have you got?” /He empties all my pockets.

I’m escorted to the next/ where the most interesting thing of the day I am told/ is waiting for lunch/ where my grandmother’s image appears/ with the message Please Be/ More Complete.

I cannot live In this house of detours/ I move to The room of what everything means/ the bird on the branch outside/ holds what’s left of my belongings/ and even he eventually flies off/ leaving me no sustenance but my spirit/ laid out on a piece of bread/ How To Feel Just Right/ I thought/ wishing my feet were warm.

What is there for me to do/ what is there to offer/ they already know how to make hard candy/ what is there for me to learn/ that’s when I heard the foot upon the stairs/ it was just a foot/ with nothing else attached/ but the foot has many bones I thought/ and not to be underestimated/ were I to remember the names for each/ it’d be mistaken for intelligence/ and then I’d be more confident.

Longing for music/ is there a way to leave/ a room with no answers/ for the one/ just right/ music where are you/ my language of loneliness/ my transportation/ my way to the means to the end/ when nothing is forthcoming/ I saw then that music was/ up to me/ whatever I said would be heard/ say it anyway/ the words will sort themselves out upon/ the tree/ you can’t do everything/ trust the wind to move the leaves/ surrender/ make the sound/that is your purpose.

The voice in the stone structure/ said others will believe in it too/ this is what I dreamed about at work/ but what if I’m afraid I won’t want to say it/ I’ll be two people/ like the woman across the street I won’t cook for/ and the one that won’t eat it anyway/ Think of the sound in your mind / that will go down the stairway/ though the gate/ up the tower/ out the grate/ the hum/ the note/ the bell/ the last sound you hear/ when you go to sleep/ is the one you’ll hear/ when you’re awake. Look here’s a closet full of clothes/ but it’s in the last room where I don’t want what they have/ and they don’t want what I have. Leave/ when you’re alone/ you can’t /blame anyone else/ maybe that’s the reason for being alone/ but I go back/ I want the clothes no one else has/ the original chiffon/through the window of my mind/ Down the stone stairs/ of the castle/ is the necessary door. I’ve stolen the red shoes/ they are certain to match something.

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Samantha Keely Smith

Harbinger 2014 oil on canvas 64x78

Tocsin 2012 oil on canvas 56x78

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Jordan Sokol

Jess 2015 charcoal and white chalk on blue paper 34.5x18

Dark Days 2013 oil on linen 15.5x13.5

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Sharon Sprung

Lithographer's Table oil on panel 40x52

M Reclining oil on panel 36x46

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Adrienne Stein

Nocturne 2012 oil & lace on canvas 60x48

Right Bloom 2014 oil on linen 36x24

Dorian Vallejo

Passages 2015 oil on panel 24x36

Composition of Thought 2015 oil on paper 9x12

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Joe Velez

Neurosis 2014 oil on canvas 20x16

Self Portrait w Shadows 2006 acrylic on canvas 18x18

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Caroline Westerhout

Tender 2008 oil on canvas 39.4x27.6

Peace?

2015 oil on canvas 23.6x19.7

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Lindsey Wohlman

Merlin 2015 photograph on archival paper 18x12

Blue Jay 2013 photograph on archival paper 26x20

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Zane York

Arrangement 1 2015 oil on canvas mounted to panel 16x12

Ascension 2014 oil on canvas mounted on panel 70 (diameter)

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devotion ART by MARCO COLÍN

MICHAEL ALAN

“I am Michael Alien, an alien who wants good and to exist with a twist of chaos and a big splash of toxic paint!”— Art Info For Michael Alan, art is a combination of harmonious opposites, close observation, catharsis, a means of communication and a radical juxtaposition of dimensional elements. He challenges everything: concepts of figure, composition, media and movement, including the language of drawing.

Exploring the ambiguity of time and history, Alan’s work focuses on translating energy into images.

Alan was born in the summer of 1977, in Bushwick during the New York City blackout. His work has been featured in 9 New York solo shows, over 200 group shows, and over 200 Living Installations. His work has been discussed in over 200 publications, books and media sources, including the New York Times, The Huffington Post, Bomb Magazine, Art 21, NBC’s Today Show, Marie Claire Italia, Frank 151, Art+Auction, the New York Post, Fox Channel 5, the Village Voice’s “Best in Show”, The Creator’s Project, Art Forum, the Gothamist, Time Out New York, Vice, Frame, American Artist, Animal, Hyperallergic, Curbs and Stoops, Cacao and many more.

In addition to his work as a multi-media artist, Michael is the founder and director of the Living Installation, where human beings are transformed into unique, living art objects. These happenings are set to Alan’s original music, which is recorded featuring artists such as The Residents, Tommy Ramone, Ariel Pink, and Meredith Monk.

NIN ANDREWS Nin Andrews is the author of twelve collections of poetry including The Book of Orgasms, Sleeping with Houdini, and her latest book, Why God Is a Woman. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, her poems have appeared in many literary reviews and anthologies including Ploughshares, The Paris Review, The Best of the Prose Poem, and four volumes of Best American Poetry.

painting methods, which often leads to the subject becoming somewhat idealized, while preserving its true essence. Drawing much of her inspiration from the joys and struggles in her life, Anna’s paintings are an expression of gratitude and an exploration of the questions one faces at different stages of their life. In addition to being a wife and mother, Anna paints full time, teaches portrait workshops and demos, and is actively involved in local and national arts communities. She has won numerous awards for her work and continues to draw the attention of national and international collectors.

Her official website is www.artworkbyannarose.com.

For a more intimate glimpse into the life of a working artist and mother who is passionately pursuing her dream, you can visit her blog, artworkbyannarose. blogspot.com.

BO BARTLETT

“Bo Bartlett is an American realist with a modernist vision. His paintings are well within the tradition of American realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth. Like these artists, Bartlett looks at America’s heart—its land and its people—and describes the beauty he finds in everyday life. His paintings celebrate the underlying epic nature of the commonplace and the personal significance of the extraordinary.

“Bartlett was educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where realist principles must be grasped before modernist ventures are encouraged.

He pushes the boundaries of the realist tradition with his multilayered imagery. Life, death, passage, memory, and confrontation coexist easily in his world. Family and friends are the cast of characters that appear in his dreamlike narrative works.

Although the scenes are set around his childhood home in Georgia, his island summer home in Maine, his home in Pennsylvania or the surroundings of his studio and residence in Washington state, they represent a deeper, mythical concept of the archetypal, universal home.”– Tom Butler, excerpt from the book Bo Bartlett, Heartland NOAH BECKER

ANNA ROSE BAIN Anna Rose Bain is a fine art oil painter and commissioned portrait artist based in Denver, CO. Her style is a combination of both classical and direct

Noah Becker (Cleveland, 1970) works from his studio in Brooklyn, NY. Becker’s oil paintings have been exhibited in numerous museums, galleries, and major art fairs in Canada, the United States and Europe, including in New York, Los

Angeles, Detroit, London, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Miami and Switzerland. Becker is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, an online contemporary art magazine. He is also a contributing writer for Art in America Magazine, Canadian Art Magazine and the Huffington Post.

Becker’s paintings can be figurative representations of anonymous people and colorful semi-abstract iconic compositions depicting various themes. When Becker works figuratively he has a tendency to depict a single figure in an unconventional portrait format. Samuel Beckett, Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella are some of the people who have influenced Becker’s portrait style. In the case of Frank Stella, Becker had an opportunity to visit the artist and discuss the formal qualities of Stella’s works. As opposed to being interested in the history of art in a way that is too literal or too constraining, Becker chooses to inform his work through face-to-face meetings with legendary artists, gaining history there when possible. It is Becker’s publishing and writing practice that affords him the pleasure of interacting with historical figures in this way.

As a result of interacting with the leading artists of his time, Becker has expanded his abilities to other levels and other areas. Becker thinks of his work as figurative painting and abstraction, done simultaneously at times.

CARRIE-ANN BRACCO Carrie’s artwork focuses on remote and endangered landscapes. She has created artwork from her experiences visiting the jungle of Southern Peru, sailing in the high Arctic seas, trekking in Patagonia, and volunteering for the American Climber Science Program in the Andes. Her work has been included in exhibits at the New York Academy of Sciences, Flowers Gallery and Mark Miller Gallery. She has been granted a number of residencies, was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2011 and was included in the book The Figure in 2014. Carrie received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art. She spent several years living abroad in Italy, England and Bolivia but now resides in Brooklyn, NY where she continues to find opportunities to connect her interests in rock climbing, sustainability and art through her landscape painting.

JOAQUIN CARTER

MARCO COLÍN

Joaquin Carter is a Mexican-born New York based artist with a background in Architecture. He is now exploring novel approaches in painting to create what he likes to describe as imaginary worlds defined by a progression of texture and structure.

I’m a Designer, Adman, Writer, Doodler, Dad & Husband. I’ve written and illustrated a book, and designed music albums, posters, campaigns and my own line of jewelry. I’m a consultant in communications and advertising, but observing is what I do best.

GRACE CAVALIERI

SILVIA CURBELO

Grace Cavalieri is founder and producer of “The Poet and The Poem” on public radio now celebrating 38 years on-air and now recorded at the Library of Congress. She’s poetry reviewer/columnist for The Washington Review of Books and she’s had many exciting adventures over the years with MiPOesias when it was streaming on line as “radio,” and in print. These years have been the brightest colors in her rainbow. She’s received many awards and the one that means most is The AWP George Garrett Award about helping others in the world of literature.

Silvia Curbelo’s latest collection of poems, Falling Landscape, was just published by Anhinga Press.

She is the author of a previous full-length collection, The Secret History of Water (Anhinga Press), and two chapbooks. She has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, the Cintas Foundation and the Writer’s Voice, as well as the Jessica Noble Maxwell Memorial Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review. Her poems have been published widely in literary magazines, and in more than two-dozen anthologies, including The Body Electric (W.W. Norton), Poems, Poets, Poetry (Bedford/ St. Martin), and the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. A native of Cuba, Silvia lives in Tampa, Florida.

MARY CHIARAMONTE Born in 1979 in Harmony, West Virginia, Mary Chiaramonte began painting at the age of three.

As a child she helped her family live from and farm their land. She had no TV or other distractions, and was encouraged to entertain herself with objects in nature. Left with the workings of her imagination and observations of the world around her, she translated her understanding into paintings and drawings.

She continues this practice today, taking much of her momentum from the people that surround and affect her. Hanging between darkness and light, Chiaramonte’s paintings offer a narrative that echoes a provocative daydream, communicating both the human disposition and the mysteries therein. Her unending exploration surfaces in her paintings with an ambiguity that asks the viewer to wonder at our world as she does.

ELIZABETH D’ANGELO Elizabeth D’Angelo — artist, spreader of love and hope, illness warrior, and force of nature — often paints with her arms pinned to her sides due to severe weakness and muscle spasms from advanced CFS/ ME. In the midst of an illness that keeps her confined to her 12 x 12 ft. bedroom, she makes vibrant work that has captivated a loyal following. Painting is her meditation, her grounding rod, and her calling, but it is the connection with others through her art that inspires her the most.

Before her illness began, D’Angelo taught art

classes, workshops and private art lessons in Atlanta, Georgia, and considered herself an undercover life coach, using art to help people to transform their lives. She was featured in an HBO documentary, received a grant from the Fulton County Arts Council, participated in an artist residency at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, won the Coordinator’s Choice Award at the Candler Park Fall Festival and won Best in Show at the Inman Park Festival. She has exhibited nationally at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Ormond Memorial Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Lark and Key Gallery, The River Gallery, and The Metallo Gallery.

STEPHANIE DESHPANDE Stephanie Deshpande is a post-contemporary painter living in New Jersey. Her work combines her love for realism with personal allegories. Deshpande graduated from University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a BFA in Painting and continued her studies at the New York Academy of Art earning her MFA. She has won numerous awards including the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship to attend the Yale Summer School of Music and Art, and has received recognition for her paintings by the Portrait Society of America, Artist’s Magazine, the Art Renewal Center, Allied Artists of America, and Oil Painters of America. She is an instructor at the Teaching Studios of Art in Oyster Bay, Long Island.

Her work has been on display at venues including the National Arts Club, Sotheby’s, Salmagundi Club, Schomburg Gallery, Eleanor Ettinger Gallery, Principle Gallery Charleston, and Richard J. Demato Fine Arts Gallery. Her painting “Assembling the Pieces” has been acquired by the New Britain Museum of American Art for their Post Contemporary room opening in 2015. She is currently represented

by Arundel Art Room in West Sussex, England.

JAMES GILROY James Gilroy attended the New York Phoenix School of Design, and Art Students League of New York.

He has had solo exhibitions at multiple New York galleries, including Dactyl Foundation for the Arts & Humanities, Agama Gallery, and 291 Gallery. His work has appeared in the New York Times, ARTnews, New York Magazine, and Paper Magazine.

JUAN GIRALDO Juan Giraldo is a photographer currently living and working in Chicago, Illinois and is a 2015 MFA candidate in Columbia College’s photography department. He was born in Manizales, Colombia and raised in Paterson, New Jersey. He received his BFA with a concentration in photography in May of 2009 from William Paterson University.

Awards include Dwight D. Follett Fellowship Full Tuition Award from Columbia College Chicago, Honorable Mention in, En Foco’s, People Places and Things, Brozowski Scholarship and Fiftieth Reunion Endowed Scholarship both from William Paterson University. Exhibitions include, Perceived Realities, Columbia College President’s Residence, Paterson Art Walk, Aljira Fine Art (group shows), What Work Is, Englewood Library (solo show), Figurative Impulse, Oualie Arts Gallery, Paterson Art Walk (group shows), and What Work Is, American Labor Museum (solo show). His work explores the personal interior spaces of working people, (in particular the employees of Great Lakes Reload) the textures of a working life and the banal indicators of domesticity that shaped his view of the world, both as a first generation immigrant and laborer. In addition to this work he continues to photograph his family as part of an ongoing project in which he looks at his relationship with his parents. Recently he has participated in the third annual New York Portfolio Review.

DAN GLUIBIZZI Dan Gluibizzi was raised in Pennsylvania and holds an MFA from the University of Cincinnati. After more than a decade of itinerant art handling in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, Dan has put down roots in Portland, Oregon. Dan’s recent exhibitions include CULT, Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Fransisco, FMLY, Texas Contemporary, Houston, Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, Ampersand Gallery, Portland, Oregon and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, Germany.

Center. He also wrote and illustrated Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, which was published in 32 countries and 18 languages. Gurney has blogged daily at GurneyJourney for almost 8 years, and has written 37 consecutive articles for International Artist magazine.

ANNE HARRIS Anne Harris has exhibited at venues ranging from Alexandre Gallery, DC Moore Gallery and Nielsen Gallery, to the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute, The Portland Museum of Art, the California Center for Contemporary Art and the North Dakota Museum of Art. Her work is in such public collections as The Fogg Museum at Harvard, The Yale University Art Gallery and The New York Public Library. Grants and awards received include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and an NEA Individual Artists Fellowship.

Harris currently teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

She serves on the board of the Riverside Arts Center and is chair of its exhibition committee. She also is the originator of The Mind’s I—an expanding drawing “conversation” designed to investigate the complexities of perception and self-perception through drawing. Harris currently has solo exhibitions at the Memphis College of Art, Memphis, TN and at Cultivator, Chicago, IL.

ALEXIS HILLIARD

Harris lives with her husband, the photographer Paul D’Amato, and their son Max, in Riverside, IL. Represented by Alexandre Gallery, New York, NY alexandregallery.com.

Alexis Hilliard is a native of Portland, OR. She received her BFA in painting, photography, & video from Cornish Collage of the arts in Seattle, WA. Upon graduation she began working for numerous artists throughout the Pacific Northwest and abroad including at Gage Academy of Art, The Florence Academy in Italy & for the American artist Bo Bartlett.

In 2014 she received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in Manhattan. She currently lives in Brooklyn and specializes in complex large scale handmade collages.

JAIME HERNANDEZ

CATHERINE HOWE

Born in 1959, Jaime Hernandez enjoyed a pleasant childhood in Oxnard, California, with four brothers and one sister. Their mother had been an avid comic book fan as a girl, and she passed onto them a love of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko’s Marvel comics, Hank Ketcham’s (and Al Wiseman’s) Dennis the Menace, and the Archie comics line. A further strain of DNA was added when an older brother smuggled R. Crumb’s Zap into the house. Taking to the early punk scene of Los Angeles, Love & Rockets, published by Fantagraphics, was born out of this gritty aesthetic by Jaime and his brothers Gilbert and Mario, and is now in its 35th year. Jaime is a highly sought after artist, with a career spanning from CD covers to The New Yorker, and Archie. The adventures of his characters Maggie and Hopey can still be read annually in Love & Rockets: New Stories.

Catherine Howe is a New York Artist with an extensive history of exhibitions and critical success. Her work has been discussed in numerous publications including The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Il Giornale dell’Arte, Whitewall Magazine, il Giornale dell’ Arte, the New Art Examiner, and The Los Angeles Times. Her paintings have been exhibited extensively in New York, and the United States, including solo exhibitions at VonLintel Gallery, New York/LA, Lesley Heller Workspace, Casey Kaplan, Liz Koury, Littlejohn Contemporary, Bill Maynes Gallery, Slein/Schmidt, St Louis, Kim Light, Los Angeles. Exhibitions abroad include Yukiko Kawase, Paris, Salama Caro Gallery, London, Johan Jonker, Amsterdam, and Thomas von Lintel, Munich.

JAMES GURNEY James Gurney wrote Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter, Amazon’s #1 bestselling instructional book on painting for over 150 weeks. He has been named a “Grand Master” by Spectrum Fantastic Arts and a “Living Master” by the Art Renewal

School of Art, and took her MA at the Royal College of Art. She has had major solo shows in leading museums and galleries in Britain and around the world, and has already been honored with a MBE for her contribution to the visual arts. Hicks’ primary media are plaster and straw, and huge sheets of brown paper on which she works up her dynamic charcoal drawings. Many of the sculptures have subsequently been cast in bronze, often with such subtlety that every fragile detail of plaster and straw is reproduced. The study of anatomy and the discipline of drawing cannot be underestimated in Nicola Hicks’ work. Although not concerned with mimetic representation her achievement is founded on a unique ability to capture the physicality and psychology of the animal and human figures she creates. Since 1984, she has had a number of successful solo exhibitions and has exhibited her work in India, Japan, America and Canada as well as across the UK, Ireland and Europe, including St Paul’s Cathedral, the Yale Center of British Art and at The Venice Biennale.

Jaime lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and daughter.

NICOLA HICKS Born in London in 1960, Hicks studied at Chelsea

Catherine Howe had her first exhibition in New York at White Columns in 1987. She served as Curator at Hallwalls (1984-88), a legendary artists-run space started by Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo. She left Buffalo for a New York studio in the meat packing district in 1989, and became Associate Director of White Columns until 1995. She emerged as an artist while in this creative non-profit milieu in the

early 90’s along with artists such as John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage; artists also interested in painting a new figuration (see Art in America “Picturehood is Powerful,” Barry Schwabsky, 1999).

She is currently a Professor on the Graduate Painting Faculty at the New York Academy of Art, where she leads a seminar on contemporary art.

The artist is married to Bob Barry and works in Manhattan and a farmhouse in Columbia County.

LINA HSIAO I’m Lina. I like gooey things and eye sockets. I like fleshy folds and stacks. My brains are jelly springs with glitter guts.

STANKA KORDIC Stanka Kordic, a 1985 graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, is an internationally recognized fine artist. Her awards include the Gold Medal of Honor in Painting from Allied Artists of America, and two Certificates of Excellence from the Portrait Society of America International Competition. Her work has been exhibited in venues nationally, among them, the National Arts Club in New York City, and the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio.

Stanka’s corporate collectors include Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, and Key Bank. She also has a piece in the permanent collection of St. Paul’s Croatian Catholic Church in Cleveland, Ohio.

Stanka’s extensive private collector list spans the US and Europe. Her work can be found at: www. stankakordic.com

DAVID JON KASSAN JEREMY LIPKING David Jon Kassan’s work has been described as “raw, poignant and profoundly honest. He seeks to capture the essence of those he paints, imbuing them with their own voice. More than simply replicating his subjects Kassan seeks to understand them. We are moved by Kassan’s depictions, captivated by powerfully expressive hands, pensive faces, and flesh that appears warm to touch. Ultimately, there is a truth and timelessness to Kassan’s work because it is so deeply human. His subjects are distilled in an exact moment in time, patiently contemplating their present. We share in this present-moment appreciation, this slowing down of time, and see life for what it is.” (Harriet Levenston, Tharunka).

David Jon Kassan (born 1977 in Little Rock, Arkansas) is a contemporary American painter best known for his life-size representational paintings, which combine figurative subjects with abstract backgrounds or “tromp l’oeil texture studies.” Of this dual representation strategy Kassan notes, “my effort to constantly learn to document reality with a naturalistic, representational painting technique allows for pieces to be inherent contradictions; paintings that are both real and abstract.”

Kassan is a much sought after drawing and painting instructor because of his steadfast commitment to the age old discipline of working from life and creating compelling expressions of the human condition. He has given painting/drawing seminars and lectures at various institutions, and universities around the world.

In 2013, he founded the Kassan Foundation in hopes of giving grants directly to underprivileged talent in both the visual and musical arts.

Kassan’s works can be seen in many public and private collections worldwide. He is represented

by Gallery Henoch (Chelsea), New York, NY and The Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Culver City, CA. Kassan lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Few artists today can claim the success and artistic repertoire attained by Jeremy Lipking (b. 1975). A realist figurative and landscape painter who claims Anders Zorn, Edgar Payne and the Taos Society of Artists as major influences, Lipking creates art that is distinguished by a contemporary aesthetic and timeless subject matter.

The son of painter and illustrator Ron Lipking, Jeremy’s interest in art started as a young child studying the works of past masters in museums as well as contemporary painters of the American West.

He soon enrolled in The California Art Institute where his burgeoning talent became evident as he devoted himself to serious study. Lipking quickly found his own way and the unique ethereal style that has made him famous. Many of his well-known paintings feature his wife, Danielle and daughter Skylar.

People are drawn to the almost paradoxical aesthetic qualities of Lipking’s work: his paintings are simultaneously hyper-realist and softly rendered.

As Michael Zakian, Director of the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University put it, “Lipking’s skill lies in his ability to probe in and around his subject. With a highly sensitive eye, he sees nuances of value and hue that the camera and most people can never see. More incredibly, he is able to translate his highly nuanced vision into a painted image.”

Lipking’s litany of accolades and acclaim serve as proof of his unique talent and unparalleled style. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles, his work has also been honored with the top awards at the Prix De West, ARC International Salon, Portrait Society of America International competitions and California Art Club Gold Medal shows among countless others. In 2013, American Artist Magazine named him as one of the 75 greatest artists of all time and his work has also appeared in films, books, and an instructional DVD.

Lipking’s ability to paint landscapes as ably and beautifully as he pains the human form—and often times combining the two in a single work—makes his body of work impressively diverse. As Lipking explains, his artistic inspiration often comes from the interplay of subject and background, which is reflected in the dynamic and intimate qualities of his work.

DANIEL MAIDMAN Daniel Maidman is a painter whose imagery occupies a spectrum from high rendering to almost total abstraction.

His art has been shown in group and solo shows in Manhattan, and in juried exhibitions nationwide. It was selected by the Saatchi Gallery to be displayed at Gallery Mess in London, and has been exhibited at the Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art. His art and writing on art have been featured in ARTnews, Juxtapoz, Hyperallergic, American Art Collector, International Artist, PoetsArtists, MAKE, Manifest, and The Artist’s Magazine. He blogs for The Huffington Post.

His paintings range from the figure and portraiture, to still lives and landscapes, to investigations of machinery, architecture, and microflaura. He has produced paintings in collaboration with bestselling novelist China Miéville, award-winning poet Kathleen Rooney, legendary actor Martin Donovan, and noted installation artist Erika Johnson.

His work is included in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the Long Beach Museum of Art, as well as numerous private collections, among them those of New York Magazine senior art critic Jerry Saltz, Chicago collector Howard Tullman, Disney senior vice president Jackson George, and Gemini-winning screenwriter Jeremy Boxen. He is represented by Dacia Gallery in New York. He lives and paints in Brooklyn.

RENEE MCGINNIS Renee McGinnis grew up on a farm in central Illinois and attended Illinois Wesleyan University, earning a BFA in 1984. She continued with graduate work in sociology and anthropology at the University of Chicago.

Her work has been exhibited widely in Chicago and has also been shown in Germany, Australia, New York City, Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Md .

Her curatorial debut occurred when she launched “The Chicago Solution Show 2003 with the late Ed Paschke as juror, then again in 2005 with Art Institute of Chicago Curator of contemporary CollectionsJames Rondeau. She received a National Emmy Award for Design in Television 1991. In 2002

she starred as herself in the Iranian-American film “American Burqa,” screened at The Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, Illinois.

RICHARD MEYER Richard Meyer has been living and working in New York City since 1975, creating paintings in the traditions of visionary art and social realism, with stylistic references to the histories of urban walls both ancient and contemporary. He looks for an empathic identification with the city’s pageant of humanity, bringing the full range of ethnicities, outsider cultures, and the physically and developmentally disabled into community and equality. The tradition of painting those whom the artist’s social group might consider to be different than themselves is time honored while still leading to questions of the limitations and responsibilities of gazing from the outside. He retains the sense of being looked at and looking in, accepting the difficulties of our differences, while finding a commonality with those on the edge. He is represented by Chelsea Underground Gallery in Chelsea, MI. www.meyon.com JENNY MORGAN Corporeal but also ethereal, Jenny Morgan (b.

1982) pushes the boundaries of figurative painting by exploring new ways of affecting her impeccably detailed images. Her haunting portraits are perfectly realized only to be annihilated; their surfaces sanded and stripped away to reveal physical and spiritual wounds of the flesh. By disturbing the surface of the canvas, she achieves a striking intensity and psychological depth in her work, breaking through the ideals of traditional portraiture and the preciousness of realism. In addition to self-portraits, Morgan often depicts people she knows personally, though not intimately, stating “If there is a spark of mystery to our relationship it leaves room for me to explore them on canvas.” Morgan’s deeply personal work examines the complexity of human relationships and awareness, providing the viewer a visual and conceptual window into the vulnerable multiplicities of the self.

Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in New York, Colorado, Utah and Indiana; in numerous group exhibitions including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. and the 92Y Tribeca, New York; and at galleries in Florida, England and Sweden. Her work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Purdue University Art Gallery, University of Maryland’s Stamp Student Union Art Collection, New Mexico State University’s University Art Gallery Collection, as well as major private collections throughout the United States and abroad.

Morgan’s work has received critical attention in numerous publications including Juxtapoz, Whitewall, Hi-Fructose, The Village Voice, and The

Denver Post. Her 2013 solo exhibition How To Find A Ghost at Driscoll Babcock Galleries was named one of the top 100 fall shows worldwide by Modern Painters. Her work has been the subject of three artist monographs, including Jenny Morgan: How To Find A Ghost (2013) authored by Benjamin Genocchio.

Additionally, Morgan has realized several portraiture commissions for publications including The New York Times Magazine and New York Magazine.

her first set of paints and began to experiment. What began as a hobby to pass the time while her children napped quickly took hold and became a consuming focus. Raising young children meant no time for any formal art training, but despite being self-taught, she has worked hard to make up for lost time, and is enjoying increasing success and recognition for her work. She currently lives in Beacon, New York with her two daughters.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Jenny Morgan currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a BA from the Rocky Mountain College School of Design in Lakewood, Colorado and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY.

MIA PEARLMAN

Jenny Morgan has been exclusively represented by Driscoll Babcock Galleries since 2012.

SYRIE MOSKOWITZ Born in the Appalachian foothills of Tennessee, Syrie Moskowitz spent most of her childhood in the deep South. She and her mother, an artist and novelist, spent extensive time traveling the country selling antiques from the back of a van. At the age of 12, Moskowitz began seriously photographing, becoming the fourth-generation photographer in her family. She also trained in classical and modern ballet, theatre, argentine tango, and piano. At seventeen, she traveled to Eastern Europe, making a documentary in Romania, which began her career in filmmaking. Since then, both film and photographic projects have led her around the globe, to create stories and record subjects in Europe, Central America, and the Middle East. She has collaborated and worked with many significant artists and photographers, including Salman Rushdie, David Salle, Ellen Von Unwerth, Amy Arbus, George Holz, Jenny Morgan, Mark Seliger, Alexander Klingspor, Antoine Verglas, and others. She has been featured in Vogue, Juxtapoz Magazine, Vanity Fair, Italian Vogue, Modern Painters, Playboy, VS Magazine and countless other publications and art books. She recently was featured in the Spring 2015 Kate Spade Campaign, alongside super model, Karlie Kloss and fashion legend, Iris Apfel and starred in the off-broadway immersive theater play, Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic.

Mia Pearlman has exhibited internationally in numerous galleries, non-profit spaces and museums, including the Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Goyang Aram Gallery (South Korea), the Centre for Recent Drawing (London), Morgan Lehman Gallery (NYC) the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (AL), and the Manchester Art Gallery (UK). Permanent public art installations include commissions for Liberty Mutual in Boston, and the 80th Street A Train station for the MTA in Queens, New York. Her work has been featured in nineteen books on contemporary art, and in both international and domestic press, including The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Post, The Boston Globe, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Surface Design Journal, Sculpture Magazine, Juliet Art Magazine (Italy), Machina (Poland), dpi (Taiwan) and Home Concepts (Singapore). Pearlman lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. ISAAC PELEPKO Isaac Pelepko is a painter and draughtsman whose work is primarily focused on the figure. He received his B.F.A. from the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design where he was awarded most outstanding student fine art his senior year and his M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art where he received a merit scholarship award. He also studied at Grand Central Academy and the Art Students League of New York. He was awarded the Phyllis and Frank Mason grant for painting in 2011. Isaac has been in shows in Paris, France, New York City, and the eastern United States.

JOSEPH PODLESNIK

KATIE O’HAGAN Katie O’Hagan was born and raised in Scotland and moved to the States in 1993, after receiving a BA in Silversmithing from Edinburgh College of Art. Growing up on the remote north coast, she often passed the time by sketching the customers who came into her father’s pub, and was accepted to ECA on the strength of these drawings. Once there, however, she decided to concentrate on design instead. She set art aside entirely for over a decade after arriving in the States, and worked primarily in the Film and TV industries. It wasn’t until 2004 that she picked up

Joseph Podlesnik holds a BFA in drawing and painting from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an MFA in drawing and painting from Cornell University.

He is Associate Professor of Art Foundations at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh - Online Division and serves as Adjunct Professor of Art (Online) at Stockton University in New Jersey. He is exhibiting drawing, painting and photographic media nationally and internationally. Joseph lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

ELISA PRITZKER Elisa Pritzker’s lifetime work is available for study through a permanent file kept at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. She has exhibited at MoMA, Queens Museum and Dorsky Museum in group exhibits. She participated in the Affordable Art Fair NYC & London UK, London Biennale-Creative Village Medienparty in Berlin, Germany, Pinta Fair NYC, Fountain Art Fair and EGGO-Cordoba Art Fair in Argentina. She was selected as the US artist for the environmental project The Pyramid of Naxos, Greece during the Olympics. From 2004 to 2012, she was represented

by Franklin 54 Gallery, Chelsea NYC. Among many other venues: Dumbo Arts Center & Nurture Art, Brooklyn. In the Hudson Valley: Kingston Museum of Contemporary Arts [KMOCA] and Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art [HVCCA], Peekskill NY. Abroad at Galeria Arte x Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina and Galerie Taste Modern Berlin in Berlin Germany. Upcoming exhibits at Jerusalem Biennial 2015 and Fresh Winds Art Biennial in Gardur, Iceland in 2015-2016. Portfolio: www.elisapritzker. com CHRIS RINI Chris Rini is a contemporary artist born and raised in New York. His work involves burning, engraving, and staining wood to depict the history of Mixed Martial Arts.

The sport functions as a sort of live action Post Modernism, blending eastern and western philosophies of combat and simultaneously exploring the survival instinct. When we are confronted with intense situations beyond our control, a reality about ourselves is revealed.

It is also an opportunity to engage in figurative artwork within a context where the body also functions as storytelling device.

Although known primarily as a painter, Salle’s work grows out of a long-standing involvement with perfomance. Over the last 25 years he has worked extensively with choreographer Karole Armitage, creating sets and costumes for many of her ballets and operas. Their collaborations have been staged at venues throughout Europe and America, including The Metropolitan Opera House; The Paris Opera; The Opera Comique; Lyon Opera; Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Opera Deutsche, Berlin. In 1995, Salle directed the feature film Search and Destroy, starring Griffin Dunne and Christopher Walken.

Salle is also a prolific writer on art. His essays and interviews have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Modern Painters, The Paris Review, and Arts Magazine, as well as numerous exhibition catalogs and anthologies. He is a regular contributor for Town & Country Magazine. His collected essays will be published by W.W. Norton in 2016.

FARSAM SANGINI Farsam Sangini was born in 1988 in Tehran, Iran. He lives in Tehran. He is self-taught and home educated in graphic design, painting and animation. Between 2011 and 2015 Sangini participated in many group exhibitions in Iran and overseas (Lithuania, Venice, London, Spain). Between 2011 and 2012 he produced a couple of music albums (Folkloric/ Fusion). He has been a member of the Tehran Stuckists since 2010.

PERI SCHWARTZ Peri Schwartz received her BFA from Boston University in 1973 and her MFA from Queens College in 1975.

Her work has been exhibited extensively for the last 30 years, and can be found in the permanent collections of numerous institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; Hammer Museum, LA, CA; The British Museum London, Great Britain; and The Albertina, Vienna.

Kansas City, MO; and the ARKEN Museum of Art, Ishøj, Denmark. In 2014, Sendor mounted a solo exhibition in conjunction with his residency at The Wright Museum, Beloit College. In November 2015, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at MSU will mount a solo exhibition. His works are in private and public collections worldwide. Andrew Sendor is represented by Sperone Westwater.

HERB SMITH Born in 1981 in Staten Island, NY, Herb Smith studied painting by reading books, visiting museums, and through hands-on trial and error in his craft. He has exhibited work in the US and in Europe. Publications featuring Smith’s art include ArtNews, Untitled II and III, The Thousands; painting inside.

As a teenager, Smith began to look at works by artists of the Northern Renaissance and Dutch Golden Age, including painters such as Jan Van Eyck, Hans Memling, Rogier Van Der Wyden, Rembrandt and Vermeer.

Also since the beginning Smith was interested in painting wildlife, especially birds. The structural differences between species along with all the colors and other traits of an animal have maintained an endless interest. The technique of building layers extending depth in a painting is what first attracted Smith to oil paint, and still retains his interest. Along with birds, his subject matter goes from portraits to still life work.

With each work he uses many different reference sources to build up an idea. Visually he would like the viewer to recognize each part of the painting, but not to give the full story of the work, rather letting the viewer work out his/her own overall idea. He is not working to create a “photo realistic” image, but to convey an illusion that seems possible.

Smith currently lives and works in Staten Island, painting and birding.

KIKI SMITH

CECILIA RUIZ ANDREW SENDOR Cecilia Ruiz is a Mexican illustrator and graphic designer who lives and works in New York City. The Book of Memory Gaps, published by Blue Rider Press, is her debut as an author.

DAVID SALLE David Salle helped define the post-modern sensibility by combining figuration with an extremely varied pictorial language. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at museums and galleries worldwide, including the Whitney Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MoMA Vienna; Menil Collection, Houston; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Castello di Rivoli; and the Guggenheim, Bilbao.

Born in 1977, Sendor currently lives and works in New York City. Sendor’s work is characterized by a meticulous draughtsmanship that serves to illuminate his ongoing engagement with the interrelation of photorealism and the evolution of the moving image. The artist’s film work further extends the intricate web of psychologically charged narratives, persona and anachronistic space developed in his drawings and paintings. He has presented solo gallery exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, and Copenhagen. His works have been included in numerous museum exhibitions, including the Funen Art Museum, Odense, Denmark; Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, New York; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art,

Kiki Smith (b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany) is an artist of international recognition whose career has spanned over three decades. She works in various media and subject matter including the human condition, the body, and nature. Smith’s diverse body of work includes painting, photography, bookmaking, sculpture, drawing, glass and printmaking.

Smith’s artistic career began in the 70’s with her involvement in the artist’s collective Colab. She has since had over 150 solo exhibitions internationally.

Her work has also been included in multiple Whitney Biennial exhibitions (1991, 1993, 2002); La Biennale di Firenze (1996-1997; 1998); and La Biennale di Venezia (1993, 1999, 2005, 2009), where in 2011, she participated in the group exhibition Glasstress at the Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti (June 4–November

27, 2011). In 2012, Art Production Fund unveiled a major stained-glass installation by Smith in The Last Lot project space, located on 46th Street and Eighth Avenue.

A retrospective of Smith’s prints was held at the Museum of Modern art in New York (2003). A retrospective of her work originated at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005 and traveled to, among other museums, the Walker Museum in Minneapolis, MN and then on to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Smith’s work is held in over fifty public collections internationally.

Smith’s many accolades include the U.S. State Department Medal of Arts presented by Hillary Clinton (2012), Theo Westenberger Women of Excellence Award (2010); Nelson A. Rockefeller Award, Purchase College School of the Arts (2010); Women in the Arts Award, Brooklyn Museum (2009) and the 50th Edward MacDowell Medal (2009), among many others. Smith was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York in 2005. In 2006 TIME Magazine named her one of the “TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World.”

She will be honored with the International Sculpture Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.

Kiki Smith lives and works in New York City. She has been represented by Pace Gallery since 1994.

SAMANTHA KEELY SMITH Born in Harlow, Essex, England, New York-based artist Samantha Keely Smith moved to the United States as a child with her family. Smith started her College Education at the School of Visual Arts, NYC. She also attended the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, earning her BFA in Painting, with Honors.

Smith’s paintings attempt to reconcile the inner world of instinct and emotions, with an external world that is both beautiful and hostile in its natural grandeur.

They map the place where these worlds intersect.

The paintings are an investigation of the struggle between a variety of human impulses: impulses that are as necessary as they are contradictory. The translucent layers of paint, contrasting soft ethereal brushwork and harder edged sweeping gestures, echo this divergence and depict a timeless place that hovers between dream and reality. www. samanthakeelysmith.com JORDAN SOKOL Jordan Sokol was born in 1979 in Queens, NY. A graduate from the Florence Academy of art, his work focuses on the human figure. In 2013, after a decade of studying and teaching in Italy he moved to Spain where he began teaching from his private studio in Madrid. In 2014 Jordan returned to the United States after being invited to open the first official

U.S. branch of the Florence Academy of Art in Jersey City, NJ where he is currently the Academic Director.

Jordan is represented by Arcadia Contemporary in New York City. www.jordansokol.com SHARON SPRUNG My approach to living is visual. What I observe is how I make sense of the world; it is how I understand people. Knowing life in paint is a different kind of knowing. It orients me; makes the world accessible, people approachable and life joyful. The patterns of nature, the colors, the textures, the proportions of a face, the architecture of anatomy - these are like breadcrumbs I follow to find a direction. The visual deepens and enriches all. Observation, quiet meditative observation, is a way of finding myself and how I fit into this very complicated world. Making art is a way of translating my experiences. My portraits and figures are biography or part autobiography.

My mind is a library of images.

ADRIENNE STEIN Adrienne Stein (b. 1986) is an emerging artist living and working in Wrightsville, PA. She holds an MFA from Boston University and a BFA Magna Cum Laude, from Laguna College of Art & Design. Adrienne studied under many gifted and influential instructors throughout the Unites States, France, and Italy. Her work forms a bridge to the present, reanimating historical painting genres with fresh insight and imagery. The worlds she paints are inhabited by figures, folklore, archetypes, and natural elements that are fueled by a sense of personal as well as universal myth. Close friends and family members are reinterpreted in lush and magical environments that form the nexus between reality and fantasy, expressed through an unconscious world of symbolic imagery. Adrienne is represented exclusively by RJD Gallery in Sag Harbor, NY. www.adriennestein.com BELINDA SUBRAMAN Belinda Subraman: Poet. Writer. Podcaster. Artist.

Drummer. Published in 100s of places, recently Red Fez, Unlikely Stories, Tribe, Gargoyle.... Mid 80-90s published literary magazine called Gypsy, six years from Germany, 4 years from Texas. Edited books for Vergin’ Press, also for 10 years.

JOE VELEZ Joe Velez is a Jersey City, N.J., native who, despite being born with an interest in the arts, didn’t begin painting until the age of twenty-one. The self-taught artist’s first works were expressionistic in nature yet still largely figurative. After developing a strong affinity for old master paintings, however, his style began to evolve. Through careful study, Velez learned how to create more classically inspired work with the sacred air of Renaissance art, the dramatic tension and lighting found in the work of Baroque greats, all with subtle touches of Surrealism. His narrative scenes contain imagery that are not impossible, but perhaps improbable.

CAROLINE WESTERHOUT Caroline Westerhout, born in 1970 in the Netherlands, graduated in 1990 from the Graphics School in Eindhoven, NL, specializing in reproduction drawing. She worked as a desktop publisher for a number of years, while experimenting with oil paints in her free time. As a child, Westerhout spent much of her time drawing, namely nude women, so it was no wonder that a woman’s naked body became the focal point in many of her paintings. She began spending more time posing and photographing herself which allowed her feelings and emotions to prevail. The art of the nude is what Westerhout’s work is mostly known for and that in the broadest sense of the word – literally and figuratively. Today she herself still remains the subject of many of her works, although her style continues to change. She passionately loves realism which she technically practices with verve. As indicated by Westerhout, she will steer clear of taking her art work in the direction of photo realism because the charm and the element of surprise is lost. Therefore, the element of abstract will always remain essential in her work.

Her artwork is known for the stories that lie within, which are open for interpretation by all. Feelings and emotion are most important to her; often these subjects’ moods transfer to the viewer, touching their core.

Caroline Westerhout has been a professional artist since 2008.

LINDSEY WOHLMAN

DORIAN VALLEJO Dorian Vallejo began his career as a illustrator while attending the School of Visual Arts in New York.

When the field increasingly began to use computergenerated images, Vallejo felt the need to pursue other avenues with his art. His love of traditional media and the human figure, plus his interest in philosophical and psychological inquiry shifted his focus to portraiture and fine art.

Lindsey Wohlman, a photographer and sculptor who graduated from the University of Colorado Fine Arts program, adds a photographic view to historical works of great artistic importance. “I feel we must remove art from the vacuum of the moment of creation,” she says. “By doing so we better understand the work, how it moves through history, and how its story is changed.” She has collaborated with several museums, including Denver Museum of Nature and Science, University of Colorado Natural History Museum and an on-going series to create a

photographic study based on John James Audubon’s iconic “Birds of America.” Other photographic work inspired by Andy Warhol was awarded a long term exhibit by the University of Colorado’s Dean of Arts and Sciences and was featured in USA Today. Lindsey has exhibited in several national and international shows and has work in public collections including the University of Colorado Special Collections Library. www.distilledartdesign.com ZANE YORK Zane York was born in Fremont, Nebraska and was raised all over the Midwest. From an artistic family, he began drawing at an early age; his focus and passion quickly became evident. For better or worse, Zane York grew up in a comic book culture. With two older brothers telling him to keep his hands off their

comics (or at least to be careful (Okay, who are we kidding? Don’t touch them at all.)), it was inevitable that he would find them enticing. So when he began getting interested in art, it was no surprise that comic books were the medium he first imagined for himself.

He was in elementary school when his parents gave him his first drawing table. Soon afterward, he began taking commissions from family members to draw pictures of superheroes. In junior high and high school, he became more involved in comic art, building a portfolio that he carried with him to comic conventions for the professionals to evaluate.

What became clear, though, as he began taking art more seriously was that the kind of work he liked to do was unsuited for any kind of conventional comic book format. Comic books thrive on caricature and abstraction—signification through simplification.

Zane’s work, if anything, celebrates the opposite of the comic book aesthetic; it celebrates the mundane in all of its startling intricacy and beauty.

Zane received his B.F.A. in Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and his M.F.A. in Painting from the New York Academy of Art, graduating with honors from both institutions. He moved out to Brooklyn in 2001 and maintains his studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He is represented by Causey Contemporary in New York.

He has shown in New York, St. Barthelemy, France, and throughout the Midwest. He has lectured on his work in correlation with his recent exhibition “Wunderkammer” at Ripon College and “Curious Remnants” at Causey Contemporary.

Belinda Subraman

Time: Everything, Basically…

Time is God passing through me with hurricane mirrors in the weight of sunshine time becomes photos in misplaced envelopes with names we’ve mostly forgotten remnants in a crumbling catalog turning digital membrane then glorious air jazz searing the senses over flowering cacti and desert daises where the odd deer walk the wild beyond where I can feel grateful a sense of wisdom moments of peace where a memory blurred into everything becomes a light that blinds us into one where random chime breezes breathe positively beyond orgasm and beliefs like God, you know passing through me

GOSS183 Publisher Didi Menendez copyright © 2015 DEVOTION curated by Daniel Maidman P#68 | www.poetsandartists.com

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Cesar Santos | Miami

50 Memorable Painters

Curated by John Seed and Didi Menendez 2015 Edition | GOSS183 Publishing House Bloomington, Illinois

PoetsArtists | www.poetsandartists.com Copyright Š2015 PoetsArtists and Contributors

Alexsander Betko Jeffrey Bess Charis Carmichael Braun Ali Cavanaugh Matthew Ivan Cherry Erica Elan Ciganek Ben Cressy Gabriela G. Dellosso Emanuela De Musis Shawn Fields Ron Francis Zoey Frank Patrick Earl Hammie Graham Harwood Mark Heine Erika B. Hess Jen Hitchings

Milan Hrnjazovic Karen Kaapcke Michael Kozlowski Valeri Larko Brianna Lee Kim Leutwyler Shana Levenson Zachari Logan Susannah Martin Renee McGinnis Darian Rodriguez Mederos Sylvia Maier Shie Moreno Rachel Moseley Judith Peck John Philbin Dolan Serena Potter

Nadine Robbins Beverly Rippel Cesar Santos Victoria Selbach Ed Smiley Kyle Staver Barry Smith Albert Leon Sultan Emily Thompson Alexandra Tyng Conor Walton Nick Ward Thomas Wharton Margaret Withers Meg Wolensky Stephen Wright

All measurements are in inches unless otherwise stated.

Mark Heine | Duress, Study | oil on canvas | 30x36

Darian Rodriguez Mederos

Evocando un Recuerdo | oil on canvas | 40x30

STATEMENT

Photo: Igor Mokhovyk

2015 has been a year of change and adaptation, both in my life and in my work. It marks my first full year living outside of Cuba and in the United States.

Every day I’m more and more convinced that things are what they appear; that they can be molded but never actually changed. This concept has pushed me closer to my roots in hyperrealism. I find myself less and less interested in conforming and creating arbitrary technical flourishes. The body of work I’ve created in 2015 has become increasingly streamlined as the year comes to a close.

BIO

Darian Rodriguez Mederos was born in 1992 in Santa Clara, Cuba, where he attended his first two years of art school at Leopoldo Romañach. His last two years of school were spent at the National Academy of Fine

Art, San Alejandro in Havana, where he graduated.

Ironically, the one thing Rodriguez Mederos was afraid to paint were faces, so he committed himself to painting them. Now he paints faces almost exclusively. He is drawn to the light in his subject’s eyes, their gaze, and the expressive nature of their visage.

Mederos considers himself a realist, with his feet firmly planted on the ground. He has no interest in the surreal, finding more than sufficient inspiration in reality. He has experimented with the slight deformation of facial features, but never alters the natural shape of the face.

Darian Rodriguez Mederos currently resides and works in Miami’s Little Havana.

Jahzel | oil on canvas | 60x72 www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Sylvia Maier

STATEMENT

This year’s work has been all about mothers. Starting with the painting of Jesus meeting his mother for the commissioned stations of the cross project where I depicted a black Jesus and Jewish Mary. Then Coca Cola and Hello Beautiful; commissioned a work on Mothers and conversations around food based on my Sylvia’s KItchen Paintings and Cafe series. To the epic series circle of mothers based on my currency series. This project is a Social commentary and an educational instrument for change. I feel now that my art is meant to serve humanity on some level. I am grateful to the mothers who allowed to serve and commemorate their sons. Mrs. Diallo, Mrs. Baez, Ms. Malcom, Mrs. Bell, Ms, Fulton, Mrs. Bah. The Included mothers who loss their children to Police brutality and are depicted as coins with the text of Liberty and In God we Trust, accompanied by a panel discussion and film including documentary trailer to air during the NAACP awards ceremony, which I am honored to have been invited to attend.

BIO

Sylvia Maier attended the School of Visual Art, The National Academy of Design and the New York Academy. She studied at the Art Student’s League with Ron Sherr and Harvey Dinnerstein, and is a recipient of the prestigious Greenshield Award and numerous merit scholarships.

Her paintings have been shown at the Parish Museum in South Hampton, Rush Gallery, The Corridor Gallery, Lincoln Center, solo shows at the Forum Gallery in Frankfurt, Germany, and in numerous other solo and selected shows throughout the U.S. and Germany.

She has worked with the US State Departments’ Art in Embassies Program. Her paintings have been to several “art for life” events, organized by Russell Simmons to bring art to underprivileged urban kids. Her work was featured in the Wall Street Journal. Her client list includes Mars (the candy company) and M&M’s has commissioned her several times for the Super Bowl events, commercials. Her clients include Jeep, the TV show “White Collar”, Art For Films, and the “Dan Zanes and Friends”. She has worked with Spike Lee on an exhibition of paintings as well as on a public service announcement/ commercial to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - for which Spike chose 30 of her paintings.

Sylvia Maier is a native of New York City and her work is very much influenced by her experiences of growing up biracial on the Upper Eastside of NYC. She has been drawing since the age of 7. Today, Sylvia Maier’s art bridges the gap between cultures as expressed in her latest body of work: the currency series and still life paintings.

Sylvia Maier lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York. www.sylviamaier.com

from the Coin Series| Peter and Milo| oil on wood | 11x14

Reincarnation in Brooklyn | oil on canvas | 72x72

Ron Francis

STATEMENT

BIO

This causes me to study how things work in the natural world, particularly how light interacts with objects and environments, so I can more easily recreate it on canvas.

Subjects vary considerably from one painting to the next, ranging from recreating past events or dreams, to comments about what I may find odd or ironic about things people do.

Francis works predominantly with oil on canvas, but has also worked with acrylic and airbrush painting commissioned trompe l’oeil murals.

He has exhibited in Melbourne at Profile Gallery, MCA (Melbourne Contemporary Art Gallery), and is currently represented by Scott Livesey Galleries in Melbourne. His work is in private collections in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney.

Most of the time I exaggerate a scene, often using allegory, to try to distil the essence of what I’m trying to express. It is common for the meaning to be an intangible feeling that I can’t express with words.

Francis approaches painting with one main aim; to refine his technique enough to be able to create realistic representations of anything that he may imagine or dream.

I work mostly from imagination, inventing scenes and trying to make them as real as I can.

Ron Francis was born in Sydney, Australia in 1954 and currently lives and works in Tasmania.

Right |Russel Williams’ Tree | oil on canvas |150 x 110 cm

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Conor Walton

STATEMENT

My two big projects in 2015 were an exhibition of drawings in Paris and a show of still life and figure paintings, ‘The Enemies of Progress’, in San Francisco. In both, several years of work came to fruition. The centerpiece of the latter show was a large work titled ‘An Ape’s Limbs Compared to Man’s’. It’s based on an illustration in an old book on primates comparing the proportions of a human and a gibbon. The illustration intrigued me because it quotes the image of Vitruvian Man made famous by Leonardo, in which man’s beauty and perfection of form are demonstrated by him fitting, arms outstretched, within a square. The poor gibbon is obviously deficient within this scheme of values: legs dangling, he appears crucified.

The illustration seemed to express unintentionally something strange and dysfunctional in our relationship with nature. I sought to fulfil the iconographic potential of the image by translating it into a dramatically

lit three-dimensional space, a sort of Last-Judgement scene in which, instead of human souls, animals are weighed and measured and man appears god-like, glorified. In the background the evolution of ape to man progresses toward an unknown future. By overlaying the iconography of science and progress upon older traditions of Christian and classical humanistic iconography, the picture condenses many of the central themes of western civilisation. The result is like a super-history-painting which parodies Christianity, Humanism, and Scientism without, I think, really endorsing any of them. I think this reflects my own ambivalence about much of our cultural heritage and likely destiny. Foregrounding my friends and family in the painting helps to counterbalance the abstractness of the ‘big picture’ themes (Man, Nature, Science, Destiny) with more intimate human values.

An Ape’s Limbs Compared to Man’s | oil on linen | 48x96

BIO

Conor Walton was born in Ireland in 1970 and trained at NCAD in Dublin and Charles Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy. He has had seven Irish and six international solo exhibitions, the most recent at CK Contemporary in San Francisco. He lives and works in Wicklow, Ireland. www.conorwalton.com

Milan Hrnjazovic

STATEMENT

My 2015 begun with an artistic residency (Glo’art) in Belgium during which piece Couple was produced. I was inspired to create a work with a strong visual reference to traditional Renaissance and Baroque Flemish art but within my own thematic framework. I am constantly examining the renewal of life through concepts of eroticism and sexuality, motherhood and fertility.

This painting depicts the story from The Book of Genesis. The embraced figures of Adam and Eve are accompanied by a serpent with a human hand instead of her head. In my interpretation of the biblical narrative, the serpent drops the apple that ends up in Eve’s hand. Her apparent anxiety is seen through distortion of their bodies caught in the whirlwind.

Theirs is the story of many couples from our times. The expression of sexuality has been often regarded as an act of free spirit, rebellion against taboo or even a revolution. In my works sexuality is about compensation. The characters are placed in a claustrophobic room where their intimacy is the escapism from everyday life rather than manifestation of a close relationship. In

spite of their physical contact the couples remain mentally and emotionally distant. The alienation and loss of personal freedom in contemporary society is in the focus of my interest.

In the light of disturbing events that marked 2015 such themes are, in my opinion, more relevant than ever before. Our wonderful world is far from being as such.

BIO

As an artist, Milan Hrnjazović explores the inability of an individual to cope with the times and the context he is put in by making vehement brush moves, yet creating precise images.

Departing from the formal realism he is trying to put light on the less transparent aspects of the visible by importing symbolic motifs. He works in mixed media surrounding equally dealing with different aspects of painting and photography.

He graduated from the University of Arts in Belgrade and subsequently started exhibiting both nationally and internationally. His paintings have been featured in Juxtapoz magazine, HiFructose, Eleven Eleven, Cultura Inquieta and Beautiful Decay among others.

Couple (Original Sin) | oil on canvas | 39x59

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Emily Thompson

Auto Body |12x12 | oil on canvas STATEMENT

I love the urban and industrial landscape, abandoned buildings, empty lots, construction sites, etc... I am primarily an abstract painter but lately have been experimenting with this series of old auto body garages. Growing up in Queens, New York I was always fascinated with neighborhoods that had blocks of these shops – one after the other. Run down, rusty and so colorful. Busy, yet lonely. These paintings are more representational than my usual style, but I am still trying to incorporate my abstract textures and techniques into these works to reflect the grittiness and distressed feeling of the subject.

BIO

Emily Thompson attended the prestigious High School of Art & Design and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the

School of Visual Arts in New York. She has been recognized both regionally and nationally for her work and has been the recipient of many awards. Her paintings are the result of multiple, improvisational phases of creation, from observing her surroundings to the final touches of paint. She is very inspired by the landscape both urban and rural. Her work is about the beauty of design, atmosphere and mood, color, the application of paint and texture. Her influences include Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko along with many contemporary artists of today. Thompson’s work is part of private collections throughout the United States and has been exhibited at the Woodmere Museum in Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Sketch Club and the Trenton City Museum in New Jersey. She has also been part of many group, two person and solo exhibits in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California.

Meg Wolensky

Objects of Desire | oil on canvas | 24x30

STATEMENT

I compile images throughout the day and combine them in my paintings to reveal, recover, and preserve memories. Using layers of paint to negotiate the details of personal narrative, I translate and redact a variety of source material - including daily visual diary entries, found imagery, and patches of observational painting.

Performing multilevel investigations into distant memories and snippets of the present allows me to draw together major themes which resurface and align in narrative patterns. Objects that are seen and erased from each aggregate of imagery signify the search for clarity in my journey to personal truth.

BIO

Meg Wolensky (b. 1992) unveils relational dynamics in paintings based on experiences, memories, and dreams. She relays key moments from various source material in atmospheric paintings, layering experiences in selective cross-sections of personal narrative.

Wolensky is from West Chester, Pennsylvania and has a background in fine arts, arts advocacy, and research. She graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2014 and currently attends Drexel University’s Arts Administration Master of Science program.

Wolensky lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

www.megwolensky.com

Stephen Wright

Untitled | oil on canvas | 36x36 STATEMENT

My work of past year has been more autobiographical than usual.

2015 marked enormous changes for me; a greater understanding of death and appreciation for life, and a time when I’ve started looking back as much as forward, with a heightened perception of change.

My recent work reflects the idea of change and restlessness, both in society and privately, along with a desire to reach past old ideas and discover new paths.

BIO

Stephen Wright is a California native. His work is in various private and public collections. Recently he was featured in New American Paintings and various issues of GOSS183.

stephenwrightart.com www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Untitled | oil on canvas | 24 x 20 www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Nadine Robbins

Double Gulp (Portrait of Howard Tullman, Courtesy of the Tullman Art Collection, Chicago) | oil on linen | 24x24 STATEMENT

completed her BFA in Graphic Design at the State University of New York at New Paltz and Middlesex Polytechnic in London. Nadine initially chose a career in graphic design where she achieved considerable success as the founder of her own firm, Namaro Graphics, while also developing and honing her skills in photography and painting.

In 2015, I chose models that engaged the viewer with strong emotions and presence, and painted them anxiously always pressing my abilities into new territory. I also pushed myself to think of creative ideas to develop for my paintings but things never went as planned. Instead of getting frustrated, I embraced these moments and it solidified my deeprooted instincts to choose the right image to paint. I continued working on my body of work called “Bad Habits and Guilty Pleasures” and began several nudes and commissions. Sirona Fine Art Gallery is now representing my work and offered me a solo show during ArtBasel week called “Oil Water Bronze”. I end the year committed to keeping an authentic narrative in my paintings and I feel as though I’ve established a solid foundation in my work and career without compromise.

Robbins is now a realist painter, based in New York’s Hudson Valley, who specializes in portraits, nudes and oysters. Merging traditional techniques and contemporary concepts, her work strives for realism but isn’t cold or clinical. It feels animated and alive. The accuracy of flesh she portrays seems warm to the touch, the eyes glisten as they connect with the viewer. Infused with emotion, authenticity, humor, wit and wisdom, Robbins’ work avoids the heaviness or leaden seriousness that can accompany portraiture. She reminds us that one of the most important aspects of being alive is the lighter side, which makes us smile.

I’m alive and able to see the good amidst the bad. Life can be heartbreaking and unfair and I choose to paint the opposite. My work harnesses optimism, honesty and beauty in concept and color and the detail and patience required forces me to be in the moment.

BIO

Nadine Robbins’ artistic style has evolved through a lifetime connection with art. She grew up in France, where her mother was an artist and introduced her to many artists including Salvador Dali. Coming of age in a family and culture steeped in visual art steered her course. She

Her work has been included in the Royal Society of Portrait Painters juried exhibitions in London, is consistently part of established competitions and shows throughout the United States and can be found in national and international collections, most notably the Howard A. & Judith Tullman Collection in Chicago. nadinerobbinsart.com

Sativa Sunrise | oil on linen | 24x24

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Ali Cavanaugh

STATEMENT

In February of 2015 I painted my first painting of Saoirse and instantly fell in love with her as my muse. Her expression is open and honest. The innocence, the energy, the whole dynamic was a huge shift from my previous eight years of work of mostly young teen women with inward, private emotion. This spring my watercolor technique rapidly changed as I responded to the presence of a younger person in my paintings. I limited my palette to blues and greens to reflect a dream state. I began pouring and dripping watercolors instead of controlling each paint stroke with tiny brushes. My approach previously was that painted every square inch of the figure with perfection and control. With these new works, I let the water fall and move and dry and then it speaks to me. I then respond by laying down more color. The painting and I go back and forth as if we are in conversation. My new approach is to allow space for surprises. I have become forgiving in my process so that I can leave unexpected mishaps in the final painting. I have the freedom and skill to develop areas where I intend for the emotion to be more direct, while I embrace the imperfections left by the spontaneous creative process.

BIO

Ali Cavanaugh (American, b. 1973) is an internationally represented fine artist. She studied painting at Kendall College of Art and Design and the New York Studio Residency Program in New York City, earning a BFA from Kendall College of Art and Design in 1995. At the age of 22, she co-founded an atelier -The New School Academy of Fine Art- in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

She relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2000. It was during her seven years in Santa Fe that she developed her modern fresco process on kaolin clay. Her paintings have been the subject of numerous national and international solo and group exhibitions.

Cavanaugh’s paintings have been featured on book covers, countless internet features such as the Huffington Post, Fine Art Connoisseur, Hi-Fructose and in numerous print publications including The New York Times Magazine, American Art Collector, and American Artist Watercolor. She has painted portraits for TIME magazine and The New York Times. Her work is featured in more than 400 private and corporate collections throughout the North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. She currently lives in St Louis, Missouri with her husband and their four children.

Left |Essence | watercolor on clay panel | 8Ă—8

Listening in Silence | watercolor on panel | 40Ă—40

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Charis J. Carmichael Braun

STATEMENT

The death of my elder sister, my lodestar, has created a watershed in my convictions this year. Having anticipated the end stages of her health, I was preparing for her departure to begin a catalyzing effect on my creative practice. In the past, I often felt shackled by my fear of showing weakness so I would resolve each painting secured in the safety of my imagination. But when I committed to flesh the image out on canvas, as my intent traveled into brushstrokes, I thought it began to break down. As such, my studio work became a nervous compulsion of redrawing, researching with every layer, a covering and revealing of mistakes. This was the last work I painted of my sister while she was alive. Now armed with knowing that I may distill my grief and ambition into new artworks, I look forward to making more psychologically intense images that interpret a tenacious relationship of confidence, fear and desire.

BIO

Charis J. Carmichael Braun’s artwork describes projection and vulnerability drawn from conflicting ideas and familial relationships. Charis combines concepts she feels are mutually exclusive (and culturally determined) such as attraction/repulsion, masculine/feminine, ideal/flawed, repressed/exalted. Spreading these

leitmotifs across bodies of work modeled on people close to her, each series centralizes around a subtheme: Brown Pink; Sit With Me Stay With Me; The Tie That Binds; Less Than Ideal. Analyzed in multi-layered painted images embodying psychological tension through saturated color and obsessive brushwork, she blends these divergent concepts into a “middle ground” so that it is difficult to see where one begins and another ends.

Charis grew up in New Ulm, MN. She earned her BA from Bethany Lutheran College and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art. She is currently a Caretaker and Director of Communications at The League Residency at Vyt, the international artist-in-residence program of the Art Students League of New York. She has served in leadership positions on three arts notfor-profit organizations, and has worked in New York galleries as well as higher education. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally and may be found in both private and public collections. With her husband, a woodworker and cabinetmaker, Charis lives and works in the Hudson Valley, New York

www.CharisJCarmichaelBraun.com

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Where Do We Go From Here [Janus] | acrylic on panel | 8.5x11

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Cesar Santos

Jay | oil and charcoal on linen | 39x28 Left |Blue | oil and graphite on linen | 18x13 Right |Woman with Dog | oil on linen | 51x40

STATEMENT

My artistic energy drives me to capture the people of my time. I am fascinated with the way our daily activities establish identity in a specific way; this action is so persistent that our individuality fades and we become archetypes. Through my obsessive paintings which intermingle areas of broad brushwork and areas of minute detail I question the history and standards of portraiture. I isolate my subject from their environment and place them in an imaginary setting, to play with the expression of identity against the loss of individuality. I seek to establish a relationship between the subject and its environment, freeing them from their original context and positioning them in a new aesthetic reality. My ultimate interest is in creating a personal visual world where my dreams and visions can become true.

BIO

Cesar Santos (b. 1982), Cuban-American. His art education is worldly, and his work has been seen around the globe, from the Annigoni Museum in Italy and the Beijing museum in China to Chelsea NY. Santos studied at Miami Dade College, where he earned his associate in arts degree in 2003. He then attended the New World School of

the Arts before traveling to Florence, Italy. In 2006, he completed the Angel Academy of Art in Florence studying under Michael John Angel, a student of artist Pietro Annigoni.

Santos’ work reflects both classical and modern interpretations juxtaposed within one painting. His influences range from the Renaissance to the masters of the nineteenth century to Contemporary Art. With superb technique, he infuses a harmony between the natural and the conceptual to create works that are provocative and dramatic.

Among Santos’ solo shows are “Syncretism” at Eleanor Ettinger Chelsea Gallery in New York; “Beyond Realism” with Oxenberg Fine Arts in Miami and “New Impressions” at the Greenhouse Gallery in San Antonio, among many others. The artist has received numerous accolades, including first place in a Metropolitan Museum of Art competition, and he was recently presented with the 2013 Miami Dade College Hall of Fame Award in Visual Arts. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia, including the Villa Bardini Museum in Florence and the National Gallery in Costa Rica.

Beverly Rippel

Ball | Black and Orange Cap Gun |Two on a Match (Lovers) | oil on canvas | 6x6 STATEMENT

I paint as a ritual for expression, exploration and communication. I am seduced by the visual world and all that resonates beneath its surface.

An idea will slip into my thoughts when I least expect it…alone on a walk, in my studio or home, or in a state of quasi-sleep. I keep journals or sticky notes with quick jottings. The conception of a work happens when I am physically stopped by something that fascinates me. I pick it up, turn it over in my hands, and hold it up to the light of day. I study it with new eyes, and recast it in paint with a new awareness. I like to make a painting ‘all-at-once’- painting ‘from the gut’, down my arm and onto the canvas, investigating it with my eyes and hands, paint, brush and rags. This experiential journey continues for one session and then it stops and the painting is done.

BIO

Beverly Rippel has a studio practice in Boston’s South End Arts District. She is on the Board of Advisors and has been Chair of

Exhibitions at the South Shore Art Center in MA since 2008. She exhibits her work regionally and nationally in galleries and museums, and has received awards from Carl Belz, Director Emeritus of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Cora Rosevear, curator at MoMA, N.Y., and Susan Cross from the Guggenheim, N.Y. She was awarded a solo show at The Fuller Museum of Art in 1998, and won “Best of Show” in Cambridge Art’s first National Prize Show juried

by Malcolm Rogers, Director Emeritus of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Rogers selected Rippel’s “Just Once” from over 4000 works.

In 2015, Beverly was invited to have a solo show of “Aggregate Abstractions” at the Attleboro Arts Museum in MA. Her mixed media works were included in the Danforth Art Museum’s “New England Photography Biennial”.

Beverly’s work is in private and corporate collections internationally, with series paintings in the collections of Nokia Corporation, Burlington, MA, as well as The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and MIT University Park in Cambridge, MA www.beverlyrippel.com

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Ed Smiley

Growl | acrylic on canvas | 24x30 STATEMENT

I believe that color is the essence of life itself.

I believe in the elusive, the poetic, in ecstasy and in joy.

I want to be lost and yet be found.

I want what I cannot achieve easily.

I consider myself defeated if I too easily know where it is I want to go.

I aim for a paradox of the intricate and the broadly gestural; the flat, and the infinite.

A note on technique: My art practice incorporates acrylic transfer of digital printing and xerography into a acrylic painting, as well as inclusion of drawing media, collage, and transferred paint skins.

I use scanners and hand movement to produce digitally modified images, gestural yet unpainted, and combine them in overlays with glazes and painted gesture. Image sources for digital distortions can be other paintings, fabrics, and found objects.

BIO

Smiley holds a bachelor’s degree in two dimensional art from the University of California Santa Cruz.

Smiley’s work incorporates acrylic transfer of xerography, digitally modified images, digital printing, or drawings, incorporating them into gestural painting where it is teasingly hard to tell where the painted brush stroke begins and the digital manipulation ends. The image sources can be digital distortions of other paintings, fabrics, and found objects.

Smiley has also exhibited works in oil, alkyd, silkscreen, intaglio, collage, xerography, assemblage and kinetic light boxes., multimedia, oil, alkyd, silkscreen, intaglio, collage, xerography, photography, assemblage and kinetic light boxes.

Smiley has an eclectic background, and has also studied science, engineering, mathematics, and anthropology as well as art. He has worked jobs in an equally eclectic range of jobs, including dishwasher, bean raker, programmer, ironworker, bookstore clerk, cannery worker, and house painter. He has no idea exactly how this has affected his work.

Erica B. Hess

The Origin Story | oil on canvas | 11x14

For You | oil on canvas | 11x14 Heritage Hunting Hat | oil on canvas | 11x14 STATEMENT

I begin each of my paintings with a compositional idea in mind and a narrative derived from my day-to-day experience. The narrative may be based on a personal exchange or driven by an object in my studio. Recently the narrative in my work comes from the act of giving and receiving flowers. I am interested in the action that takes place on the canvas involving the viewer. Are they, the audience, being given flowers? Is the figure on the canvas giving or receiving? I am also interested in the historical significance. The action of giving flowers is a tradition we still partake in for the birth of a child, a gift for a lover, the death of a friend. It is a way to communicate a deep emotion that we may not have the words to express. In that way, flowers are a way to visually communicate just like a painting.

The medium of oil paint and the physical process of adding and subtracting materials allow the process to dictate the evolution of my work. I do not begin with a finalized image in mind but

rather a compositional idea typically involving the relationship between figure and ground. Each revision of the piece leads to a more activated image and surface leading toward the final image which is something I could not have imagined or anticipated.

BIO

Erika b Hess was born in 1982 and received her MFA in 2009 from Boston University. Hess’s work has been exhibited nationally including galleries in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Boston as well as galleries throughout the Midwest. Her work has appeared in various publications, most recently, Post Industrial Complex, a book released by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the art publication, Fresh Paint Magazine. In 2014 she was a resident artist at MicroArtSpace in Cleveland, OH and served as a panelist for Cleveland Institute of Art’s, “Feminism Now 2014: Exposing the Truth”, a symposium focusing on art, feminism and digital culture. Hess currently lives and works in Boston, MA. www.erikabhess.com

Margaret Withers

at least dance with me one more time | flashe paint, ink, acrylic gouache on linen; small people, telephone poles, Porsche 356 Jimmy's Speedster on wood | 49x79x5

rich time, cash poor | flashe paint, ink, acrylic gouache on linen; small people, telephone poles,Lamborghini Aventador LP on wood | 49x79x5 STATEMENT

Into these ocean landscapes I’ve painted a large botanic contraption, and in some regards, it’s the last remaining planetary or mechanical system that floats above the earth, abandoned and silent. It’s just out of reach of the humans who are left, floating on a log, where it seems that something might occur, or has already occurred, and now the consequence is being played out, and like the loop of a scene from a movie these people are set to repeat the narrative assigned to them, forever adrift in the world’s vastness.

BIO

Margaret Withers is a visual artist who lives and works in New York

city. Her paintings are fragments of stories found in an imaginary landscape that capture in the abstract the conflicting ideas of joy and melancholy, as well as community and aloneness in regards to the concept of home and communication. Her web based transliteration project is based on cultural shifts in the 50 United States. Originally from Texas, Withers has exhibited her work throughout the country and internationally in Brussels, Australia, Berlin, China, Vienna and Russia. Her artwork is included in multiple private and corporate collections and has won numerous awards including a 2013/2015 resident fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center, a fellowship to the Millay Colony, and a 2013 USA Project Grant. www.MargaretWithers.com

John Philbin Dolan

Above | The Helper | pastel on paper | 18x12

Left | The Actress | pastel on paper | 17x14 STATEMENT

This year was a bit of a departure for me and my usual painting methods. Since the beginning of my painting career I have always used professional models for my paintings. In 2015, nearly every portrait I painted were personal. Painting a likeness is difficult enough, but when you know the sitter, it adds an element of complexity to the painting process. I would often have to stand back and ask myself whether the paintings accurately reflected the subject. It has been very rewarding and challenging.

BIO

John has won numerous national awards including The Gold Medal, Master’s Division, at the 2015 International Association of Pastel Societies Int’l Juried Show, 2nd Place at the 2014 Pastel National , an Honorable Mention at the 2014 International Assoc. of Pastel Societies annual gallery exhibit, The Gold Medal at the 2012 International Association of Pastel Societies Gallery Show, Honorable Mentions in the 2015, 2013 and 2012 Pastel Journal’s Pastel 100, Finalist in the 2013 and Honorable Mention in the 2012 Artist Magazine’s All Media Competition and an Honorable Mention in the Butler Institute of American Art’s 2012 Mid Year Show. Other awards and honors include Best of Show at The 2009

Richeson 75 Pastel Show, 2nd place at The 2009 Platinum Show at The Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Art, The Holbein/Richard McKinley Award of Excellence at the 18th National Pastel Society of New Mexico Show and The New Orleans Art Association Award at The Degas Pastel Society’ 12th Biennial National Exhibition. In total, he has been in nearly 100 exhibits in the last 8 years.

John received The Pastel Society of New Mexico’s highest honor of “Distinguished Pastellist” in 2015 and is a signature member of The Pastel Society of America. In 2015, he also was inducted into the International Association of Pastel Societies’ Master Circle.

He is also a member of The Oil Painters of America, The Portrait Society of America, The International Guild of Realism, The Degas Pastel Society, The California Arts Club and is an Artist Member of The Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago.

His work is in collections throughout the United States and Ireland.

He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife Diane and their four children

Judith Peck

Pulled Over | oil and plaster on board |40x30 STATEMENT We live in a broken world, full of distances and rifts between and across cultures. I think life is about relating to others with empathy in spite of these breaks. These paintings are done in oil with broken plaster shards in an attempt to hold this cracking world together.

For my subjects, I choose people whose rich inner life comes across on their faces, because it allows a viewer to delver into the sitter’s psychology. If we can actually see each other, we can pursue life compassionately without getting stuck in its rifts.

Most recently I began a series on the recent racial violence in Baltimore, Ferguson and Charleston. The work is a commentary the on the ongoing pain suffered by people of color because of racial discrimination and profiling, the lack of integration of civil rights policy and the reality on the street.

Working from these principles, my paintings then become about how we heal ourselves in this broken world. The work becomes a guide to investigating our lives. Hopefully, the models’ lingering and penetrating gaze will move us away from our complacency.

BIO Known as a allegorical realist, Judith Peck has exhibited her work in venues nationwide including the Portsmouth Museum in Virginia and the Masur Museum of Art in Monroe, Louisiana awarding Peck the juror’s award, Aqua Art Miami Basel, Arte Américas, Fresno Art Museum in California, and a solo at the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts in New Castle, Pennsylvania. She has received the Strauss Fellowship Grant from Fairfax County, Virginia.

Her paintings have been featured numerous times in Poets /Artists Magazine, as well as The Artist’s Magazine, American Art Collector Magazine, iARTisas, Combustus, Catapult Magazine and The Kress Project book published by the Georgia Museum of Art. Judith Peck’s work is collected internationally and can be found in many private collections as well as in the permanent collection of the Museo Arte Contemporanea, Sicilia and the District of Columbia’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities collection. www.judithpeck.net

Shana Levenson

Paul | oil on dibond | 20x20 STATEMENT

2015 was an incredible year in my growth as an artist. I start my series, “Beyond the Illness”, which tells the stories not only of the survival of those living with HIV/AIDS, but also the stories of those that have lost a loved one due to the disease. These stories are personal to my life and my past, having had an uncle who died of the disease in the early 90’s. The beginning of this series also means that I have come closer to finishing my thesis for my masters, titled “Portraits of Parenthood”, which is focused on non-traditional portraits of the sometimes-secret duality of parenting in modern times. My work has evolved over time through the mentorship of my fiancé, David Kassan, who has taught me that moments we spend with our paintings are moments we get to understanding our subjects better. Each portrait is thoughtfully painted in a sensitive manner so that the essence of that moment in the subjects’ life is told.

BIO

Born in Houston, Texas, Shana Levenson moved to Austin where she began drawing at an early age. Her passion for the arts grew into an undergraduate degree at The University of Texas, where she received

a Bachelor’s in Fashion. After having 2 children, who were born in 2009 and 2010, Shana went back to school in pursuit of a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Art in San Francisco.

Shana’s love for the process of creating art is the reason why she is able to be so prolific. Her greatest passion is portraiture. However, landscapes and still life paintings all play a role in work. Her inspiration comes painting people that are important in her life. Shana’s goal is to capture each person’s story in an honest and meaningful manner.

She regularly works on commissioned pieces, creating works that capture the emotion not only of the artist but also of the buyer. Her greatest passion is finding the elements that are most meaningful to an individual or family and incorporating these concepts in her work.

Shana’s current series of work, “Portraits of Parenthood”, is focused on non-traditional portraits of the sometimes-secret duality of parenting in modern times. “Beyond the Illness”, her upcoming series reveals the emotional struggles of long-term survivors currently living with HIV/ AIDS. Shana’s works can be currently seen in exhibitions around the United States.

Erica Elan Ciganek

STATEMENT

2015 was a time of transitioning and beginning to open my work up. The human experience of water and its obscuring relative qualities within intimate observation have carried through the work and pushed me further.

I have considered the resonance of the work of humanizing others within the political sphere as well as my personal sphere. The practice of seeing people continues to be the foundation for my pieces, and what it means to see people in a world of dehumanization is the enduring question I wrestle with.

Girls I | oil on MDF | 36x48

BIO

Erica is a painter currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Washington in Seattle. She graduated in 2013 from North Park University with a BA in both Art and Conflict Transformation. Her work has been featured throughout the US as well as in blogs, and publications such as Juxtapoz, Hifructose, and Poets/Artists. She continues to paint mainly portraits with an emphasis on the power of truly seeing people in a world that is quick to dehumanize. www.ericaelanciganek.com

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Kim Leutwyler

STATEMENT

My finalist entry for the 2015 Archibald Prize. The subject is a friend of mine who also happens to be an activist, designer and one of Australia’s top models, Ollie Henderson. Aged just 26, she has received global recognition for founding the fashion label and youth empowerment project House of Riot, which uses fashion as a vehicle for encouraging young people to start productive conversations about social change in Australia. As a feminist member of the LGBTQI community, Ollie speaks openly about the objectification inherent to a career in modeling, and the unrealistic modification of images that set unattainable standards of beauty.

BIO

Born in America in 1984, Sydney-based Kim Leutwyler migrated to Australia in 2012. She works in a variety of media including painting, installation, ceramics, print media and drawing. She holds concurrent Bachelor degrees in Studio and Art History from Arizona State University, and additionally graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a Painting and Drawing degree. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States and Australia, and she is part of the collections at both the Naestved Cultural Center in Denmark and the Brooklyn Art Library in New York.

Start the Riot | oil on canvas | 152x102cm

Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso

The Burning of Adelaide Labille-Guiard's Masterpiece, Self-Portrait Homage | oil on linen | 70x105 STATEMENT

The concept of my self-portrait homage paintings involves altering my features to resemble the historical women I honor in my homage paintings and drawings. I hope the result brings attention to their life stories.

Adelaide Labille Guiard (1749-1803) was an artist born in Paris, France. Her remarkable career shows, how she evolved from miniaturist painter, to portraitist of nobility, to then attempting multiple figure painting. “ The Burning of Adelaide Labille-Guiard’s Masterpiece” is a scene depicting a tragic event in Adelaide LabilleGuiard’s life, the destruction by Revolutionaries, of her painting “Reception of a Chevalier de Saint-Lazare by Monsieur Grand Master of the Order”. Adelaide’s painting was an ambitious multiple figure commission, her most important up to that point in her life. This painting was commissioned to honor the Comte de Provence, brother of Louis XVI, in his role as grand master of the Chevaliers de SaintLazare (The Chevaliers – were a royal order founded during the

Crusades). The French Revolution would not tolerate art glorifying the monarchy, so they issued mandates to seize royal paintings and burn them. Adelaide had spent two and a half years painting her “magnum opus” when it became a casualty of the French Revolution and went up in flames in 1793. She was devastated and never attempted anything as ambitious again.

BIO

New Jersey based artist, Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso received her BFA from The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Her work can be found in many notable private and museum collections. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Fine Art Connoisseur, Artnews and many others. She is represented by the Harmon-Meek Gallery in Naples, Florida. Gabriela teaches painting and drawing at the National Academy School of Fine Arts, NYC and the JCC of Manhattan. www.gabrieladellosso.com

Homage to Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait Homage | mixed media |16x14

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Shie Moreno

Mirando El Espejo Eterno | acrylic, collage, graphite, marker and oil on canvas | 58x62 STATEMENT

My body of work is the resonant, thunderous voice, inside of me.

A voice of harmonious colors celebrating Earth, love and respect.

These are the principles on which I approach everything on a daily basis. I am an individual who speaks out of the collective need of my time, place and culture. Painting illustrates my voice which differentiates substance from fashion, synchronizing with sound waves, traveling energy, vibrations and light. The work takes on a life of its own based on pure intuition and wisdom. The voice is free to resonate on multidimensional planes and hyper waves returning with a gift of truth, a strong current running through my physical and mental states, merging with the kingdom of the invisible, a free flow manifesting, drifting with universal radiant energy, permeating the cosmos, living beings and nature.

BIO

Shie Moreno is a painter and musician (b. 1971, La Habana, Cuba). He is a living tendril connecting ancient spirituality, the

fecund tropics and contemporary American art. The artist is not hindered by material constraints; any surface and material will do for creating expression. Paint, collage, tar, marker, wax, aerosol, keepsakes and even fire are used to create a surface effect on canvas, wood, paper or glass. An earnest examination of color, letter forms, figures and composition inform the work. This leads to Shie Moreno as an inventor of forms, ever expanding the techniques and range of his expression.

His work has been widely exhibited since 1996 on a national level and shown in Japan, London, Chile and Mexico. A finalist for the Cintas Foundation Fellowship in 2012 at the Miami Museum of Art and Design, his activities include recent solo shows such as: Sights, Sounds and Spirits (No Romance Gallery, Tribeca, NY, 2014), Via Color Spectrum (Mason Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia, 2015), Outdoors (Kurt Seligmann Center, Chester County, NY, 2015), As well as two upcoming solo shows in Cuba and Denmark in 2016.

La Gran Ceremonia | acrylic, graphite, oil, and tar on canvas | 58x84

Susannah Martin

Le Déjeuner sur L´herbe est Fini | oil on linen | 28x28 STATEMENT

2015 was a year of big transition in my work. My continuing experimentation in contemporizing the classical theme of the realistic nude in landscape, is leading me increasingly toward confrontation with our contemporary concept of realism itself. For many, the idea of a painted nude in landscape brings to mind a masterfully painted and peaceful scene of late French romanticism or naturalism.

But the crowded house of images which now occupy our minds and make up our concept of reality feels like a bawdy three ring circus show compared to the orderly Tableau of the 19th century. It is difficult for us to fit our concept of life back into that picture frame. The people in my paintings clearly are distantly related to those of the Salon, but they are more the bawdy revelers of contemporary society. We are more likely to find them obstructing and disturbing the bucolic landscape than peacefully coexisting as they used to in the forest of Fountainebleau. As I attempt to preserve a romantic landscape for my viewing pleasure, they burst in with all their awkward struggles to cope with an ever expanding virtual reality. I have decided that, in order to contemporize the painted nude in landscape, I will have to let go of the last vestiges of idyllic

fantasies which linger in my mind and fully embrace the synthetic reality of contemporary existence. I suspect that my struggle with this process reflects every man´s struggle with this process and is in fact the true subject of my new work.

BIO

Susannah Martin was born in New York City in 1964. She studied at New York University with a scholarship for painting. Following her studies she was self-employed as a muralist and painter of sets for film and photography in New York, Berlin Germany and finally Frankfurt am Main where she currently lives and works. In 2004 she returned to fine art and portraiture. Over the last 8 years her work has focused exclusively on contemporizing the classical subject of the nude in landscape. Avoiding a falsely idyllic scenario, her work focuses on mans´ estrangement from nature. The figures may appear absurd stripped of all social indicators and possessions or ecstatic in unexpected reunification with their natural selves. Martins´ work creates a stage in which mans´ struggle between the two poles of his identity, the natural and the synthetic, may be contemplated. Her work is exhibited internationally throughout Europe and the United States of America. www.susannahmartin.de

Emanuela De Musis

Fritter and Waste | oil on linen | 36x22 STATEMENT

My intent has been to create confrontational portraits in which the viewer is not disaffected but rather feels a sense of intimacy with the sitter. These portraits, though autobiographical in nature, only ambiguously suggest private issues and never reveal meaning; instead, the subtleties of a cocked head or a sideways glance present a mystery. My personal themes informed the conception of the work, but I invite the viewer to freely interpret the narrative through the looking glass of their own experience.

Heading into the coming year, I am working on a group of paintings that will address, in a more aggressive and upfront way, these very same personal topics which I have only alluded to in 2015.

Miss Rachel | oil on linen | 42x40 BIO

Born in Boston, Emanuela De Musis traveled to Italy in 2008 to study drawing in Florence and subsequently enrolled at the Academy of Realist Art Boston where she now teaches. She holds a BFA in Painting from Carnegie Mellon and is a graduate of Walnut Hill School for the Arts.

In 2015, her painting, Miss Rachel, was awarded the Gold Medal at the Guild of Boston Artists Regional Juried Exhibition and her painting, Fritter and Waste, was featured in International Artist Magazine.

Graham Harwood

If you go down to the woods | oil on canvas | 60x48 STATEMENT My work is a celebration of life. I am fascinated by the splendor of nature, science, magic, transformation and memory.

In the example here other ideas have come to the fore in the painting process. The ‘Unicorn’ encouraged rather than eradicated. If you like ‘a visual, poetic expression’ of a contemporary scientific theory.

I am interested in ‘what paint might do’ and explore this through paintings done ‘in series’. . Our evolving understanding and ‘reach’ of the human mind fascinates and informs my practice. For example... the ‘Ephemerae’ series of works explores the visual metaphor used to describe ‘chaos theory’. Ephemerae refers to a ‘short-lived insect’, in this instance the ‘butterfly’. It expresses the transience of existence and its beauty, and the wonder of our ability to perceive such things.

BIO Born in 1954 in London, Graham lives and works there, his studio being right next to the ‘Olympic Stadium’. He taught Fine Art for thirty years but now dedicates his time to painting.

www.grahamcharwood.co.uk www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Michael David Kozlowski

A Fever Transfixion |oil, acrylic, spray paint on canvas. | 84x60 STATEMENT

In my paintings I consider the relationship between abstraction and representation and explore a fusion of, and balance between, the two. This last year was marked by some exciting projects and a subtle but important evolution in my work. During a residency in late 2014 I achieved something of a course correction. After trying to force my way through some paintings that I finally had to admit were no longer exciting even to me, late one night in the studio I put everything aside and started fresh on some new work. Though I was continuing to explore ideas and imagery that have been central to my practice for some time, the work achieved a greater spontaneity and openness in execution which I have continued to cultivate.

The work created since has been especially well received and has opened doors to many new opportunities.

BIO

Michael David Kozlowski is an award winning painter living in the greater New York City area. Though a lifelong artist, he didn’t begin exhibiting his work until a few years after college, in 2012, and has since participated in numerous group and solo shows in Connecticut, New York City, and Vermont. In 2014 Michael was awarded a grant and residency with the Vermont Studio Center and upon returning to Connecticut was a featured artist in New Haven’s City Wide Open Studios—an honor repeated in 2015.

Also in 2015 Michael was one of only 8 artists chosen by Richard Klein of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum to participate in Westport Art Center’s “SOLOS,” and soon after was awarded best in show at Greenwich Art Society’s Flinn Show “Emergence,” juried by Christie Mitchell of the Whitney Museum of American Art. This past summer he was chosen to participate in several public art projects in New York City including Sing for Hope’s “Pianos” and “100 Gates NYC.” In late 2015 he was juried into New Canaan’s Silvermine Art Guild.

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Matthew Ivan Cherry

SAD Red Face | oil on canvas | 68x68 STATEMENT 2015 ... Year of the sheep?? I don’t think so. Not any more. I started this year debuting a painting called BOBBLE in which I depicted myself on both ends of the ISIS equation portraying myself as the victim and perpetrator of barbaric beheadings.

In a way, this was the end of me, being married, coming out, transitioning away from Mormon theology. It was also the beginning of a new me, a new life, and unrealized potential. The two panels of BOBBLE are disturbing and not easy to look at and will most likely end up in a dark corner of my studio ... But they have become a catalyst of possibility and things to come.

I am wrapping up a few projects of heads and bodies that have held my attention for many years. But with additional changes in my life I am stepping down as the Sr. Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and will assume the position of Chair of Fine Arts and Foundations at

Lesley University’s College of Art and Design. This will bring me back to an important role of working directly with the young and talented students/artists that have long inspired me. This also means I will be spending much more time in the studio allowing me to continue to let old endeavors mellow and come to new fruition while venturing into the new and unknown. Next year is the year of the monkey.

Ironically so was the year I was born, ‘68. A good year to be reborn!!

BIO Cherry is a Boston-based representational painter. He received his BFA from Northern Arizona University and his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he attended with the Presidential Fellowship. He is currently the Sr. Associate Dean of Academic Affairs a faculty member and the Chair of Fine Arts and Foundations at Lesley University College of Art & Design in Cambridge, MA where he has served for 6 years.

Jadyn 22/23| oil on canvas | 72x72

Ben Cressy

Interior Corner with Ghost Chair Electric| oil on canvas | 36x30 STATEMENT 2015 has been a transitional year in my studio practice. Having worked through an evolving series of stripped down symbolic interiors, I have begun embracing a more ‘traditional’ interior view, complete with a composed clutter. Minus something. A major piece of furniture, ghosted, waiting, insistent that the observer resolve in their minds eye. What color, pattern, period style belong here?

This year I have also embraced a wider range of paint handling as my process of resolving the imagery become more premeditated.

I still revel in the clash of reality meeting the imagined, but am less compelled to tear apart the image for the sake of discovering meaning within the painting.

BIO Ben Cressy was born in England and raised in California. He attended University of California at Santa Cruz where he studied painting. He received his MFA from American University in Washington DC. After a stint in New York, he now lives and works in San Francisco.

Right | Cyclic Indoctrination | oil on canvas | 36x24

Brianna Lee

STATEMENT

Painting is my way of connecting to people and searching for beauty and balance in the chaos of daily life. My recent work has been a form of meditation on simplicity and a singular subject. In particular, I am interested in how a single portrait make us feel connected to universal ideas and emotions. My aim is to create a beautiful portrait that transcends cultural or socio-economic barriers.

At our core, we all experience the myriad of emotions that make us human. Somehow in the chaos of daily life, family, work or politics, we often lose sight of empathy and what makes us connected as a human race. Art is an opportunity, I believe, to shed light on this.

Someone that might be overlooked walking down the street is now a timeless subject of a painting that people intentionally reflect upon.

My aspiration as a painter is to portray the unacknowledged beauty around us and encourage others to seek it out for themselves in daily life and view the world with empathetic eyes.

of all life around her. She gleans inspiration from the people she meets, the abundance of nature and Dutch masters such as Vermeer, Rembrandt and Rubens.

She studied Fine Art, Education and Western Art History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2008, Ms. Lee moved to Los Angeles to study contemporary and traditional painting techniques at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art (LAAFA) and in the atelier of Adrian Gottlieb. She received her BFA with honors from the prestigious Laguna College of Art and Design (LCAD) in Laguna Beach, CA. In 2009, she began teaching art at various studios and community colleges in Los Angeles. She currently teaches at Kline Academy of Art while also running her own atelier in Southern California.

In addition to building her teaching career, Ms. Lee accepts international commissions and exhibits her work in throughout Los Angeles, Orange County and nationally.

BIO

Brianna Lee is a native California artist with a love of beauty and the human form. Her work is a continuous search for the intrinsic beauty

www.briannaleefineart.com Right | Portrait of Deirdre | oil on panel |18x24

Barry Ross Smith

The Plunge | oil on canvas | 76x76 cm STATEMENT

My kids are growing up so fast! In 2015 I have witnessed my two children take their initial steps towards independence and self-assertiveness. Along these seperate new paths they are each leaving behind the comforts of their innocence.

My paintings this year have been influenced by tracking this transition, acknowledging their personal journey and expanding upon the themes of passage, idiosyncrasy and growth.

Each path may be unique, but each relates to all the pathways taken through our lives; as we discard and discover along the way.

BIO

Barry Ross Smith was born in Northland, New Zealand. He has been a professional artist for over 15 years with artworks and awards held both nationally and internationally. He received his MFA in 2011 from Whitecliffe College of Art and Design.

Barry held the inaugural show as well as several sell out shows with SOCA gallery (at one time the largest commercial gallery in the southern hemisphere). His work typically engages with the conception of myth, personal and cultural identity, often exploring these avenues from the perspective of a New Zealand male and father. His work has been widely acclaimed by critics and described as “hymns to rural New Zealand tellingly observed and cleverly rendered�

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

end of innocence | oil on canvas | 91x120 cm

Albert Leon Sultan

STATEMENT

BIO

In my paintings I seek to understand the underlying mechanics of our world. I imagine a quantum flux animating the physical reality we perceive. In the dimensions that I explore, the walls separating the physical from the metaphysical simply do not exist. This is a place of infinite energy, where time both speeds up and slows down, where the ancient and the future flirt. It is a playground where the possible and impossible collide, dance, merge, and separate. Through my paintings I seek to expose this secret world, and the gears that move our existence. My paintings thus serve as a bridge between the seen and unseen; blurring the line between intuited and concretized forms.

Albert Leon Sultan is a multidisciplinary artist and designer living and working in NYC. He is a graduate from the prestigious University of Pennsylvania. He further studied drawing and painting with internationally renowned artist Israel Hershberg at the Jerusalem Studio School. In the ensuing years Albert has distinguished himself in New York City’s competitive design community. His list of creative collaborations crosses over into the art, fashion, interior design and Broadway.

His furniture and interior designs have been featured in publications including NY Spaces, Domino Magazine, House & Garden, Luxe, V&M Inc, Wall Street Journal, and NJ Monthly. www.albertsultan.com

March of Time | oil on canvas | 60x80x2

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Karen Kaapcke

Three Steps to Becoming a Blacbird | oil on canvas | 14x22

STATEMENT

To refer to my work I have created the label: Experiential Realism.

Experiential Realism names a branch of painting that places primacy on the experience and allows the technique to respond, as opposed to viewing the painting or drawing experience through the lens of the technique and placing primacy on that technique. ‘Experience’ encompasses psychological, emotional, memory and physical - in the Phenomenological sense, all manners of reaching out to and being reached by the subject. Involved in this is an understanding that painting can thrive in that place where it does not yet make sense to divide between subject and object, or between subjective/ objective, between the present moment and the memories that pervade our experience. The painting or drawing is, rather, a leap into, an active dialogue and a question that precedes this division.

www.unprimedcanvas.blogspot.com

BIO

Born in New York City, Karen Kaapcke began painting and drawing while completing her Masters degree in Philosophy. She then studied at the Art Students League in New York City, the Ecole Albert Defois in France, and at the National Academy of Design where she won a full scholarship. She has taught with Parson’s School of Design, the Crosby Street Painting Studio, and currently teaches privately out of her studio. She also runs the Young Urban Artists - a drawing and painting workshop for teens in New York City.

Karen exhibits extensively, both in galleries and in museums such as The Butler Institute and Fontbonne University, has won many awards for her work including a first place award from the Portrait Society of America, and is in private collections throughout the country and in Europe. Her work has been written about in the Huffington Post, PoetsArtists Magazine, International Artists Magazine, Professional Artist Magazine and Fine Art Connoisseur among others. She and her family currently share their time between her home and studio in New York City and in France.

Right | You, You |oil on linen | 30x40

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Zoey Frank

Dance Party | oil and gold leaf on linen | 27x39 STATEMENT

2015 was an exciting year for me because I had the opportunity to spend four months in Paris, painting and studying in museums.

This extended time looking at historical art led to new ideas for my work that I have just started experimenting with, and that will carry into the paintings I’m planning in the coming year.

“Dance Party” is an example of my investigations while I was in Paris I used bronze sculptures as the figures in my scene and incorporated gold leaf for the first time, using it to form the walls and ceiling of the room, and painting an intricate pattern over the leaf to build persecutive in the space.

BIO

Zoey Frank was born in Boulder, Colorado in 1987. She completed four years of classical atelier training under Juliette Aristides at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, and received an MFA in painting from Laguna College of Art and Design.

Zoey has received numerous honors and awards, including two Elizabeth Greensheilds grants, the Artist’s Magazine All Media Competition Grand Prize of 2012, the Hudson River Fellowship in 2012, scholarships from the Albert K. Murray foundation, the Stacy Foundation and the Art Renewal Center. Her work has been featured in Fine Art Connoisseur, American Art Collector, The International Artist’s Magazine, Artist’s Magazine, and Southwest Art, among other publications, and is exhibited in galleries across the United States and Europe. Zoey works from her studio in the Bay Area. www.zoeyfrank.com

Nick Ward

And I Realize, Most of My Wounds Are Self Inflicted | oil on board | 36x58

Christine #3| oil on board | 72x36 Private Message #1| Two Panels | oil on board | 32x32 and 32x42 STATEMENT

The way we view the world has changed. So much of our life is spent interacting with pixels and, I have always tried to make art that embraces that reality. In the past, I have often done this by painting in short fragmented brush strokes, building up tones with layers of colors and flattening space into one plane of sharp focus.

Recently, I have decided to take this on more directly with a new series, while treating other pieces more traditionally.

In order to more directly take on the digital world, this new series explore the ways that sexual images sent online and via text messages can take on a life of their own. Each piece features two panels; first a painted interpretation of an image created by corrupting the file of a sexual image sent by the model in a text message, the second is a more formal portrait painted with the model in the studio.

Because these images so often lose touch with the humanity of the people who originally sent them when they are shared, the reference image is cropped so that identities are hidden and the files are corrupted to create glitch effects that can plague files as they are shared widely and saved repeatedly. The identity of the

model is then revealed in the second panel, allowing her to reclaim ownership of the images of her body.

Because the composition of these pieces are left in part to the models, I have been forced to find other ways to tie the diptychs together. This has provided me with the opportunity to explore new painting techniques and experiment with more varied ways of representing, and abstracting the subjects.

The recent sunbather paintings on the other hand have become more traditional. While the colors and compositions are still being manipulated away from their natural state, the painting technique is much simpler. My hope is that the removal of unnecessary complications in painting technique will bring more focus to the narrative of the painting.

BIO

Nick Ward is figurative painter and printmaker who enjoys exploring the use of portraiture. Originally from a small town outside Portland Oregon, Nick currently resides in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston, MA. His work has twice earned him the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant for painting.

Jeffrey Bess

STATEMENT

Always Looking at everything around me. Looking at art every spare minute I’m not painting or working. 2015 finds me still painting objects and landscapes I would like people to see as I do. I find beauty in the obvious and mundane every day stuff many overlook or glaze over. 2015 also finds my work evolving with less detail and bigger brushes. I’m more focused on basic form and color.

A series of objects isolated on black backgrounds is in the works. My happy place is a small space somewhere between ego and self doubt.

BIO

Born in Macomb, Illinois in 1958. Primarily an acrylic painter, Jeffrey’s artistic background includes 25 years of graphic design, acrylic on canvas and found object art. Jeff began his fine art studies at Miami Dade Community College and majored in fine art at Illinois State University. While mostly focusing on surreal landscapes and objects, simple compositions depict his work as he skillfully and sometimes humorously questions our sense of gravity and place in the universe.

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Fog on Route 150 | acrylic on canvas | 24x48

Abducted Couch | acrylic on canvas | 24 x 36

Shawn Fields

Afghans | oil on canvas | 33x37 STATEMENT

In 2015 I had a great opportunity to make a series of paintings for a solo show at Dowling Walsh Gallery in Maine. Knowing the work would culminate in a show at the end of the summer, I was inspired to think of the show almost like a representation of a full year. I wanted the images to be true to my own experience of childhood and that of my kids, and to touch different aspects of time, and mood-- from dormant to bursting with life. My experience of being a parent allows me to revisit the natural way children have of viewing the world, and my goal was to put those emotions into a visually palpable expression- while satisfying my pursuit of good design, technique, and execution.

The way I am looking at drawing and painting, I see the craft aspect, and the idea aspect, which inform one another, and should be, in my mind, symbiotic. After a show where I have relied so heavily on

a developed technique, I am eager to dive back into a discovery of materials, so that the new ideas and inspirations I have about life, the feelings I want to share, are as fully realized in the actual mark making and process of making a painting, as they can be.

BIO

Shawn Field’s earliest conception of art was formed by exposure to traditional American illustration and his monthly subscription to Mad Magazine. Shawn studied at the School of Visual Arts, (B.F.A), anatomy with Franc Porcu at the Art Student’s League, and at the New York Academy of Art (M.F.A). His work has been exhibited at ArtBasel Miami, the Forbes Gallery NYC, Arcadia Contemporary NYC, and is held in private collections both in the US and overseas.

Shawn Fields is represented by Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, Maine.

Alexandra Tyng

Arteries at Dusk| oil on canvas | 42x66 STATEMENT

2015 has been a year of indulging my natural tendency toward introspection. Honesty and directness are important to me and, if I can get to the root of the “Big Ideas” in life, then I am better able to communicate to others through my art. There are several things germinating: a portrait of an autistic young man and his brothers; paintings for a 2016 exhibition; the manuscript of a book. As the year began I was preparing for a show at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia. It was a fascinating experience to gather reference material from the rooftops of skyscrapers that hadn’t yet been built when I had painted my last series of aerial cityscapes. An increasing focus on concept has been happening in all my work, but it is perhaps most surprising for me to discover that all landscapes contain potential narratives. Both reality and imagination play a big role in my figure paintings. There’s an idea in every one of these paintings that I communicate by setting up a convincing scene that could have happened only in my mind, or by introducing a major element that could almost—but not quite be physically possible, thus stretching the viewer’s (and my own) credibility.

painting in Maine and other locations. To date, Tyng has had eleven solo exhibitions; her next one will be in 2016 at the Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, Maine. She has received numerous national awards, most recently the Plein Air Magazine Award in the ARC 2015 Salon, the Curator’s Choice Award in the America’s Parks I traveling museum exhibition, and 1st Place in the Portrait Society of America’a annual Art of the Portrait competition. Her work has been featured in such periodicals as American Arts Quarterly, Plein Air, ArtNews, Fine Art Connoisseur, PoetsArtists, International Artist, and American Art Collector; and online publications like Painting Perceptions and The Huffington Post. In 2012 she was interviewed by art historian and editor Peter Trippi as part of the Artist Audiocast Series sponsored by the Newington-Cropsey Cultural Studies Center..Tyng’s paintings reside in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., the New Britain Museum, the Springfield Art Museum, and in many corporate, university, and other public and private collections. Tyng is represented by Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, ME; gWatson Gallery in Stonington, ME; Fischbach Gallery in New York City; Gross-McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia, PA; and Haynes Galleries in Nashville, TN.

BIO

Alexandra Tyng (b. 1954 in Rome, Italy) paints people and landscapes, often combining the two genres. She has lived most of her life in the Philadelphia area, and spends part of her summers www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

alexandratyng.com

Victoria Selbach

STATEMENT

‘Goddesses’, the 2015 series, was a journey to explore varied facets of the divine feminine. I find myself surrounded by incredible women who radiate immense beauty, power and strength. Lifting the cultural veil of expectation is the first step in uncovering the diverse attributes that constitute each individual. The practice of discovering and recreating both the starkly visible and that which emanates from deep within feels to me as an intimate merging of empathy and paint. By creating powerful images that frame our contemporaries through the prism of celebrated deities I challenge the viewer to reawaken a sentient knowing, recognize inherent magnificence and envisage the boundless potential of celebrating and maximizing the universal feminine.

BIO

Victoria Selbach is a New York contemporary realist painter best known for her lifesize nude depictions of women caught at the intersection of light and shadow. Her gaze is directed through a deep connection to the individuals who carry their complexity and strength into her paintings. Selbach has exhibited in galleries and museums in New York and nationally including the Heckscher Museum of Art and The Butler Institute of American Art. Her work can be found in private collections throughout North America and internationally including the Howard A. and Judith Tullman Collection and was discussed in the Huffington Post article ‘Finally, Artist Paints Female Nudes As They Really Are’. An archive of work is available at victoriaselbach.com.

Right |Chandi My Heart Burns | acrylic on canvas | 52x28

Patrick Earl Hammie

STATEMENT

In 2015, I focused on drawing and concluded my project Significant Other. Informed by historical representations of Otherness, works such as Reprieve and Study for Labor (Second Study) are part of an ongoing response to how women, LGBTQ, and people of color have been situated as central influencer of culture and politics. These works reorient inherited expectations of these bodies, constructing moments where traditionally masculine and feminine strengths are conflated in the woman’s actions while the man’s body is vulnerable to public critique, introducing the woman as an active authority and relieving the man from macho performance. In August, I received the rank of Associate Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and returned to painting, producing Twilight Watch and F.B.J.

BIO

Patrick Earl Hammie (b. 1981) is an American artist best known for his large-scale portrait and figural paintings. His work draws from art history and visual culture to examine ideas related to cultural identity, masculinity, beauty, and sexuality. His paintings often use allegory to implicate power structures, and question systems of racism and sexism. Hammie lives in Champaign, Illinois, where he currently works as an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign. His work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the U.S., and he has received awards from Wellesley College, Tanne Foundation, Alliance of Artists Communities, and Joyce Foundation.

His work is held in permanent collections including the John Michael Kohler Art Center, JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, Kohler Company, Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and William Benton Museum of Art. He has been an artist-in-residence at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, and was recently named an Artist to Watch by the International Review of African American Art. Hammie is represented

by Yeelen Gallery in Miami and Kruger Gallery in Chicago.

F.B.J. | oil on linen | 80x68 www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Rachel Moseley

Double Gulp| oil on wood panel | 18x24 STATEMENT

My current work focuses on my experience of temporarily living in Las Vegas while my husband completes his medical residency. Using 7-Eleven as a metaphor for my transient, indulgent and often artificial surroundings, all of my subjects are people I’ve met here.

BIO

Rachel Moseley is a representational figurative artist from California.

She received her MFA from the Academy of Art in 2010 and her BFA

from Chico State in 2007. After completing her MFA, Rachel began working as a freelance illustrator, focusing on developing her oil painting skills in her free time, and eventually transitioning into Fine Art and shifting her focus from client based projects to personal work. She has exhibited her paintings across the United States and abroad, and has been teaching and building curriculum for the Academy of Art since 2011. Rachel currently lives in Las Vegas with her husband and splits her time between Nevada and California.

Rachel is represented exclusively by RJD Gallery.

Valeri Larko

Bronx Scrap Yard | oil on linen | 25x72

Oak Point, Bronx, NY | oil on linen | 20x78

Top Dollar | oil on linen | 28x72 STATEMENT

From February through August 2015, I painted on location at a site I’ve dubbed the “Graffiti Scrap Yard”. This overgrown location is next to a scrap metal recycler in the Bronx and contained numerous truck bodies and abandoned campers that had been used as canvas by the local graffiti artists. The day I completed my last large painting (a two month endeavor), a backhoe showed up to dismantle the site clearing it down to bare earth. This colorful and fascinating place is now paved over, flat as a pancake waiting to be redeveloped. This is the nature of much of what I paint; here today, gone tomorrow. My goal is to capture the vibrancy of these sites before they are destroyed and lost forever. In the latter half of 2015, I focused on the urban waterfront along the East River, painting abandoned docks now home to numerous birds and marine life. One of the pleasures of painting at these overlooked sites is the peacefulness that can be found on the fringe of a bustling city and the joy of seeing wildlife thriving in an unexpected place.

BIO

Valeri Larko is best known for her densely painted landscapes of the urban fringe painted on location. She is attracted to the decaying and abandoned structures that populated the outskirts of America’s urban centers and the stories these places tell. Her paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries in the US and Europe. Exhibitions include Lyons Wier Gallery, NYC, The Bronx Museum, NY, Fleming Museum, Burlington, VT, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA, The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ, The Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ, The New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, The National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC and the Barbara Frigerio Gallery, Milan, Italy. Her artwork has been featured in numerous publications including the New York Times, ARTnews and the Wall Street Journal. Valeri Larko is represented by Lyons Wier Gallery, NYC.

Renee McGinnis

Three Suitors at the Crack of Dawn | oil on birch panel | 30x30 STATEMENT

With a lush hand I lay bare the formidable intelligence and energy of man, what drives us and what we leave behind. I bring extinct mega-steel structures to life once again as they become sexualized and adorned with the beauty of that which made them necessary in the first place-- the mass production of goods that make us desirable to one another. This combination of dark decay and seductive beauty impact the viewer like a Chaplin film. Chaplin using humor and pity, I using beauty, and decaying wreckage to deliver a potent marriage of emotions.

BIO

Renee McGinnis grew up on a farm in central Illinois and attended Illinois Wesleyan University, earning a BFA in 1984. She

continued with graduate work in sociology and anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited widely in Chicago and has also been shown in Germany, Australia, New York City, Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Md . Her curatorial debut occurred when she launched “The Chicago Solution Show 2003 with the late Ed Paschke as juror, then again in 2005 with Art Institute of Chicago Curator of contemporary Collections- James Rondeau. She received a National Emmy Award for Design in Television 1991.

In 2002 she starred as herself in the Iranian-American film “American Burqa”screened at The Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, Illinois. She is represented by Aron Packer in Chicago.

Thomas Wharton

The Escape | oil on linen | 36x36 STATEMENT

In my paintings over the past couple of years, I’ve been exploring emotional and spiritual states as expressed through the human body.

I began by thinking of using the model in much the same way a choreographer might design expression through the movement and lines of a dancer’s body. In 2015, I began to include the human face with its enormous expressive potential, not so much with the goal of creating portraits of individuals, as much as portraits of moments of human experience.

“The Escape” is a painting where the force of will and the energy needed to break free are expressed in the extreme extension of the man’s body.

BIO

Thomas Wharton’s paintings have won many awards, including The Georgie Read Barton Award, The Katlin Seascape Award, the Windsor Newton Award, and the Richard C. Pionk Memorial Award

for Painting, in addition to being recognized in the RayMar Art Competitions. He has been selected to participate in the Art Renewal Society annual salon, and was awarded a Certificate of Excellence

by The Portrait Society of America, where he is a member. He has exhibited at the National Arts Club, the Salmagundi Club, Dacia Gallery, and the RJD Gallery in Sag Harbor, which represents his work.

He has studied drawing and painting with many of the finest realist painters working today, including Nelson Shanks, Alyssa Monks, David Kassan, Daniel Sprick, Steven Assael, T. Allen Lawsen, Steven Polson, and Burton Silverman. In addition to fine art, he maintained a long, successful career in New York as a designer, illustrator, art director, and children’s book author and illustrator.

He is also an accomplished pianist and holds a Masters degree in Piano. He now lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and his work can be found in private collections throughout the United States.

Serena Potter

STATEMENT

This year I have been giving a lot of consideration to our evolving sense of self and to the roll that the external world plays in that definition.

My drawings and paintings represent myself, my family and others who are close to me, as they each approach different stages in life.

Each of these works create a beauty from the truths that time reveals and it’s so called flaws.

and compositional elements used in film noir. She creates paintings in oil on birch panel or canvas as well as drawings with mixed media charcoal and pastel, on cotton rag paper.

Potter received her BFA from the University of Utah and her MFA in painting from Laguna College of Art and Design, where she is currently mentoring in their MFA program. She teaches at National University, Mt. San Antonio Community College and Saddleback Community College.

BIO

Serena Potter’s work focuses on themes of sense of self, perceived change or imperfection, private pain vs. public persona, and interpersonal connections. Her paintings and drawings are notable for their use of chiaroscuro inspired by the dramatic cinematic lighting

PHOTO: Eric Swenson

Awakening | oil on canvas | 60x40

Zachari Logan

STATEMENT

Through large-scale drawing, ceramics and installation practices, Zachari Logan evolves a visual language that explores the intersections between masculinity, identity, memory and place. In previous work related to his current practice, Logan investigated his own body as exclusive site of exploration. In recent work, Logan’s body remains a catalyst, but no longer the sole focus. Employing a strategy of visual quotation, mined from place and experience, Logan re-wilds his body as a queer embodiment of nature. This narrative shift engages both empirical explorations of landscape and overlapping art-historic motifs.

BIO

Zachari Logan is a Canadian artist working mainly in drawing, ceramics and installation practices. His work has been exhibited widely, in group and solo exhibitions throughout North America and Europe, including: Athens, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels,

Cincinnati, Calgary, Edmonton, Grenoble, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, New York, Ottawa, Regina, Paris, Seattle, Toronto Winnipeg and Vienna and can be found in public and private collections worldwide. Logan has attended residencies in Paris in conjunction with Galerie Jean Roch Dard, in rural Tennessee at Sassafras ARC/Liberty, in Calgary through ACAD’s Visiting Artist Program, in Vienna several times through both the Museum Quartier’s quartier21: Artist in Residence Program and project space Schliefmuhlgasse 12-14, in London at Angus-Hughes Gallery and most recently in Brooklyn at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, Logan will return to NYC during the winter of 2016 to be artist in residence at Wave Hill Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. His work has been featured in many publications worldwide.

Pink Man | pastel on paper | 32x49

Mark Heine

Imminent, Study | oil on canvas | 30x36 STATEMENT

Sirens we all know as the femmes fatales made infamous by Homer’s Odyssey ... but were they perhaps misunderstood? These are my muse, and they play the key role in a book I have recently finished writing. A fictional work of magical realism, Sirens is a fusion of ancient Greek and Coast Salish (First Nations) mythology. It examines humankind’s ambiguous and destructive relationship with the natural world, from the point of view of the creatures who inhabit the oceans. My aim is to influence attitudes regarding how we relate to the planet we depend on. The Sirens paintings depict key moments in the narrative and will be featured in a show of life-sized works, which will accompany the launch of the book. RJD Gallery in Sag Harbor, NY, is my exclusive representative.

BIO

Artist and author Mark Heine is a storyteller. In the course of his 33-year career in the arts, he has won numerous national and international awards and been published in a variety of magazines, becoming best known for figurative works in oil on canvas.

His artwork can be found in corporate and private collections throughout North America and Europe. Writing has always been an integral part of his creative process, and the interplay of the two disciplines has led to his unique vision. Bringing stories to life – to larger than life – is the focus of his most recent works. Mark, his wife and creative collaborator, Lisa Leighton, and their two daughters, Sarah and Charlotte, live in beautiful Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. www.markheine.com

Alexsander Betko

Stay Amazed |oil on linen | 24x20 STATEMENT

2015 was a year of tearing down boundaries and barriers with myself and ultimately my work. It was a process of reaching a greater honesty. I took greater care with choosing my subjects and crafting a narrative that was more about them rather than using them to tell my story. I felt the more powerful story was that they were in my life in the first place.

BIO

Aleksander Betko is an artist whose contemporary appeal is firmly – and poignantly – rooted in the New York of decades past. Born in Poland in 1976, his family fled the

political unrest in that country when he was four years old, settling in Queens. Betko subsequently spent his youth immersed in the city’s dynamic culture, both established (museums, art mentors) and the underground (the 1980’s punk scene, street performers). Those influences constantly linger in his work today.

Aleksander currently lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn which serves as an endless source of inspiration. His current works revolve around the people and places of Williamsburg where he poses the question “who are we as Americans today?” aleksanderbetko.com

Jen Hitchings

STATEMENT

BIO

In the past year, I have begun to shift my focus in painting from a more cerebral and emotional standpoint to one investigating color and form, while depicting scenes reminiscent of my own youth and which suggest a particular demographic of banal suburban life - a subject I have been concerned with in my work for some time. Camping scenes, which I consider to be moments of bliss in camaraderie with others and the environment as well as a method of escape from daily - or perhaps urban - life, dominate my recent work.

Made in psychedelic but monochromatic palettes, these environments simultaneously suggest toxicity and euphoria, while depicting what might be a comforting but slightly askew narrative.

Jen Hitchings is a Brooklyn-based artist, born in 1988 in New Jersey. She received her BFA in Painting and Drawing from SUNY Purchase in 2011.

Hitchings has maintained a studio practice in Brooklyn since 2011 and her work has been featured in Maake Magazine, Bushwick Daily, and BLOUIN Artinfo.

www.jenhitchings.com

River Rats | oil on canvas | 30x40

www.poetsandartists.com | December 2015 | Issue #70

Kyle Staver

Ganimedes | oil-on-canvas | 58x68 STATEMENT

I have been painting dragons, distressed/curious maidens, and bulls with bad intentions. Titian, Rembrandt, Picasso, Redon, have all preceded me to this well and drunk deeply. It’s not an accident that Mythical subjects are often taken up by artists in mid to late career.

My painting reflects my growing awareness of the uncertainties of life. Myths intent is to make sense and give form to uncertainty. A perfect painter’s starting point.

BIO

Staver received her MFA from the Yale School of Art. She has exhibited her work across the United States, and is a recent recipient of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize. She was recently elected a member of the National Academy.

Waterfall and Red Fox | oil on canvas | 68x58

John Seed (right) with artist Max Ginsburg at the Representational Art Conference | November, 2015

John Seed is a professor of art and art history at Mt. San Jacinto College in Southern California.

Seed has written about art and artists for Arts of Asia, Art Ltd., Catamaran, Harvard Magazine, International Artist, Hyperallergic and the HuffingtonPost. An archive of his writings can be found at www.johnseed.com

PA

Issue 78 | 100 GREAT DRAWINGS

GOSS183 Publishing House | Bloomington, Illinois

www.poetsandartists.com | Issue #78 All Rights Reserved Š2016 - 2017

Publisher Didi Menendez

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016 Amaya Gurpide

John Walker

Seongjin Kim

Austin Uzor

Joseph Todorovitch

Serena Potter

Batya Kuncman

Karen Kaapcke

Shane Wolf

Carol Prusa

Kay Ruane

Stephanie Rew

Casey Childs

Lauren Amalia Redding

Stephen Faulk

Daniel Bilmes

Mark Reep

Steven Hughes

Denis Chernov

Mark Tennant

Stephen Yavorski

Dorian Vallejo

Martin Campos

Sue Bryan

Edgar Jerins

Michael Mentler

Sue Tatham

Gordon Hanley

Michael Newberry

Tamie Beldue

Gromyko Semper

Nelli Levental

Tanja Gant

Isaac Pelepko

Olena Babak

Teresa Oaxaca

Jenny Reyneke

Paul Heaston

Yavora Petrova

Johan Barrios

Rebecca Venn

Zhaoming Wu

John Kennedy

Ryan Shultz

Unless otherwise mentioned all dimensions are in inches.

100 Great Drawings Selected by Steven DaLuz I was delighted to be asked once again by Didi Menendez, the publisher and founder of Poets and Artists to select artwork for an issue of her wonderful magazine. I consider it an honor and privilege to discover and select outstanding artworks that would, in my opinion, showcase and celebrate some of the finest drawings produced in 2016. It would be impossible for me to unequivocally say that these are the "best" drawings produced during the past year. That would be an arrogant assumption on my part, and I am quite certain I only saw a fraction of the great work that was produced. But, they are certainly a glimpse at some excellent drawings that I had the pleasure of seeing this year. It was decided early on that 100 drawings would be selected from among works submitted in response to an open international call, and from some artists who were specifically invited by virtue of their work that I had seen throughout the course of the year.

When I announced the open call and invited specific artists to participate, I mentioned in the prospectus that, while a drawing can

be a preparatory cartoon for a painting, or a study for a more fully resolved work of art, it can also be a finished work unto itself. Sketchy, or refined with exacting detail, the 100 works published in this issue represent excellent drawings from across the globe, created in 2016.

I am delighted that 44 artists are represented, from coast to coast in the U.S., Colombia, Ukraine, Nigeria, Spain, France, the Philippines, South Africa, Australia, Russia, South Korea, Bulgaria, and the United Kingdom. The drawings are primarily figurative, including portraiture, though some interior spaces, landscape, imaginative works, and a few more non-objective subjects are represented.

Some were completed with an academic approach, some realistic, while still others employed a more unconventional process. Mixed mediums were allowed, so long as a preponderance of the work contained some form of identifiable drawing mediums. As you travel through these pages, you will see graphite drawings, works in charcoal, conte', pen & ink, silverpoint, pastel, colored pencil, chalk, marker, and mixed mediums. Some of the works capture the nuance of another human being's emotion and character, while

Drawing by Dorian Vallejo

others evoke moods, communicate ideas, spark feelings, or tell stories. All were well executed, despite a wide range of expression and handling.

You may be asking, "Why did he choose the image on the cover?"

I was truly impressed by the quality and variety of work I received.

I looked at hundreds of drawings, and even received a few after the deadline that I would have liked to include in this issue, but could not. Having done this process two years ago, I expected the task of selecting just one image for the cover would be a daunting one. As before, I considered drawings where an understanding was displayed of the formal elements, such as line, weight, form, composition, rhythm, value, etc. After two days, I managed to filter these strong pieces down to about a dozen works--then six.

Any one of these could have been selected as I considered the visual impact of each work. I placed all six side-by-side in Photo Shop; then studied them individually. Eventually, I began to see two works that kept insisting that they should serve as the cover.

Both works displayed exquisite technical proficiency. I placed the two works side by side and then alone, so one would not unduly influence the other. Both works connected with me. One appealed more to my personal aesthetic, while the other, despite its relative simplicity of subject, showed a level of creativity in its handling and expressiveness that finally pushed it over the top. Reading from the upper left down to the face in the lower right, the image appears as abstracted shapes, reminding me of a tattered parchment or ancient textile. Gradually, the interlocking shapes merge with lines that begin to crisscross and overlap. The marks begin to weave a tapestry, revealing a young woman, tilted head viewed slightly from below, in a dream-like state of serenity. Her hand is relaxed on her shoulder, grasping the literal marks that comprise both her hair and the surface itself, interwoven to create a splendid image that commands the viewer's attention. I hope you will appreciate this great drawing, "Interwoven", by Daniel Bilmes, and enjoy all of the other very fine works by the 44 artists contained on the pages that follow.

John Kennedy (jedika) is an Australian artist and instructor born

and condition through mythology and post-colonialism. John has

in 1973. His current interests revolve around intricate pentimento

achieved a Diploma of Fine Arts (West Wollongong TAFE) and

drawings, miniature paintings and illustration for children as well as

Bachelor of Creative Arts (University of Wollongong), and has

science and natural history. His creations draw from academic and

exhibited in Australia, Turkey, England and Italy. Early in his career,

contemporary art approaches exploring the human imagination

John was mentored by the Australian abstract expressionist Ron

Illumination | copic pen and graphite on illustration board | 29x19

John Kennedy

Lambert. John furthered his drawing as an archaeological illustrator

the relationship between music and the visual arts. More recently,

working in Cyprus and New Zealand, which included producing

John has been filmed on

illustrations for academic journals. The diversity of John’s work

program Colour in Your Life hosted by Graeme Stevenson, for

extends to music collaborations. Over the last decade, He has

which he has received ongoing national and international exposure.

worked with London composer and pianist, Lola Perrin, examining

the popular international television

Horse Rider of Driftwood | graphite on paper| 8.27x11.69

The Wastelands | graphite on paper| 11.5x9.8

Leaf | graphite on paper| 13x11

Olena Babak

Winter Poem | charcoal and chalk on toned paper | 19x25

Olena Babak is an award-winning,

art atelier approach under the renown

classically trained artist, whose figurative

masters of realism. Â She was awarded

works and landscapes can be found in

a number of scholarships and grants

numerous public and private collections

that allowed her to attend Mims Studios,

and galleries in the U.S. and abroad.

In North Carolina. Olena was also a recipient of a Hudson River Fellowship

She was born in Ukraine where she

in New Hampshire.

received her first formal art training rooted in Russian art traditions. Later,

Formerly teaching graduate students

after moving to the US, she continued

at the Academy of Classical Design,

her art education through independent

Olena now offers private workshops and

studies that led her down the path of an

classes in her studio.

Envisage | charcoal and chalk on toned paper | 19x25

Nelli Levental

Feeling Pregnant 2 | colored pencils | 12x9

Feeling Pregnant 1 | graphite | 12x9

Nelli Levental was born in Moldova,

art, which became her escape at the

one of the republics of the former

age of 6 and later transformed into

Soviet Union . As a small child she

her profession and life endeavor.

was mostly left alone due to her weak

Levental works in various mediums

health, preventing her from following

and her projects are often some

the order of social development;

form of storytelling. She teaches

however

the

Graphic Design courses to College

conservatism and brainwashing set

students and occasionally works

the environment for her childhood.

on commissions; all in all staying

The only interesting and satisfying

creative and never forgetting to

activities were reading and making

draw.

the

ambience

of

Feeling Pregnant 1 | marker pen | 12x9

Michael Newberry

Oct 19, ‘16, Self-Portrait, Day of Third Presidential Debate | graphite on Canson Mi-Teintes paper | 22x16 Michael Newberry grew up in La Jolla, California and started painting at 11 years old. In 1974 as a fine art major, he began studying art with American Modernist Edgar Ewing at U.S.C., and has virtually painted every day since then.

In 1977 he moved to The Hague, Holland and studied life drawing at the Free Academy Physcopolis. From 1990 to 1994 he taught life drawing, composition, and painting at Otis College of Art and Design. He has exhibited in Athens, Rome, New York, and Los Angeles.

Archdeacon of Durhamshire | ink on lami li paper | 8x6

Michael Mentler

Christine conte’ on canson paper 26x19

Morning Coffee Rough Ins rollerball pens & pastel pencil on cover stock 8x9

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Torso Study felt tip, rollerball and fountain pens on Italian laid paper 10x7.5

Michael Mentler of Dallas, TX, is the Founder and

Louis magazine, Communication Arts, Art Direction,

Director of the Society of Figurative Arts. He studied

Graphis, American Artist Drawing Magazine in a

at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Layton

feature article titled Learn From The Sketchbooks

School of Art in Milwaukee and Washington University

of a Modern Day Leonardo. Michael has also been

in Saint Louis, where he taught figure drawing and

featured in Juliette Aristides’, Lessons in Classical

design. Michael’s work has been featured in Saint

Drawing (Essential Techniques From Inside the Atelier).

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Martin Campos

4899 charcoal, pastel on paper 11x14 4904 charcoal, pastel on paper 14x11

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Arcenio Martin Campos attended New Mexico State University

given lectures on anatomy, figure drawing, and painting and

for studio arts, the University of New Mexico for art history,

has facilitated open figure drawing groups in both Albuquerque

and received a Certificate of Painting from the Pennsylvania

and Philadelphia. His work has received numerous awards and

Academy of Fine Arts. He began drawing on his own as a child,

has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad.

and between schools acquired much of his fine art education from independent study and private instruction of the human

Mr. Campos currently teaches life drawing at the Pennsylvania

figure. Mr. Campos began his teaching career conducting

Academy of Fine Arts and figurative painting, plein air, and still

classes in cast drawing whilst still in New Mexico. He has

life painting at the Wayne Art Center.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Martin Campos | 4902 | charcoal, pastel on paper | 14x11

Mark Tennant

9768 | charcoal on paper | 24x18 Mark Tennant received a B.F.A. from the Maryland

Francisco, where he had been an instructor since 1998.

Institute College of Art, in Baltimore, and an M.F.A. from

Among other exhibitions, his paintings have twice been

the New York Academy of Art, in New York City. For the

displayed in the Salon d’Automne, in Paris. He has taught

years 2008 and 2009, he was the Director of Graduate

Museum Copying at the Louvre, Paris, at the Metropolitan

Fine Art Painting at Academy of Art University, in San

in New York, and the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

Mark Tennant | 9799 | charcoal on paper | 18x24

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Mark Tennant | 0066 | charcoal on paper | 18x24

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Yavora Petrova

Drawing 1 | Charcoal, Pastel, Graphite and ink on paper | 27.5x39 Yavora Petrova was born in 1957 in Sofia.In 1983. She graduated in graphics from the National Academy of Art in Sofia.She has had many solo exhibitions and participations in international shows and forums of graphic art.In 1996, Petrova received the Prize of the Union of Bulgarian Artists from the National Exhibition of Drawing, Sofia; in 1993 she was honored with a Diploma from the Print Biennial in Wakayama, Japan and in 1991 she received the Grand Prix at the International Competition of Printing “Maximo Ramos”in Ferrol, Spain. In 1990, she received the First Prize from the National Exhibition of Illustration in Sofia.

The main thing about me is music. I work with music trying to express it abstractly in color. I turn dance into drawing. The tools l use are pencil, dry and oil pastel, acrylic and oil on canvas. The line is my character, my finger print. I don’t have a single reasonable cause to be an artist, except for the will to preserve and save myself.

I want to make intimate art-saturated, professional.

Agnes | Charcoal, Pastel, Graphite and ink on paper | 39x27.5 inches

Teresa Oaxaca

Teresa Oaxaca is an American born artist based currently in Washington D.C. She is a full time painter whose works can be seen in collections and galleries throughout the US and internationally. Her talent has been recognized and rewarded by museums and institutions such as the American Museum of the Cowboy, The former Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Art Renewal Center, The Elisabeth Greenshields Foundation, the Posey Foundation, and The Portrait Society of America and

the Museu Europeu D’Art Modern in Barcelona. Her training includes a four-year diploma at the Angel Academy of Art (Florence Italy, Graduate studies at the Florence Academy, an Apprenticeship with Odd Nerdrum in Norway, and studies at the Art League of Alexandria VA where she trained with Robert Liberace. Currently she teaches workshops around the United States and in Europe. In addition to her studio work she takes a variety of portrait commissions.

La Primavera | charcoal, white chalk on toned paper | 26x18

Teresa Oaxaca | Spray Rose Flower Maiden | charcoal, white chalk on toned paper | 26x18

The One | graphite | 20x13

Tanja Gant

Born in Bosnia (former Yugoslavia) in 1972, Tanja Gant is a contemporary, realist portrait artist who currently resides in Mississippi. She discovered her passion for pencil and portraits very early. Being self-taught she drew throughout her childhood and later on during the Bosnian war. Since becoming a full-time artist in 2010 she has won numerous awards in regional, national,

and international competitions and has had her work exhibited in as many shows throughout the country. Her work has also been published in several books and magazines, most notably: PoetsArtists, Southwest Art Magazine, The Artist’s Magazine, and a series of Strokes of Genius books. Tanja’s drawings focus on the narrative and individual’s personality.

Tanja Gant | 1992 | graphite | 24x15

Tanja Gant | EnsueĂąo | graphite | 20x15

Ryan Shultz

Self Portrait | graphite and ink on gessoed board | 12x7.75 Ryan Shultz is a contemporary realist painter and draftsman from Chicago, IL. His works embrace the art historical canon, borrowing compositional devices, technical processes, poses and gestures from classical painting. In this self portrait, Shultz has chosen to

eschew the modalities of “textbook photorealism,� letting the technique and style of his mark making work as visual metaphor, giving the viewer a sense of his inner psychological state through lines, scrapes, sandings, and drips.

Sue Bryan

Born and raised in Ireland, Sue Bryan has lived and worked in New York City for over twenty years.

Primarily self-taught, she studied briefly in the School of Visual Arts from 1993 to 1994. She has exhibited in many national and international venues, including the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, The Edward Hopper Art Center and the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in Dublin. Her work has been featured in many publications, including Fresh Paint Magazine, and Manifest Gallery’s International Drawing Annual Volume 9, 10 and 11 (2017).

Heart Land | charcoal, graphite, on museum board | 8x10 Fledgling | charcoal, carbon on arches paper | 8.5x10

Sue Bryan

Secrecies of Green | charcoal, carbon, pastel on arches paper | 8x10 Lone Star | charcoal, carbon on arches paper | 22x24.5

Stephen Faulk

Cicada 1 | graphite and ink wash | 31x15

My work is mainly rooted in nature themes, but also human made systems and objects: Flight, aircraft, landscape, light. I'm fascinated by the formal structures of architecture, airframes, structural openwork of many kinds, the structure of plants, animals and insects. I freely work with this information to make work that digs up metaphor, or hopefully, simply communicates the beauty, tragedy, visual seductiveness of these ideas and objects.

Stephen Faulk currently resides in Akune Japan; A fishing town on the West coast of Southern Kyushu. He divides time between fulfilling custom guitar orders and drawing and painting. He is reentering the art world as an exhibitor of sculpture, drawing and painting after a long hiatus to explore and become established in making guitars.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Cicada 2 | graphite and ink wash | 21x12

White Peacocks | pastel and white gold leaf on paper | 45x60 cm

Stephanie Rew

Jessica in White Gold | pastel, graphite, white gold leaf | 15x15 cm Stephanie Rew (b 1971) is a Scottish painter based in Edinburgh, UK. Her highly detailed figurative paintings are in collections across Europe with considerable international interest growing in her work.

Her primary subject matter is the female figure. Always painted with a sense of ambiguity, faces half hidden with the human form often just emerging from the darkness. The kimono is a predominant motif to her work and she has developed her style by combining drapery and pattern with the figure. Tone and form as

well as strong light and colour is what inspires her, concentrating on the juxtaposition of tonality and texture whilst keeping a private, reflective mood with the work.

Stephanie won the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Bursary soon after graduating and since then has exhibited in Glasgow, London, Paris, Nashville and California. In 2013 she curated the first ‘Women Painting Women’ Exhibition in the UK. She has been finalist twice in the International Artist Magazine Contest and recently won the BoldBrush Award run by FASO.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Stephanie Rew | Fascinator | pastel charcoal on paper | 25x30 cm

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Stephanie Rew | Wishing | pastel, graphite and gold leaf on paper | 15x20 cm

Carol Prusa

Clouded | silverpoint, graphite, titanium white pigment with acrylic binder and aluminum leaf on 1/4� plexiglas | 60x60x2 Represented by galleries on both coasts as well as Taipei, Vancouver and Geneva, Florida artist Carol Prusa exhibits widely in museums and curated exhibitions. Her work has been supported by fellowships including the Howard Foundation and South Florida Cultural Consortium.

Her work is in museum collections including the Perez Museum of Art, Spencer Museum of Art, Museum of Art Ft. Lauderdale, Hunter Museum of American Art and Daum Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work was selected

for the 2015 American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational, NYC, through nomination, and received a purchase award to place her work into the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. Prusa participated in a four-month funded Artist in Industry Residency at the Kohler Company, producing a large installation of sculptural work involving fiber optics and silverpoint on ceramic. She is a Professor of painting and drawing at Florida Atlantic University.

Opening | silverpoint, graphite, titanium white and mars black pigment with acrylic binder | 48x48x2

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Carol Prusa | Unknowing silverpoint, graphite, titanium white pigment with acrylic binder on 1/4� Plexiglas 60x60x2

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Carol Prusa | White Hole Universe silverpoint, graphite, titanium white pigment w/ acrylic binder on acrylic sphere w/ fiber optics, programmed LED light emitter 8x8x8

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Casey Childs

Chelsea | charcoal on paper | 18x14 Casey is a professional painter after spending more than a decade as a graphic designer. He has painted full time since 2009 receiving numerous awards and recognition during that time for his work, most recently receiving 2nd place Painting from PSA’s 2016 International Portrait Competition, as well as

First Place Drawing in the same competition in 2015. Casey is represented by Principle Gallery (Alexandria, VA), Haynes Gallery (Nashville, TN), Meyer Gallery (Park City, UT), and Waterhouse Gallery (Santa Barbara, CA). He works out of his studio in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

Daydream | charcoal on paper | 18x11

Denis Chernov

Bricks | graphite on paper | 21x21 Denis Chernov regularly participates in artistic exhibitions (above eighty), both in Ukraine, Russia and abroad. Most of Denis Chernov’s artworks are kept in private collections in Ukraine, Russia, Italy, England, Spain, Greece, Hungary, France, USA, Canada, China and Japan. Some works have been sold at “Christie’s. He works in a wide range of graphic and painting techniques, though his favorite is pencil

drawing, which covers such as landscape, portrait, nude, genre compositions, book illustration, literary and historic reconstructions and fantasy. 2008 - member of All-Ukrainian Union of Artists. Denis Chernov was awarded the medal “Talent and Vocation” by the “Peacemaker” Worldwide Alliance.International 2008/2009 ARC Salon, the Third Place & Honorable mention - Drawing Category.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Edgar Jerins

Tom in Winter | charcoal on paper | 60x96

Edgar Jerins was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1958. He graduated from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1980 with a four-year certificate. That year, he was awarded an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. Subsequent grants: The PollockKrasner Foundation Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts, Fellowship in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists Books, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Grant, George Sugarman Foundation Grant (twice), and the E.D. Foundation Grant. In 2014 he received the New York Academy of Art’s Venture Fund Grant. He has

had solo shows in the Latvian Foreign Art Museum, Riga, Latvia, Museum of Nebraska Art, Payne Gallery at Moravian College, and two New York City exhibitions at Tatistcheff Gallery. His drawings have been widely exhibited in catalogue supported shows across the US. His drawing and essay are included in the recent survey of figurative art in the Rizzoli book The Figure: Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture: Contemporary Perspectives. He is represented by ACA Galleries in New York City. Jerins is an Adjunct Faculty at the New York Academy of Art.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Paul Heaston

The Garage | gray ink on paper | 9.75x6.75 inches

Paul Heaston is an artist and educator originally from San Antonio, Texas. He holds an MFA in painting from Montana State University. During a semester abroad in Italy nine years ago he began keeping a visual journal to record his day-to-day experiences as well as explore ideas about seeing and documenting

space. Since that time he has been a correspondent for UrbanSketchers.org, a global collective of sketchers and visual journalists, and taught numerous workshops and classes on keeping a sketchbook, perspective and drawing in pen and ink. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

The Living Room | gray ink on paper | 11.25x8.25 inches

Union Station | gray ink on paper | 11.25x8.25 inches

Stephen Yavorski

Give You My Word | black and white charcoal on pastel paper | 19x19 New Jersey Artist, Stephen Yavorski has work that’s been featured in several exhibitions including venues such as Rehs Conteporary Galleries, Swain Galleries, Mainstreet Galleries, The Salmagundi Club, Misericordia University, and The Ice House Gallery in Monmouth University. His outspoken manner and ability to objectively look at situations with clarity and insight are the driving forces behind his work. For Stephen, it’s not just about creating artwork, it’s about communicating these thoughts

through the limitless vehicle of art. He provokes thought and insight and sees himself as an example for other people to do the same. He has received many accolades, including the Scholarship Award from the American Artist’s professional League, finalist in The annual Art Renewal Center Salon, and a feature on page 11 of “Strokes of Genius 6:The Best Of Drawing”.

Stephen hosts workshops and classes through duCret School of Art and The Visual Art Center of NJ also teaches private lessons.

Taking Flight | black and white charcoal on pastel paper | 11x14

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Shane Wolf Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Shane Wolf received his academic training at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy. Since late 2009Shane lives, works, and collects wine in Paris, France. Equipped with his Zak Morris-era Nokia phone and an internet-free studio, Shane is not exactly a

Luddite but definitely prefers spending time sans gadgets and working on large-scale compositions. In like spirit of the great forebears of the Italian Renaissance, Shane works uniquely from the live model and from his imagination to create works that seek to share his Humanistic world view.

Shane Wolf | Tronche | charcoal on paper | 30x24

Shane Wolf | Triton | 3 crayons: charcoal, sanguine, and chalk on prepared paper | 59x39

Serena Potter

Metamorphosis | mixed charcoal and pastel on cotton rag paper | 20x24

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Accommodation | mixed charcoal and pastel on cotton rag paper | 21x19

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Kyoto trip | pen (ink) on paper | 21x30 cm

Seongjin Kim

Sam Kim (Seongjin Kim) was born in 1981. He is a portrait artist who lives in Seoul, Korea. He’s been drawing and painting friends and acquaintances in oils and pen and ink. He resigned from his former company in 2012 to focus entirely on his art activity.

Austin Uzor

Heavy rains | ballpoint pen on paper | 25x35

Daniel Bilmes

Daniel Bilmes is a contemporary painter, working in Los Angeles. His approach is characterized by deep personal exploration, combining realism with elements of symbolism and abstraction. Through tactile textures and delicate expressions, his paintings weave together the magical and mundane. His work is at once hopeful and brooding. Realistic and symbolic. Somewhere between the vitality of the Russian circus and the gravitas of a Churchill speech.

Daniel began his art education at the age of 8 under the tutelage of his father, the respected artist and educator, Semyon Bilmes. Being immersed in art from such an early age had a profound impact on his personal growth and creativity, laying a lasting foundation of curiosity that continues to drive and inform his work today.

Interwoven | mixed media on panel | 30x24

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Woven In The Wind | mixed media on panel | 30x30

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Batya Kuncman

Romanticism Revisited I | ink on paper | 14x11

Romanticism Revisited 2 | ink on paper | 14x11

Rebecca Venn

Fragile | graphite on paper | 14x17

Rebecca Venn is a Wisconsin based artist. She is well known for her figurative artwork and portraits. She taught Life Studio at UW Parkside, and a variety of workshops at the Charles A. Wustum Museum in Racine, Wisconsin and The Clearing Folk School in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin. Rebecca has won various awards,

including First Place in the National Figurative Juried Exhibition in Woodstock, Illinois. She has work in the permanent collection in The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut. Her artwork is in numerous private collections throughout the United States and abroad.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Robert; Sunday Morning | graphite on paper | 11x14

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Sue Tatham

Portrait of Arielle | charcoal on Fabriano paper | 60x60 cm Sue Tatham is a South African painter in the genre of contemporary classical realism. Portraits and figurative works including nudes are her speciality. Oils, watercolour, drawing media and photography are her favoured media and she accepts commissions. Her art is represented in several collections and publications. She has held numerous solo as well as shown on group exhibitions and accepts commissions.

Sue works full-time as an artist and photographer from her studio

near Cape Town, SA and is married with 2 daughters.

Sue has achieved significant artistic recognition, notably as finalist in several prestigious national art awards, residency in Paris, award winner in several competitions and honours graduate with distinctions from the University of Cape Town. Highlighted merits and awards include being a top 5% finalist in the 2013 SPI National Portrait Award which toured SA; and a 2014 finalist in the Tollman Bouchard Finlayson Art Award, Hermanus FynArts.

Steven Hughes

Elusive Persuasion | graphite and white chalk | 5.78x8.25 Steven Hughes received his training at Kent State University, earning an MFA in Visual Communication Design with a concentration in illustration. He operates a freelance art studio, Primary Hughes Illustration, and serves as Associate Professor responsible for the Illustration program at Northern Michigan University. His work has been used by The New York Times, American Greetings, Toronto Blue Jays Care Foundation, Light Grey Art Lab, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio Magazine, and been displayed

in numerous gallery exhibitions around the US. Recently, one of his paintings was acquired by director Martin Scorcese. Hughes’ illustrations have won numerous awards, including a Silver Award from the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles (SILA) in 2014, Merit Awards from 3x3 Magazine’s Annual Show, Creative Quarterly 100 Best 2013, Art Renewal Center 2013/2014 International Salon Finalist, and a Silver Medal in painting from The National Art Museum of Sport.

Tamie Beldue

Born in upstate New York, Tamie Beldue is a contemporary American artist focused in mixed media drawings. Beldue received a BFA at the Columbus College of Art & Design and earned her MFA at the University of Cincinnati. Beldue has exhibited extensively in the US in group and solo exhibitions, including the Fort Wayne Museum of Art Realism Biennial, Southern Ohio Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, Mobile Museum of Art, the Arnot Art Museum’s

Re-Presenting Representation and the Fontbonne University Fine Arts Gallery. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Arnot Museum of Art, The DeYoung Museum, Howard & Judy Tullman Collection, James T. Dyke Collection of Contemporary Drawings and the Sandy & Diane Besser Collection. Currently she is represented by Blue Spiral Galleries in Asheville, NC and is an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville.

Transitory | graphite, charcoal, encaustic | 18x24.5

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Tamie Beldue | First Self Portrait After Separation | graphite, natural gesso on paper | 14x10

Tamie Beldue | Stairway | graphite, charcoal, encaustic, watercolor | 14.75x9.75

Zhaoming Wu

Musician | charcoal | 24x18 Zhaoming Wu was born in Guangzhou, China. He graduated from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art where he earned a BFA in painting and was as an assistant professor there for seven years. After moving to San Francisco, California, he received his MFA in painting from the Academy of Art University where he is currently an instructor. Active for many years as both an artist and a teacher, Zhaoming has works exhibited in museums

and private collections around the world. Many national and international publications have highlighted his vibrant career and technique, major awards and honors have been given to Zhaoming Wu. For 3 consecutive years, he was a juror of an international art contest at the Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona, Spain.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Pigeon | charcoal | 24x18

Amaya GĂşrpide

Born in Spain, Amaya formally began studying art at the age of 16 in the School of Arts of Pamplona. She moved to New York City in 1999 to broaden her studies in figure painting and drawing at the Art Students League, the National Academy of Design and the Grand Central Academy, all of which awarded her several scholarships.

In 2014 Amaya was invited to move back to the U.S. to take part in the creation of the U.S. branch of The Florence Academy of Art in Jersey City, where she currently has a studio and is a Principal Instructor. In 2016 she taught as an adjunct Professor at The New York Academy of Art.

From 2009 to 2014 Amaya returned to Spain to concentrate on her painting and offer figure drawing, anatomy and painting classes.

Amaya's work has exhibited internationally. Her drawings and paintings are in private collections throughout Europe and the U.S.

Reverie | graphite, white chalk, black contĂŠ and gouache on hand toned paper | 17x17

Jenny Reyneke

The Gift | ink on fabriano | 29x31 Born in South Africa in1968 to parents who loved to travel, Jenny Reyneke learnt the love of the open road from a young age. Never settling in one place for longer than two to three years for most of her childhood and adult life, she came to associate places and their trees with the people she connected with and her paintings are often a visual representation of this deep love and respect while her ink seascapes are her concerns for the destiny of her country.

A self-taught painter, she paints to remember the interconnectedness between all things and sees her works as conversations with the lands, trees, oceans and skies that find her.

She sees herself not as an artist but as a painter whose purpose is to make visual the often overlooked but sacred and mystic truths to be found in the contemplation of nature. And that these truths more often than not, translate to messages of hope and love.

Enchantment | ink on fabriano | 39x27.5

Silver Tide | ink on fabriano | 27.5x39

Poseidon’s Rage | ink on fabriano | 27.5x39

Possessed | ink on fabriano| 59x59

Isaac Pelepko

Antonia in leather jacket | graphite on bristol board | 11x14

Isaac Pelepko is a painter and draughtsman whose work is primarily focused on the figure. He received his B.F.A. from the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design where he was awarded most outstanding student fine art his senior year and his M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art where

he received a merit scholarship award. He also studied at Grand Central Academy and the Art Students League of New York. He was awarded the Phyllis and Frank Mason grant for painting in 2011. Isaac has been in shows in Paris France, New York City, and the eastern United States.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Cassandra | graphite on bristol board | 8x6

Kay Ruane

All the drawings I’ve made over the years are like a map of my life’s journey so far. I love the feel of pencil on paper and drawing has been a constant ever since I can remember.

Recently, I’ve been working on larger scale landscapes, like Wave. I completely immerse myself in them, knitting together all of the tiniest details across the page with my pencil, working with the tensions between the static hardness of graphite and the softness and movement of the wave.

Kay Ruane is a Los Angeles-based artist who received her BFA from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and continued her studies at Indiana State University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited widely in galleries and museums nationally with a focus in the northeast, most recently the Julie Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art in Auburn, AL, and The Baker Museum in Naples, FL. Her work is included in both private and public collections, and has been featured in several publications, including Flaunt Magazine and ZYZZYVA: West Coast Writers & Artists Journal.

Kay Ruane | The Wave | graphite on paper | 36x60

Mark Reep

No Lonely Way | charcoal & graphite on paper | 8x8 Mark Reep is an artist and writer whose work has appeared in American Art Collector, Endicott Journal, Bluecanvas, Metazen, and many other publications.

He has exhibited regularly for over twenty years.

Mark’s moody, detailed charcoal, graphite, and ink

drawings blur natural and architectural elements, often in isolate, dreamlike context. Mark says, “I value exploration, discovery at the drawing table, and I also enjoy refining detail and depth at an intimate scale.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Dream Logic | charcoal & graphite on paper | 14x17

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Mark Reep | Calling The Dream Into Being | charcoal & graphite on paper | 8.5x4.5

Mark Reep | The Faithful Nightlight | charcoal & graphite on paper | 11x4.5

Lauren Amalia Redding

Chicagoan Hatuey | silverpoint and silverleaf on panel | 30x24 Lauren Amalia Redding (b. 1987, Naples, Florida) is an artist and writer living and working in Astoria, Queens, New York.

She received her B.A. from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and her M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art in New York, New York. Her poems have

been published by the Pen + Brush in Manhattan and currently in PoetsArtists magazine, and she is anticipating a solo show at Menduiùa Schneider Gallery in Los Angeles in 2017. She primarily creates silverpoint drawings paying homage to her mother’s Cuban family.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Joseph Todorovitch

Joseph Michael Todorovitch is a contemporary painter, immersed in figurative subject matter, who is exploring painting through the lens of a naturalist perspective. His paintings are searching for a breathing sense of light, space, time, and subtle narratives that are personal but allow the viewer to ponder and create meaning. His concern for

excellence of craftsmanship is balanced with a freedom to explore the playful side of paint application. He simultaneously pushes to create interest with surface abstraction and visual fidelity. The concert of the technical narrative, along with the implied narrative of the subject matter, requires the viewer to complete the experience of a Todorovitch work of art.

Joseph Todorovitch Kristin charcoal on paper 18x24

Val charcoal on paper 18x24

Katrina | charcoal on paper | 24x18

Gromyko Semper

Gromyko Semper is an artist based in Cabanatuan City, Philippines. Largely self taught, his work has been exhibited in Singapore, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Austria, Mexico, the United States, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.

Semper’s drawings are executed to imitate woodcut prints, embody a personal, invented mythology after the fashion of William Blake in the early nineteenth century; the symbolists, surrealists and decadents; and the forerunner of Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, the influential visionary painter, Ernst Fuchs. Semper’s woodblock style has some affinities with Albretch Durer’s, but is quite unique, drawing heavily on both the Roman Catholic and supernatural folk traditions of the Philippines, quantum mechanics, alchemy, world mythology, classical art, occult, art nouveau, and the gamut of erotic drawing from Japanese Ukiyo-E to Aubrey Beardsley.

His works are also included in numerous publications particularly related to the Visionary/Fantastic/Surreal art Genres, the latest of which was Liba Warring Stambollion’s colophon/book Divining the Dream, published in winter 2012 on Paris, France, where his work is published alongside the top names of the aforementioned genre. He was also included in the Latest encyclopedia of surrealism, published in Vienna,Austria, the Lexicon Surreal, edited by emeritus Prof.

Gerhard Habarta. In 2013, he co edited the book Encyclopedia of Fernal Affairs (Published in 2015) with Liba WS, Bruce Rimmel and others. He represented the Philippines in the recent X Florence Biennale, along with other Filipino Artists as part of the Philippine Delegation under Artesan Gallery of Singapore. He is recognized internationally as an active voice of the Visionary Art movement.

Tristan and Isolde | ink,acrylic,distemper on canvas | 60x36

Gordon Hanley

Zen Ballet | goldpoint on prepared arches 300 gsm HP paper | 72x52cm

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Light Moves | goldpoint on prepared arches 300 gsm HP paper | 60x45cm

Gordon Hanley began his professional life as a scientist, and became a full time artist in 1993 following his first two solo exhibitions. In 2009 his art shifted focus from watercolors to drawings in the Renaissance medium of silverpoint. He draws highly realist images in 24ct gold on paper that has been coated with grounds of his own design. An entirely self-taught artist, he is highly experimental moving this ancient art form into previously unexplored territory. He is now recognized as one of the world’s leading artists in this medium.

His work has been featured on all major TV channels in Australia and he has been widely published in many art magazines around the world. In 2014 the ARC awarded him the status of “Living Master” (ARCLM). He exhibits widely and usually has at least one solo exhibition a year featuring his unique goldpoint drawings.

Dorian Vallejo

Small Kingdoms Rise and Fall | mixed media | 12x18

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Hold It Against Your Bones | mixed media on panel | 15x25 Born into an artistic family, Dorian Vallejo’s career began in his late teens when he began illustrating book covers while attending the School of Visual Arts in New York. As the field increasingly began to incorporate the use of computer-generated images, Vallejo felt the need to pursue other avenues with his art. His love of traditional media and the figure, drew him to portraiture and to focus on personal work, which shows in galleries. These days Vallejo spends most of his time creating paintings and drawings for sale through galleries.

John Walker

Essence 2 | graphite with colored pencil on paper | 18x24

John Walker’s work is usually centered around a core of imagined narratives, as with his recent series of faux antiquities from an invented culture.

Born in Aurora IL, he attended the College of DuPage and the American Academy of Art in Chicago before beginning a long career as an airbrush artist and illustrator working from his home studio. Much of his work is executed in a realistic manner that

often includes elements of graphic design and stylization. He has has won numerous awards including Best in Show at the Richeson 75 International Portrait and Figure Competition and the National Society of Painters in Casein and Acrylic Award at the 59th Annual NSPC&A Exhibit. His work has appeared in the “AcrylicWorks Best of Acrylic Painting” annuals, Spectrum art annual and Acrylic Artist magazine.

Echoes of Azure | graphite with acrylic on paper | 18x12

Moonflower Maiden | graphite on glazed paper mounted to canvas | 24x18

Scrim 3, With O | graphite and silverpoint ground on matboard | 13x10

Karen Kaapcke

Eyepatch Off 2 | graphite and silverpoint ground on matboard | 18x22 Born in New York City, Karen Kaapcke began painting and drawing while completing her Masters degree in Philosophy. She then studied at the Art Students League in New York City, the Ecole Albert Defois in France, and at the National Academy of Design where she won a full scholarship. Karen has taught with Parson’s School of Design, the Crosby Street Painting Studio, and currently teaches privately out of her studio. She is also the founder and director of the Young Urban Artists - a drawing and painting workshop for teens in New York City. Karen has exhibited extensively, both in galleries and in museums such as

The Butler Institute and Fontbonne University, has won many awards for her work including a first place award from the Portrait Society of America, and is in private collections throughout the country and in Europe. Her work has been written about in the Huffington Post, PoetsArtists, International Artists Magazine, Professional Artist Magazine and Fine Art Connoisseur among others. Most recently, her work was selected for inclusion in the 50 Memorable Painters 2016 issue of PoetsArtists. Karen and her family currently share their time between her home and studio in New York City and in France.

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Johan Barrios

Born in 1982 in Barranquilla, Colombia.

Artist Johan Barrios graduated with his BFA from the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia. His work has been evolved from drawing and painting exploring the artists ongoing enquiry into concepts of time, movement and space, as well as notions of self-disclosure and intimacy. From a balance between the materiality of graphite and paint, and its emotional and figurative resonances.

Johan Barrios recently moved to and currently lives and works in Houston, TX. He is presently working on his first solo show, in this city, scheduled for early spring 2017.

Johan Barrios | Somnambulo | graphite and watercolor on paper | 12x9

Johan Barrios | The Wait | graphite and watercolor on paper | 12x9

Johan Barrios | Untitled | graphite and watercolor on paper | 12x9

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Johan Barrios | Diptych | graphite and watercolor on paper | 12x9 each

These drawings are a series of small works on paper that have an otherworldly, haunting quality, exploring my ongoing inquiry into concepts of time, movement and space, as well as notions of self-disclosure and intimacy. From a distance they read as photographs, but up close their intricate surfaces become visible, striking a subtle balance between the materiality of graphite and paint, and its emotional and figurative resonances.Â

100 GREAT DRAWINGS | PA#78 | December 2016

Steven DaLuz focuses primarily on the sublime, using mixed mediums in his work.

Born in Hanford, California, Steve lived 13 years abroad, completed a BA in Social Psychology, and an MA in Management, before earning the BFA in 2003.

A featured speaker at The Representational Art Conference, 2014, he was invited to participate in the International Masters of Fine Art exhibition in

2014. Internationally exhibited, his work has been published in art books, and magazines, such as Art in America, American Art Collector, The Huffington Post, Professional Artist, Fine Art Connoisseur, PoetsArtists, Encaustic Art, International Drawing Annual, and The Artists. He is represented by two galleries in the U.S. He works out of his studio in San Antonio, Texas.

PA Issue #67| September 2015 David Eichenberg Bernardo Torrens Mueller Franken Randall Rosenthal Alexandra Tyng Victoria Selbach William Lazos Alvin Richard Tanja Gant Aleksander Betko Dave Lefner Andres Castellanos Dirk Dzimirsky Harry Sudman Eric Wert Peter Hรถhsl Neil Hollingsworth Philipp Weber Lorena Kloosterboer

THE REALISM ISSUE Edited by Frank Bernarducci

contemporary realist painting Viewing Hours: Tuesday - saTurday, 10am - 5:30pm

CONTRIBUTORS PA#67| September 2015

www.poetsandartists.com

David Eichenberg Bernardo Torrens Mueller Franken Randall Rosenthal Alexandra Tyng Victoria Selbach William Lazos Alvin Richard Tanja Gant Aleksander Betko Dave Lefner Andres Castellanos Dirk Dzimirsky Harry Sudman Eric Wert Peter HĂśhsl Neil Hollingsworth Philipp Weber Lorena Kloosterboer GOSS183 Publisher

Didi Menendez www.poetsandartists.com Š 2015 PoetsArtists & Contributors

David Eichenberg

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Birdie with Duck 2014 oil on aluminum panel 13 x 10

David Eichenberg

Aimee in Hoodie III 2015 oil on aluminum panel 30 x 40

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David Eichenberg Devan and Afghan 2015 oil on aluminum panel 26 x 30

Bernardo Torrens

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Study for Sandra’s Sunglasses 2014 watercolor on polyester 23.5 x 16.5

Study for Sandra VII 2014 watercolor on polyester 23.5 x 16.5

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Bernardo Torrens Study for Sandra in the Pool 2014 watercolor on polyester 16.5 x 23.5

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Mueller Franken Caserne Poya oil on canvas 29.5 x 39.5

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Mueller Franken Le Journal du Printemps acrylic on canvas 20 x 27.5

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Randall Rosenthal Sweet Memories acrylic and ink on wood 12.5 x 22.5 x 3

Randall Rosenthal Guy Sections 2013 acrylic and ink on Vermont white pine 18 ½ x 16 x ½

Alexandra Tyng Event Horizon oil on linen 46 x 66

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Alexandra Tyng

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Point of Turning oil on linen 38 x 42

The Unseen Aspect oil on linen 44 x 56

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Victoria Selbach

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The Vision acrylic on canvas 48 x 26

Chandi: My Heart Burns acrylic on canvas 52 x 28

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Victoria Selbach Golden Taras (cropped image) acrylic on canvas 50 x 60

William Lazos Manhattan acrylic on canvas 60 x 72

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Alvin Richard

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A monopoly of lollipops acrylic on hardboard 16 x 16

Life in Delft, gifts for Griet acrylic on hardboard 12 x 12

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Alvin Richard 9-11 on a Dice Roll acrylic on hardboard 11¼ x 14¼

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Tanja Gant

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DNA colored pencil 20 x 15

See No Evil colored pencil 13 x 9

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Aleksander Betko The Scorpion And The Lion graphite pencil on paper 48 x 34 Lover, Have A Heart graphite pencil on paper 30 x 40 Outsides graphite pencil on paper 30 x 44

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Dave Lefner

Left Gaslite Motel reduction linocut 30 x 20 Above Sky Ranch Motel (diptych) reduction linocut 30 x 45

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Andres Castellanos

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BAHNHOFSTRASSE acrylic on wood 162 X 100 cm

Lammat River acrylic on wood 130 x 81 cm

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Andres Castellanos Shopping Center acrylic on canvas 190 x 120 cm

Dirk Dzimirsky

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Stay oil on canvas 100 x 160 cm

Ghost Of The Past charcoal and acrylic on canvas 120 x 160 cm

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Harry Sudman

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Kink 23 &12 oil on panel 36 x 36 and 40 x 40

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Eric Wert An Offering oil on panel 24 x 24

The Arrangement oil on canvas 50 x 40

The Hunt oil on panel 30 x 24

Peter Hรถhsl

Left Factitious Friends oil on canvas 80 x 100 cm Above Hashtag Enervation oil on canvas 100 x 80 cm

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Neil Hollingsworth

Title: Big Grapes No. 2 oil on canvas 16 x 20 Community Coffee (image cropped) 24 x 24 oil on cradled hardboard panel Sunbeam Mixer No. 2 30 x 30 oil on canvas

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Philipp Weber

Top Bless 6 Antonia 2013 oil on canvas 140 x 190 cm Right Bless Antonia 2012 oil on canvas 160 x120 cm Left White Heart 11 Kristina 2014 oil on canvas 60 x 70 cm

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Lorena Kloosterboer Tempus ad Requiem V acrylic on canvas 31½ x 15¾

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contributor notes Aleksander Betko is an artist whose contemporary appeal is firmly – and poignantly – rooted in the New York of decades past. Born in Poland in 1976, his family fled the political unrest in that country when he was four years old, settling in Queens.

Betko subsequently spent his youth immersed in the city’s dynamic culture, both established (museums, art mentors) and the underground (the 1980’s punk scene, street performers). Those influences constantly linger in his work today.

Aleksander currently lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn which serves as an endless source of inspiration. His current works revolve around the people and places of Williamsburg where he poses the question “who are we as Americans today?”

Web site: aleksanderbetko.com Andres Castellanos was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1956.

He has won several awards such and has worked with the best galleries of realism in Spain. Currently he works with the Gallery Santiago Echevarria (Madrid) and Persterer Art Gallery in Zurich, and he is also involved in acts of Arcilla Foundation. He is represented in major collections in Spain (Museum MEAM), United States, Greece and other countries of Europe.

Web site: andrescastellanos.com Dirk Dzimirsky (b. 1969) is a german artist best known for his hyperrealistic drawings and paintings depicting human beings in a somewhat dark artistic mood, relentlessly revealing the vulnerability and tragedy of their condition. The complex details and almost surreal compositions of light and shadow intend to create a dramatic feeling and intense emotions for the viewer.

Dzimirsky’s works have been exhibited in the US, Europe and Tokyo and are held in private and public collections throughout the world. He has been featured in international magazines, newspapers and books.

Recently he was commissioned by Waterman - Paris, to draw a large scale portrait with ball pen to introduce their new line of luxury pens. The artwork was shown at exhibitions in Paris and Tokyo as well as on billboards and screens throughout the cities.

Web site: dzimirsky.com David J. Eichenberg was born in in 1972 in Toledo, Ohio where he resides today. He received a BFA in sculpture and painting from the University of Toledo. His works have been exhibited in museums around the world including such exhibitions as the Outwin-Boochever National Portrait Competition 2009 (US NPG, Washigton, D.C), The BP Portrait Award (UK NPG) 2010, 2011, and 2012, The Realism Biennial 2012 (US, Fort Wayne Museum) The Figurativas 13’ and 15’ (MEAM in Barcelona, Spain). David received a BP Portrait Award in 2010 for his piece “Tim II” as well as 1st place in The Realism Biennial 2012. David is represented by the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery in NYC, Robert Lange Studios in Charleston, SC and Fairfax Gallery in Hampstead, UK. Tanja Gant, who grew up in Bosnia (former Yugoslavia) and now lives in Texas, is a self-taught portrait artist whose works bring a fresh original vision to traditional portraiture, using graphite and colored pencil. Her drawings convey a sense

of spontaneity using unique angles and compositions. She is an award-winning artist whose works have been juried into numerous regional, national and international exhibitions, and have also been published in several books and magazines. Tanja is a member of Colored Pencil Society of America, Portrait Society of America and Pencil Art Society.

Peter Höhsl Cape Town based painter Peter Höhsl was born 1967 in Windhoek, Namibia where he attended a German private school and completed two years compulsory military service.

In 1990 he and his family moved to South Africa where he completed a two-year course at a drama college. While working in the theatre – both onstage and behind the scenes – he made coloured pencil pet portraits to support his income.

After 1994 digital imaging and visual effects became his primary occupation and henceforth defined his career. Peter lived in Vienna from 2000 to 2010, Austria where he worked as a visual effects artist, colourist and traditional animator on numerous feature films and television series. In 2010 he moved back to Cape Town, working as a motion graphics artist, animator and visual effects supervisor.

In early 2014 Peter discovered contemporary photorealist artists and became increasingly interested in realist painting. After many months of comprehensive research in traditional and modern painting techniques, as well as studying the work of many contemporary and classic figurative artists, he decided to become a realist painter himself.

Peter’s preferred subject matter includes animals and still life elements either individually or in an unconventional yet plausible and thought-provoking combination. Inspiration can come from anything that is seen or experienced and is transformed into a unique point of view using traditional oil painting techniques.

Web site: peterhoehsl.com James Neil Hollingsworth (b. 1954) in Marietta, Georgia. With the exception of a few life drawing classes at a community college in the 1970’s, Hollingsworth is a self-taught artist.

His early adulthood was spent in a variety of exacting disciplines. After high school, he served in the U.S. Air Force as a mechanic, and eventually worked as a licensed civilian aircraft mechanic after his discharge. Later he was a partner in a graphic design/typesetting business for several years, then shifted his profession once again to work as an emergency room and surgical nurse for more than a decade. The dynamic stages of Hollingsworth’s early career are linked by a common thread-each position revealed his penchant for detailed work and honed his appreciation for design and craftsmanship. However, each phase left him yearning for the narrative creativity that he eventually found in painting.

In 2004, Hollingsworth committed himself to pursuing his art full time. He now finds inspiration in paring down the “stuff” of life to a single item, or group of items, with pleasing color and form.

Placing his subjects against a simple backdrop, he intensifies our connection to their design and aesthetic appeal through formal choices. A dramatic use of light, flawless draftsmanship, and clever compositions bring viewers up close and personal with the irresistible shapes and colors inherent in ordinary household objects. In his romanticizing of utility-driven design, one can draw comparisons

between Hollingsworth’s style and mid-century modernism. His vibrant interpretation transforms utensils and edibles into powerful, visual creatures that beckon our prolonged enjoyment.

Web site: neilhollingsworth.com Lorena Kloosterboer is a Dutch-Argentine artist (born in the Netherlands, 1962), focusing on tightly executed realism. Despite a formal art education, she considers herself predominantly self-taught and a perpetual student of the arts. The challenge to paint with great precision seduces her into continuously conquering her boundaries and mastering new skills.

During her thirty-year career Kloosterboer’s artwork has received many prestigious awards, and has been exhibited in over 75 gallery and museum exhibitions in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Five of her bronze statues enjoy permanent public installation in the Netherlands.

She is the Founding Member of the International Guild of Realism, Full Member of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club in New York, Signature Member and Member at Large of the International Society of Acrylic Painters, and Member of the National Acrylic Painters’ Association of the U.K. Her artwork has been published in U.S. and international art magazines, including Atelier Magazine, Southwest Art, International Artist, and American Art Collector. Her sculptures were published in a Dutch book entitled Beeldend Wassenaar, and illustrations appeared in the children’s book entitled Artikel 12* published by the Center for Peace in Belgium. Her paintings are included in a museum catalog entitled The Reality of Things: Trompe l’Oeil in America, published by the Vero Beach Museum of Art, and in Lexi Sundell’s book Acrylic Artist’s Guide to Exceptional Colour.

Lorena Kloosterboer currently lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.

Web site: art-lorena.com William Lazos exhibits in galleries in Toronto, London, and Indiana, Collections include: Tullman Collection, Chicago, Royal Canadian Mint, Ottawa, Art Gallery of Peel, Brampton,, Standard Chartered Bank, UK. Bruce R. Lewin Collection, New York, and City of Toronto Art Collection. Ontario The retro, Pop art of Dave Lefner reflects the vision of an old soul. From his subject matter to his process, he pays his respects to a time gone by, but finds a way to re-invent its relevance in this contemporary world.

Being born into the sunny optimism of Southern California, Lefner developed a true love of the Left Coast at an early age. The distinct architecture, urban landscape, and car culture of the West soon became his main inspiration as his life as an artist began to develop. Other influences included the graphic design of typefaces & fonts, the paintings of Stuart Davis abstracting the cityscape of NYC in the 1920s, the work of Ed Ruscha and the Ferus artists, and finally, Picasso’s series of reduction linocut from the 1950s. It was this innovative, labor-intensive form of printmaking that seemed to resonate with Lefner’s desire to create art the old-fashioned way… a dedication to technical craft, using an innate creative ability. The process of hand-carved reduction linocut would become his main form of

expression to this day.

Web site: victoriaselbach.com

Studies Center.

Now, more intrigued by mid-century design than the present, homogenized world, he tries to capture that beauty of yesteryear. Too young to have experienced this Golden Age for himself, he daydreams us into the nostalgic world when American design and craftsmanship reigned. Through images of vintage motel neon in an ultra-cool font, or classic cars designed as if they could rocket to the moon, Lefner hopes to take us on a road trip through our past. Then maybe, just maybe, we can realize fully that the journey is as important as the destination.

Harry Sudman was born and raised in Chicago, IL. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Southern Illinois University with disciplines in drawing and painting. Sudman also attended the Atelier Neo Medici, located outside of Paris, France, where under the tutelage of Patrick Betaudier, he studied and refined traditional realistic painting techniques. These techniques became the foundation for the style he uses to execute concepts which explore contemporary culture and attitude.

Tyng is the founder of Portraits For the Arts, an ongoing philanthropic project to enhance the arts in Philadelphia. By painting visual artists, musicians, writers, architects, visionaries and benefactors of the artistic community, Tyng immortalizes these creative individuals and generates funding for the arts in her hometown. Commissioned by the Portrait Society of America in 2008 to paint Frolic Weymouth, founder of the Brandywine River Conservancy and Museum, Tyng was able to include the painting in her project. Tyng is represented by Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, ME; gWatson Gallery in Stonington, ME; the Fischbach Gallery in New York City; Gross-McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia, PA; and Haynes Galleries in Nashville, TN.

Johannes Mueller-Franken lives and works in Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany. He studied painting and film at the University of Mainz. MuellerFranken’s figurative paintings contain a mysterious narrative. He arranges his compositions like movie sets, sourcing every prop and even the costumes.

He has exhibited in notable group exhibition in Europe and the United States - namely “Feest der herkenning - International realisme” at the Kunsthal Rotterdam in 2010.

Alvin Richard was born in 1962 in New Brunswick, Canada. Drawing from an early age, he wasn’t exposed to art as a child nor was art education part of school curriculum. His apprenticeship in exploring the medium of acrylic paint began in 1987 and is self-taught. During the process of finding his own voice, he was initially influenced by the realism movement that emerged from the faculty of Fine Arts at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB. Canada. His knowledge of art history is a perpetual journey of self-study and visiting hundreds of art galleries and museums in Canada, the United States and Western Europe. Several art movements including Realism, Impressionism, Photorealism, Hyperrealism, Pop Art in addition to mass media and popular culture has greatly influenced his artwork. Alvin was elected to the Federation Of Canadian Artists in 2004 as an active member.

Randall Rosenthal was born on a small island in the North Atlantic (Manhattan) in 1947. He started painting at age four and majored in painting at Carnegie –Mellon University, graduating in 1969.

At his first show in New York in 1974 salvador dali wrote ‘bravo” in the guest book. He has shown extensively across the US, in Europe and Asia. After working as a carpenter he worked for a number of years with Norman Jaffe F.A.I.A. as an award winning architectural designer. This led to a decade as an architectural sculptor. In 2006 Randall Rosenthal won “best in show” and “artist choice” awards at the “Smithsonian Craft Show”. He lives in Springs ,NY with his wife Caren , a photographer. Currently he is represented by Louis Meisel and BernarducciMeisel Gallery in New York . NY. Victoria Selbach, a New York Contemporary Realist, is best known for her powerful lifesize nude depictions of women. In 2014 Selbach’s work was covered in Huffington Post by Priscilla Frank, ‘Finally, Artist Paints Female Nudes As They Really Are’.

Selbach has exhibited in galleries and museums in New York and nationally including the Heckscher Museum of Art and The Butler Institute of American Art.

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Guest Edited By FRANK BERNARDUCCI September 2015

Sudman presently exhibits at Rosenthal Fine Art in Chicago. Other Chicago galleries that have exhibited his work in the past include 33Contemporary, Las Manos, and Hokin Kaufman. Sudman’s work has been exhibited internationally at F.I.A.C. (Paris France), ExpoChicago, and Art Spectrum/Artspot (Art Basel week, Miami).

Sudman has curated exhibitions at 33Contemporary and Las Manos Gallery, and his work has been published in PoetsArtists and the Dutch magazine Massad.

Web site: sudmanart.com Bernardo Torrens lives and works in Madrid, Spain. He has had several solo exhibitions there as well as in Milan, Italy and other major cities. Bernardo Torrens’s work has been featured at the New Orleans Museum of Art entitled The Walda and Sydney Besthoff Collection, on view November 8, 2014 through January 25, 2015. In addition, his work was featured in traveling museum exhibitions such as Hyperrealism 1962 – 2012 (2013 – Present, Kunsthalle Tuebingen, Germany, Museo Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain, Saarland Museum, Saarbreucken, Germany, and now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Bilbao, Spain) as well as Photorealism Revisited (2014 at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK and the Butler Museum of American Art, Youngstown, OH). He has worked on commission to produce portraits of notable Spanish dignitaries such as the former Presidents of the Spanish Congress of Deputies, Felix Pons and Jose Bono.

Alexandra Tyng (b. 1954) is known for her figurative paintings, portraits and landscapes. Born in Rome, Italy, she has lived most of her life in the Philadelphia area.

To date, Tyng has had eleven solo exhibitions. In 2010 she was one of 50 artists from around the world invited to participate in the highly publicized Women Painting Women exhibit in Charleston, SC. Her work has also been shown at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH, the State Capitol Building in Augusta, ME, and in many other themed shows across the U.S. Tyng’s paintings reside in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., the New Britain Museum, the Springfield Art Museum, and in many corporate and university collections. She has received numerous national awards for her portrait and figure paintings and her landscapes, and she has been featured in major art publications. In 2012 she was interviewed by art historian and editor Peter Trippi as part of the Artist Audiocast Series sponsored by the Newington-Cropsey Cultural

Web site: alexandratyng.com Philipp Weber was born in Rostock (Germany) on the 03 January 1974. He began to paint very young, so already at an early age his artistic talent was recognized and accordingly encouraged. From 1996 to 2000 he attended studies at the University of Fine Art in Kassel (Germany) with excellence, for which he was awarded with a national University prize. He then moved to Berlin (Germany) to continue his studies and hyperrealistic work at the renowned Universität der Künste (UdK) – University of Fine Art. He finished his studies in 2002, coming Top of his Class..

In 2002 Weber had his first solo exhibition in Berlin, Germany, obtaining both public recognition and that of the critics. Over the years his works have been included in numerous national und international art fairs like Berlin, Frankfurt,Cologne, Paris, Zurich, Vienna, New York, Miami, Toronto or Seoul.

In 2013 Philipp Weber acted as the protagonist in an international commercial for Hyundai Motor Company. The TV spot, which was shot in Berlin, Germany, shows the process by which the artist recreated key aspects of the company’s luxury flagship sedan through a series of seven hyperrealistic paintings. Philipp Weber currently lives and works in Kassel (Germany).

Web site: philippweber.com Eric Wert was born in Portland, Oregon in 1976.

He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Northwestern University. He currently paints full time from his studio in Portland.

His work has been shown across the U.S. and in Europe. He has had thirteen solo exhibits and has participated in over sixty group exhibitions. His work has been featured in numerous publications, including Hi Fructose, Artists Magazine, American Art Collector, New American Paintings, and PoetsArtists. Public collections include the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Illinois State Museum, and Carnegie Mellon University. He is represented by Gallery Henoch in New York, and William Baczek Fine Arts in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Web site: werteric.com

PA

Issue #72 | The Portrait Issue

Portraits Milan Hrnjazoviฤ Sharon Sprung Erica Elan Ciganek Daliah Ammar John Harris Alia El-Bermani Matthew Ivan Cherry

Geoffrey Stein Francien Krieg Nick Ward Nadine Robbins James Needham Joyce Polance Cynthia Grilli

Cesar Santos Rebecca Venn Victoria Selbach Judith Peck Maria Teicher Shana Levenson Sharon Pomales

Rachel Moseley Terry Strickland Sylvia Maier Judy Takรกcs Harry Sudman Steven DaLuz Michael Van Zeyl

Santiago Galeas Jennifer Balkan Melinda Whitmore Thom Priemon Karen Kaapcke Robert Bunkin Debra Livingston Michelle Buchanan

Poetry

Interviews

Michael Charles Maibach Allisa Cherry Grace Cavalieri Joshua Gray R. Jay Slais

John O’Hern Carol Hodes

Front Cover

Daniel Maidman

PoetsArtists GOSS183 Publishing House | Bloomington, Illinois

www.poetsandartists.com | Issue #72 All Rights Reserved Š2016.

Publisher / Editor Didi Menendez Assistant Editor Jay Menendez

Unless otherwise noted all sizes are in inches.

Centimeters Chart IN = CN 5 = 12.70 8 = 20.32 12 = 30.48 14 = 35.56 16 = 40.64 18 = 45.72 20 = 50.80 24 = 60.96 36 = 91.44 40 = 101.60 48 = 121.92

Milan Hrnjazović

CONTACT for further information

Dornröschen | oil on canvas | 43 x 30 | 2011 Milan Hrnjazovic (born 1982) lives and works in Serbia. He graduated from Faculty of Fine Arts of the Belgrade University of Arts and subsequently started to exhibit in his home country as well as throughout Europe. In US his works were reviewed and published in popular art magazines and blogs like Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, Beautiful Decay, Huffington Post and PoetsArtists.

After completion of the studies, he commenced to develop his ideas in mixed media surrounding equally dealing with different aspects of painting and photography.

Hrnjazovic’s work has a strong relation to his social surrounding.

The central motif of his works is human body whose depiction is derived from various understandings of society, human relationships and mentality. Departing from the formal realism he is trying to put light on the less transparent aspects of the visible by importing symbolic motifs. His visions direct the viewers to the realm of desires, dreams subconscious fears, and anxiety.

Distortions and swirls in his paintings create unexpected shapes and motifs that provide the additional layers of meaning.

Such expression aims to make reflections of turbulent and unpredictable social changes visible. Painter’s usual themes refer to destruction and renewal of life. Sometimes those might give insight into people’s’ everyday life. Depicting their private moments makes satirical remarks on narcissism, greed and alienation.

Marina Markovic (born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1983) graduated from Faculty of Fine Arts of the Belgrade University of Arts. Since 2006 she has exhibited widely in personal and group exhibitions throughout Serbia, the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Mexico and beyond. A Fellow of the Young Visual Artist Award and Dimitreije Basicevic Mangelos Award for 2011, Markovic co-founded and regularly collaborates with Third Belgrade Independent Artist’s Association.

Starry Sky | oil on canvas | 43 x 30 | 2011

Portrait of a girl | oil on canvas | 28 x 43 | 2013

Sharon Sprung

CONTACT for further information

Sharon Sprung attended Cornell University and studied at The Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. Her most recent exhibitions include one-person shows at New York’s Gallery Henoch in 2013, and in 2012 at the O’Kane Gallery in Houston, TX, the ACOPAL “Exhibition of Contemporary American Realism” traveling to 8 museums in China through November of 2013, inclusion in the Smithsonian-Outwin Boochever National Portrait Competition of 2006, and a three-person show at Henoch, part of the Gallery Salute to the 130th Anniversary to the Art Students League.

She has had numerous prior solo exhibitions at Gallery Henoch, where she is represented. She was included as an invited artist in the Cecilia Beaux Forum’s first exhibition honoring women whose work elevates modern portraiture and figurative art at the Butler Museum in 2010, she was also invited to speak and exhibit in “Self-Portrait and Portrait of an Artist from the 18th to the 21st Century”, at the Museum of the Russian Academy of the Arts, St. Petersburg, Russia in 2009. She has had many other solo exhibitions at the Asher Gallery, Boca Raton, FL, the Sundance Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY and the Harbor Gallery, Cold Spring Harbor, NY. Her

work has been included in exhibitions at Art Miami, International Art Exposition, the Chicago International Art Exposition, the Fitchburg Art Museum, the Anchorage Art Museum, the Rockwell College Art Gallery and the Knoxville Museum of Art. She is also represented by Portraits, Inc in New York City. Ms. Sprung was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by The National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts at their Spring Gala in New York City in 2012. She was also appointed a member of the board of the Artist’s Fellowship, Inc. in the Fall of 2011 and received the purchase Prize and The William Bouguereau Award from the Art Renewal Center, and won First Place in the annual National Portrait Competition of The Portrait Society the same year, as well as numerous other grants and awards Her work can be found in numerous private and corporate collections, including AT&T, Bell Labs, Chase Manhattan Bank, Hobart and Smith College, Packer Collegiate Institute, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, Scott Bennett, Shearman & Sterling, the Federal Court House in New York City, and the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C..

Portrait of Zelided Berusch | Entangled | oil on panel | 40x40

My paintings are a carefully observed negotiation, manipulated layer upon layer in order to create a work of art as equivalent to the complexity of real life as possible. They are an attempt to control the uncontrollable substance that is oil paint, and the equally untamable expression of the human condition.

Pushing around puddles of this almost living substance, I am endlessly defining and redefining the craft of oil painting to fabricate an animated, breathing image grounded in the recognizable and familiar. Since I am purposefully involved with the contemporary world, I always seek to merge it with a surface that is at once abstractly patterned and textured, and that combines a meticulous respect for realism with the power of the personal image to speak a universal language. I want the subject and its environment to collide through the use of echo and repetition to form a united composition. We are constantly bombarded visually and I hope to infuse my work with a way of engaging the viewer that is both evocatively silent and powerfully commanding.

The artists I have been most influenced by are quite diverse: Caravaggio, Velazquez, Egon Schiele and Kathe Kollwitz. Their paintings share both a profound respect and reverence for the individual with the power and the wisdom to explore those themes that haunt us – man’s strength, resilience, and sensuality together with the possession of an almost shocking clarity in this pursuit. I believe in the transformative powers of painting: that the luminosity of pigment and medium is as manifest as the surface of the soul.

John O’Hern

Interviewed by Didi Menendez John O’Hern is an editor for American

relations. As resident curator of Frank

Art

Collector,

Lloyd Wright’s Darwin D. Martin House in

American Fine Art and Native American

Collector, Western

Buffalo, he was instrumental in obtaining

Art magazines. He retired from the Arnot

National Historic Landmark status for the

Art Museum in Elmira, NY, where he was

property as well as a listing of the Parkside

director and curator and where he began

Neighborhood, designed by Frederick

the influential series of exhibitions, Re-

Law Olmsted, on the National Register

presenting Representation. He began

of Historic Places. Among his community

his museum career at the Albright-Knox

activities was serving as chair of the Visual

Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, where he was

Artists Panel of the New York State Council

responsible for publications and public

on the Arts.

John please tell our readers a little about your editorial experience.

I’ve been writing about art since the mid-60s when I was editor of our college paper. My first real job was in public relations at Bowdoin College where I wrote about everything from championship hockey to the finding of the marble body for a Carolingian head in the museum of art. I was in charge of publications and public relations at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in the early 70s. I worked with the staff to produce catalogues for artists from Richard Diebenkorn to Max Bill. We had quite a staff, Bob Buck who became director of the Brooklyn Museum, Jim Wood who became director of the Art Institute of Chicago and later headed the J. Paul Getty Trust, Chris Crosman who directed the Farnsworth Museum and was the founding curator at Crystal Bridges. And so many more. I¹m grateful for the exposure to the non-objective art and artists of that time because the rest of my career has been devoted to contemporary representational art.

As executive director and curator at the Arnot Art Museum I initiated a series of exhibitions called “Re-presenting Representation” and produced catalogues for the later shows.

My peers thought we were crazy to promote realism because it’s all been done before. I think we showed that the best work builds on tradition but is fresh and new.

Art

When Josh Rose asked me to write for American Art Collector in 2005, I jumped at the chance. Since then I’ve jumped at the chance to write for our new magazines, Western Art Collector, American Fine Art, and our latest, Native American Art. I “retired” in 2007 and now work full-time with the magazines.

It’s great to be able to keep in contact with artists, collectors and galleries and to write about them in my own quirky way.

I’ve always thought that the people side of art is very important.

So Portraiture has been involved in your editorships and background history. However, I know that it’s impact is not as high as other works of art. Do you find that portraiture is still being collected actively? I am thinking that having Colin Davidson’s portrait of the chancellor of Germany on the cover of TIME may help.

I grew up with family portraits in the house and sat for one of them. We weren’t wealthy. My parents knew the artists and we all sat for them. When they didn’t sell, they made it into our home. I used to study them because it fascinated me that a few brush strokes could capture not only forms and light, but the personality of the people I knew so well. That was the beginning of my realization that artists could teach me to see.

Portraits are still a difficult sell. If they have a narrative other than being a study of the sitter, people are more comfortable buying them. For some reason people are more comfortable with a painting of someone else’s backyard than they are with one of someone else’s sister--unless she’s a goddess or a nymph.

Colin Davidson’s “Portrait of Angela Merkel” is masterful. All that wonderful chaos of paint that forms her face leads up to the finely rendered eyes. It may or may not be true that “the eyes are the window to the soul” but they always reveal who the person is. It’s interesting that “Time Magazine” used the portrait for their “Person of the Year” cover. That’s both fortunate and unfortunate. It exposes Colin’s talent to the world but portraiture on magazine covers often gets relegated to “mere” illustration.

I was just looking at his “Portrait of Seamus Heaney” the great Nobel Prize winning Irish poet and looking for a way to describe those eyes. Then I found that Heaney had already done it. “If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.” The eyes speak of his inner life. I could easily live with that painting in my home but I suspect that most people are happy to look at it briefly at the Ulster Museum and move on to less challenging things.

So many paintings so little time. What do you think of the current competitions for Portraiture such as the one the Smithsonian offers every few years and the ones abroad?

The National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Competition always generates a lot of excitement when it comes around every three years or so. It gives validation to the artists because of its sponsorship and the objectivity and inclusivity of the jurors.

(I wonder if I think they’re objective because I subjectively agree with their choices?)

The cachet of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution and the mix of museum and fine art professionals as jurors provides a vetting process for the artists, especially for those who aren’t well known. That’s one great thing about the competition. It’s open to household names and the unknown alike. The vetting process works for collectors, too, especially those who aren’t ready to go out on their own and buy something simply because they like it.

It’s extraordinarily important for there to be artists on the jury because their experience brings an objectivity to an inevitably subjective process. The jurying process is always a crap shoot no matter how carefully organized. A harrowing taxi ride to the museum or last night’s bad sushi can affect a juror’s outlook I’m more familiar with the BP Portrait Award an international competition at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

I’ve watched artists enter year after year, getting rejected, getting accepted, winning a prize and sometimes winning the competition. It’s been disheartening to see how little impact winning the competition has had on some of the artists’ careers.

The cash awards are modest but welcome. The flurry of press coverage is brief.

Do you think the British care more about portraiture than Americans?

There are two young guys whose portraits are also honest and haunting. Frank Oriti paints the people of working class Cleveland, people he says are “inspiring because of their resiliency and never giving up attitude.”

Jason Yarmosky paints his grandparents, willingly being playful about their still being kids in their octagenerian bodies.

The paintings are about aging but also about his love for his grandparents and their trust in him.

Since I seem to be into honesty. Haley Hasler’s self-portraits depict her in mythological dream worlds while she goes about the mundane chores of wifehood and motherhood. They’re portraits of her inner and outer self.

It seems to me that most artists are always creating a portrait of themselves whether it is intentional or not. If you could choose to have your portrait done by any living artist, who would you pick?

Oscar Wilde wrote “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” I think artists reveal something of themselves in whatever they do, whether they want to or not.

I’ve sat for three portraits. One at three when the artist told me to sit still or she’d stop painting. One at the beginning of my career at the Arnot Art Museum by Thomas S. Buechner in which I’m dressed as a monk. And one at the end of my term there, two heart attacks and eighteen years later, by my friend Marc Dennis. It’s uncompromising and painfully honest.

It would be nice to have a portrait that ironed out the wrinkles.

I drew one name out of the hat with names of potential portrait painters. It’s the Canadian painter Daniel Barkley. Lots of paint.

Lots of light. Lots of honesty. Lots of humor. I’d keep my clothes on, though.

As with most things, the British have a longer history of portraiture than we have. Royal portraits were often self-promotions by the monarchs. Charles I was about 5’ 4” but in his portraits by Van Dyck he appears, literally, majestic. There are some great portraits from years back and some pretty awful portraits more recently.

I’ve always liked Lucian Freud’s tiny, millennial portrait of Queen Elizabeth. I sometimes think it looks like a self-portrait, but it depicts the monarch, on in years, who is still commanding and resolute. There’s an amusing story that as he was painting he thought he should add the Diamond Diadem so he had to add on to the top of the canvas.

Who are some of the other artists who are bringing the souls out of the sitters onto the canvas?

As for contemporary artists who, in my opinion, reveal the souls of the sitters, I’ll limit myself to a few. In the “old school” there are Max Ginsburg and Burt Silverman. Max’s paintings are often multiple portraits. Each person contributes to the whole but is an individual with his or her own story. Burt’s self-portrait “Survivor” is one of my favorite paintings. He painted himself shirtless, photographing his reflection with paint brushes in his hand. A real survivor.

Years ago I saw Anne Harris’s portrait of her newborn son Max and have been a fan ever since. Her nude self-portraits pregnant with Max are painfully honest and haunting.

L’Apparition Redux by Daniel Barkley | oil on canvas

Erica Elan Ciganek

Portrait of Maggie Hubbard | This Too | oil and gold leaf on wood | 8 x8 Erica Elan Ciganek is a painter currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Washington in Seattle. She graduated in 2013 from North Park University with a BA in both Art and Conflict Transformation. Her work has been featured in blogs, shows, and publications such as Juxtapoz, Hifructose, and PoetsArtists. She continues to paint mainly portraits with an emphasis on the power of truly seeing people in a world that is quick to dehumanize.

Maggie Hubbard is a painter and musician currently working and living in Seattle WA. She has shown work throughout the United States and through various publications. Hubbard celebrates the meaningful in the mundane through her emotive paintings.

CONTACT for further information

Michael Charles Maibach

Michael Charles Maibach began writing poems around age nine. Since then he has continued writing poems, and sharing them with friends. In 2015 he opened a Facebook page, Poems of Michael Charles Maibach and launched the web site www.MaibachPoems.us.

Why We Love Poets The lexicon's filled Words up to the gill, In alpha order aligned.

All words are arranged B's following A's, No reason, no purpose, no rhyme.

Along comes the poet, His work clearly shows it, His intent is wholly sublime.

To words he brings focus, Whim, beauty and locus, Gives meaning to each distinct line.

Then we do reflect, On what we often neglect, As he touches our hearts and our minds.

Of the family he writes, Of faith, love, and true might, The things that move our souls to chime.

They are words we can see, Clear, honest, and free, Bearing to all the truth of our time.

So to poets let's toast, Keep them doing their most, To make sense of our virtue and clime.

Daliah Ammar

Portrait of Anna Russett | By Any Means | oil on panel | 18 x 24 | 2015 Daliah Ammar (b. 1995, Philadelphia, PA) is a

is the reason oil paint was invented”. By using

Palestinian-American artist & designer based

the painted surface as a trope for the physical

in Chicago, IL. She is currently earning her BFA

and psychological presence between the

from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

inner self and external viewer, her works are

The purpose of Daliah’s work is to transcend

confrontational, yet, intimate and personal

the notion of the self and the physicality of

– a drawn reflection upon the art of painting

paint, resonating from her own vulnerable

itself: thoroughly self-referential, yet no less

and personal experiences – as a means of

aesthetically pleasing, and therefore deeply

conveying life as it blooms and decays from

inscribed in contemporary realism.

within. Expressing that awareness of the self and reflecting to the viewer establishes a relationship between themselves and herself.

Anna Russett is a new media artist working

in Chicago. Her practice combines video,

Her works appear as dreamlike images in

photography, text and code to create vlogs,

which ethereality and reality meet, subjects

tutorials, internet and social media art that

appear lost deep within the confines of the

addresses millennial-focused themes. She’s

canvas, moments are evocative of atmosphere

sincerely invested in social media and has

and emotion and become a window into the

gained an audience of over 200,000 followers

human psyche.

across different channels and platforms. Her work is heavily informed by follower’s feedback,

William de Kooning once stated that “Flesh

which consists of comments, likes, and more.

CONTACT for further information

John Harris

CONTACT for further information

Portrait of Bobby Lucy | water color, pen, and ink | 8 x 12 Johnny Harris was raised in the central coast of California where he spent most of his time surfing and in the coastal mountains riding bikes and enjoying nature. He received a BFA in illustration and design from Art Center College of design, in Pasadena California. During his time at Art Center he was influenced by underground comics such as R. Crumb and Charles Burns and Low brow Artists Robert Williams and Joel Coleman.

After graduating from Art Center he worked as an illustrator for Disney, and freelanced on projects for Voyager Co., BMG, Adrenaline, Inscape, G&G Interactive, Thomas Dolby, and The Spice Girls, among others. While freelancing he continued

to work on his paintings always making time to go into his studio. In 1999, Johnny started working as a costume designer on editorial photo shoots, commercials, and films while developing a series of paintings incorporating the inspiration he derives from nature and his fellow man. He has shown his art work at The Brewery Art Walk and has created a series of portraits and illustrations for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Robert Lucy is a resident of Byrdcliffe where he makes idiosyncratic, highly polished paintings exploring images of popular culture and personal transformation. He is also the proprietor of Robert Lucy Animals, specializing in commissioned portraits of animals, both human and otherwise.

Alia El-Bermani

CONTACT for further information

Portrait of Greg Baldwin | As He Worked | oil on panel | 12 x 9 Artist, teacher and independent curator, Alia El-Bermani received her BFA in 2000 from Laguna College of Art and Design in Laguna Beach CA. She has had several solo exhibitions as well as her work featured in numerous group exhibitions. Her paintings and drawings have been showcased in museums such as the Palm Springs Desert Museum in California, the Anchorage Museum of History and Art in Alaska, the West Valley Art Museum in Arizona, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto and the Greenville Museum of Art in North Carolina. In 2015 her painting Paper Wishes was acquired by the Museu Europeu d’Art Modern, in Barcelona, Spain for their permanent collection.

Since 2001 she has occasionally taken on the roll of curator. Ms. El-Bermani has coordinated several thoughtful exhibitions, the first titled About Paint featured seven artists who explore the various qualities, characteristics and essence of paint. January 2017 will mark her most ambitious project as a curator. The

exhibition Women Painting Women: In Earnest, which features 34 contemporary, figurative artists will begin its museum tour, starting at Texas A&M Universities J. Wayne Stark Galleries.

El-Bermani is a member of the Portrait Society of America as well as a co-founder of the important blog Women Painting Women. Several articles have been written on her work in such periodicals as American Art Collector, iArtistas, ArtSee, Art Week, The Independent and LA Weekly. She currently lives and works in Apex, NC. Greg Baldwin, co-founder of the highly sought after character design duo, CreatureBox, grew up in a small town just south of Boston. In 2000, he graduated with a BFA in Fine Art, with minor in sculpture from Laguna College of Art and Design. He has worked in the video game industry creating some of the most bizarre monsters, robots and spacemen for over fifteen years.

More of his work can be found at www.creaturebox.com

Matthew Ivan Cherry

Matthew Cherry is a Boston-based representational painter. He received his BFA from Northern Arizona University and his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he attended with the Presidential Fellowship. He is currently the

Sr. Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, a faculty member, and the Chair of Fine Arts and Foundations at Lesley University College of At and Design, in Cambridge, MA where he has served for six years.

Portrait of Allisa Cherry | Matriarch-SistersRow Allisa | oil on canvas | 36x36 This painting and portrait of my sister represents the centerpiece of a group of 9 paintings.

It is a project I am currently working on entitled Matriarch. Having stemmed from a Mormon heritage that is largely patriarchal, I can account for few men who were as strong and fiercely influential in my life as these women were, having surrounded me and supported me both inside and outside of that culture. Each row of this 9-piece project is represented by a different generation of women from my maternal side; my mother and two aunts in what will be the top row, my three sisters placed in the middle, and my three daughters in the bottom row. They will be grouped together in a grid of 9 paintings, 36” x 36”ea. While portraits, they are positioned to form a kind of quilt, not unlike the blocks of fabric our women forbearers used to make as they pushed their handcarts across the US.

See Allisa Chery’s bio on following page.

CONTACT for further information

Allisa Cherry

Allisa Cherry was raised in large Mormon family in the sparse, barely populated high desert of Eastern Arizona reading books and reluctantly watching shows like “Kung Fu” and “A-Team.” She took a degree in English Literature with an emphasis in Creative Writing from Arizona State University, which makes her about as qualified as anyone else to reside on a working urban farm in Portland, or where she lives now, writing poems and growing vegetables for market.

You Are Composed of the Things You Create The bedrock of you is breast after breast.

The slopes and curves and, good God, the heft of those first faceless bodies in a hot, dusty schoolyard near Phoenix.

I see you there, cutting your eyeteeth on the marrowless bones of dead latter-day prophets. And, too, you are the damp scrappy dollars that once lined your trouser pockets. Arisen to be all the son-ness in the house. The dead brother, the brother incapacitated by genetics, poured into you. Until you were the quintessence of son. Son distilled and undiluted. That reservoir of birthright and light, the reverse weight of which tipped you forward on your toes.

You glided through the house, so lithe and starving and gifted, you could barely keep your huaraches on your feet.

Don’t you get it, you battered thing, you cosmic ball of string? The world loves you and means to kill you with its love.

To flay the engorged trunk, to lay bare the viscera that can hardly be contained, to pick meat from strong bone and reckon what made you tick like a time bomb or a well-crafted assembly line machine.

The undiminished blue of your eye, those lips that are almost obscene.

Wrest meaning from you the way I failed to wrest the image of you out of language, wresting oily, robust figures from the frame.

When you blew apart three years ago, the only way back was to patiently sew each scrap of flesh together again with thread made of ink and the relentless rat-tat niggling pain of needle on skin.

Until all your bits were embroidered with birds in flight. Birds tied to the moon at night. Birds who knew their way home again and a reverse Icarus because first you fell and now you ascend.

Geoffrey Stein

Portrait of Jim Plunkett | Surf Dude | acrylic, mixed media and collage on paper | 29.75 x 29.15 | 2015 Geoffrey Stein is a recovering lawyer, who has been painting full-time since 2000. He received an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2007. Stein lives and paints in New York City. He is represented by the Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge, NY and the Minster Gallery in the UK. His work can be seen at www.geoffreystein.com.

Jim Plunkett is a surfer, skate boarder and painter, who ran the Visceral Surf Shop in Gloucester, Mass. before coming to New York City to go to art school. Plunkett received an MFA from the New York Studio School in 2005. When not surfing or skate boarding he lives and paints in New York City. Plunkett's work can be seen at www.jimplunkettimages.com.

Francien Krieg

Portrait of Nick Ward | oil on canvas | 32 x 40 | 2015 CONTACT for further information

Francien Krieg is an artist who lives in Holland. Her art is motivated by her desire to start a discussion about how convention has distorted our perception of beauty. Krieg www.francienkrieg.com paints mainly older women who she believes are symbols of beauty but also represent something much deeper humanity.

Her work is in many public and private collections over the world: ING art collection, Tullman Collection Chicago, Museum More/Scheringa Museum, Reflex Art gallery Miniature Museum Amsterdam, Museum van Lien, Museum Mohlmann Collection, and others.

See Nick Ward’s bio on following page.

Nick Ward Portrait Of Francien Krieg | oil on canvas | 39.5 x 31.5 Nick Ward is figurative painter and printmaker who creates portrait based works that explore stories of the women around him. Originally from a small town outside Portland Oregon, Nick currently resides in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston, MA. His work has twice earned him the Elizabeth Greenshields

CONTACT for further information

See Francien Krieg’s bio on previous page.

Nadine Robbins

Portrait of Nick Ward | Nick at 1871 | oil on canvas | 9 x 12 | 2016 Nadine Robbins’ artistic style has evolved through a lifetime connection with the creative arts. She grew up in Southern France, influenced by her artist mother and being introduced to many artists including Salvador Dali. Coming of age in a family and culture steeped in the arts steered her course. In the beginning of her career, she chose to study graphic design in the US and in London and achieved considerable success eventually founding her own firm in New York. During this time she quietly developed her fine art by merging her experiences as a creative director with a longstanding interest in painting into a large-scale series of paintings called “8 Portrait Peaces”. On a whim, she entered several of them into the Royal Society of Portrait Painters juried exhibition and was accepted twice. Encouraged by this, she chose to further her painting skills by spending 2-years working on traditional oil painting techniques with master painter Paul McCormack. This proved to be the turning point into a new career as a fine artist.

See Nick Ward’s bio on previous page.

Robbins is now a full-time realist painter, who specializes in portraits, nudes and oyster still life paintings. She continues to merge traditional techniques and contemporary concepts, striving for realism but her work isn’t cold or clinical. It feels animated and alive. The accuracy of flesh she portrays seems warm to the touch, the eyes glisten as they connect with the viewer. Infused with emotion, authenticity, humor, wit and wisdom, Robbins’ work avoids the heaviness or leaden seriousness that can accompany portraiture. She reminds us that one of the most important aspects of being alive is the lighter side, which makes us smile.

Her work has been published in The Huffington Post, American Art Collector, Crain’s Chicago Business, Fine Art Connoisseur, PoetsArtists and Artsy and may be found in national and international collections, most notably the Howard A. & Judith Tullman Collection in Chicago.

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James Needham

Portrait of Maria Radun | oil on canvas | 40 x 30 James Needham is an English Artist based in Sydney Australia. Having studied at The Oxfordshire College of Art in the UK, James moved to Australia permanently in 2010. After moving to Sydney from Queensland in 2013 James began studying his BFA at Sydney's National Art School.

Maria Radun is an emerging artist, working primarily in oils. Born in Russia she is currently living in Melbourne, Australia. Her work often depicts scenes from everyday life, with an emphasis on colour and light. Her portraiture pieces and figurative compositions explore human emotion and connection to the natural world.

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Joyce Polance

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Portrait of Nadine Robbins | oil on canvas | 20 x 16 Joyce Polance’s paintings explore gender and relationships. She attended Wesleyan University and received a BFA from F.I.T. in New York. She has been awarded six CAAP Grants from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, a Cliff Dwellers’ Artist in Residence Award, two Judith Dawn Memorial Fund grants and a George Sugarman Foundation See Nadine Robbins’ bio on previous page.

Grant. Her work has been featured in multiple publications both in the U.S. and abroad. Polance’s paintings are held internationally in private and corporate collections. She has exhibited widely and is represented by Judith Ferrara Gallery in Three Oaks, Michigan. Her paintings can be viewed at www.joycepolance.com.

Cynthia Grilli

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Portrait of Elizabeth Wallace | Elizabeth and Otis | oil on panel | 25 x 40 Cynthia Grilli received her BFA in illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992 and earned her master’s degree in painting at the New York Academy of Art in 1994.

Primarily a figurative painter, Grilli is a two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant and has been featured in numerous art publications. Her work has been exhibited throughout the country and is included in private and corporate collections across the United States and Europe. Grilli currently teaches painting at Fullerton College and figure drawing at both Saddleback College and California State University, Long Beach. For more information, please go to www.cynthiagrilli.com.

Elizabeth Wallace studied fine art drawing and painting full-time for three years at the Laguna College of Art and Design while raising her two children. While there, she earned scholarships and was awarded Best of Fine Arts for her award-winning, large-scale pastel tricycle series.

Wallace is perhaps best known for her thirty-two pastel portraits of the victims of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, which are now housed in a permanent memorial on campus. She currently exhibits at the Mission Fine Art Gallery in San Juan Capistrano, CA.

interview Carol Hodes

Interviewed by Didi Menendez

Carol Hodes was born in the Winelands of the Western Cape, South Africa in 1953. Her first encounter with art was her grandmother who had an Irma Stern painting of a Malay woman in her home. She was mesmerised by this work and it has been etched in her memory forever. Although she was

involved in Education, she was always keen and inspired by art from a young age. She would buy art and the gallerists would let her pay the works off over a long period. This was the only way she could afford art at the time. She has a deep gratitude to these galleries for allowing this. She is an art lover.

Please tell us about your involvement with the arts.

artists greatly. Painting, printing, sculpture and installations still dominate but “Western” art is taking a backseat to allow for previously disenfranchised artists to get the spotlight. In February the Cape Town Art Fair will take place and it will be interesting to see in which way they are heading.

I have been buying art since the 70’s and got to know gallerists and artists through the years. At present I would describe myself as an art lover and not a collector as there is a seriousness to that statement which doesn’t really apply to my take on art.

In Cape Town I visit most galleries and always look for upcoming talent so that I can promote them mostly verbally. I also like to support upcoming artists as they are the ones who need the recognition as well as the money. Thus I am looking, finding and talking about Art on a daily basis because it isn,t my job, it is my passion.

What is your take on the state of portraiture in the arts?

As much as people try and move away from portraits or say that they are passe, I find it to be the opposite. Oil paintings and portraits will always be with us as long as people paint.

The fact that there are many awards and competitions related to portraits tells the story that there is and always will be an interest in this genre. The fact that the “selfie” has become so overbearing in many ways, shows that people are intrigued by portraits or self-portraits.

Have you ever had your portrait done by a painter?

Yes I have. Two artists have painted me but they photographed me first and then went on to do the work. I didn’t have to sit for the painting. Somehow that minimizes the impact for me because one could learn so much more from a sitter/poser if you were to paint them in real time. Strangely enough I didn’t like either of the works.

Whom are some of the artists whose portraits you do like and why.

Personally I dont allow myself to be influenced by trends at all as I buy only what I like and not what gallerists try and tell me is an investment.

The other point is that I don’t ever buy art as an investment.

However, many of the works that I have bought through time have increased in value greatly.

How has social media come into play with buying the art you love?

Social Media has had an enormous impact on my art buying.

I can now see what artists create, whether on their pages or gallery pages and then contact them directly if I wish to buy something.

I look at galleries and artists every day. This is what I do and how I learn about trends. I have met many really interesting and extraordinary people this way.

People also refer me to artists they like who I may never have heard of if it hadn’t been for social media. Its an exciting tool at our disposal and has opened worlds up to me.

I have also been able to buy art from abroad which would have been much more difficult to do before.

Do you have any words of encouragement for artists who may be struggling?

Lucien Freud is my all time favourite. There is Colin Davidson (Ireland), Matan Ben Caan(Israel), Aleah Chapin, Craig Wylie, Alyssa Monk; Paul Emsley. These are just a few. Then I have a list of artists in South Africa whom I admire.

I know that it must be so hard to “bare ones soul” to people if you are an artist and showing your work. In fact it must take immense courage to do so. I thank my lucky stars that I am not an artist because I would be in a constant state of despair about the reception of my work.

I like their portraits because they convey so much emotion that you can create your own narrative around these works. I lose myself in a presumed/assumed story that they portray. I often don’t even want to know what the artist was trying to convey. I like to imagine and think about what the work is saying to me.

If you are creative and you believe in what you do you need to show your work on social media and other venues. There will always be people who don’t like what you do but there might be more people who really like what you do which makes it all worthwhile.

Oh I have published several of the artists you mention including Craig, Alyssa, Aleah and Colin. Colin has put Portraiture back on map with his cover on Time Magazine.

Tell us a little about the art scene in South Africa.

A bit of bravado also helps. I once asked people in general just to show me something that would make me excited. A young guy here in S. A. was confident enough to show me his work and I was so proud that he opened himself up like that that I have 2 of his works already. Sometimes it does work!

The art scene in South Africa seems to be politically motivated.

There is a move away from S. A. Art towards African Art. This is great on many levels, but probably discourages some

Get a portfolio together, go to galleries, send to galleries and see what happens.

Grace Cavalieri

Grace Cavalieri is the author of several Goss 183 poetry publications: Navy Wife; Anna Nicole: Poems; Sounds Like Something I Would Say; and, Gotta Go Now. She has been guest editor for two MiPOesias issues. She produces “The Poet and The Poem From the Library of Congress” for public radio; and is the monthly poetry reviewer/ columnist for The Washington Independent Review of Books.

Portrait of the Basement Stairs What he may do is nothing as grand as strapping his mate to a table or chair— Nothing so dramatic as throwing her against a brick wall, Oh no, his focus may be more much subtle.

He doesn’t need to push her in the path of an oncoming train, In fact his surface voice may sound as sweet as a bell ringing only for her.

The menacer need not twirl her from the window to the street below, or farm her out to brothels to be her only pimp.

No, first he isolates her from her family and her friends, and then of course she quits her job, she might just talk to strangers.

He refuses that she go to the store unless she comes right back. He’s waiting by the door.

He doesn’t need to buy a farm far away from town, he only has to close the blinds when others come around, and then, and then, and then, the real fun begins.

Cesar Santos

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Portrait of Teresa Maria Rojas | pencil on paper | 14 x 11 Cesar Santos (b. 1982, Cuban-American) art education is worldly and his work has been seen from the Annigoni Museum in Italy, the Beijing museum in China, to Chelsea NY. Santos studied at Miami Dade College where he earned his Associate in Arts Degree in 2003. He then attended the New World School of the Arts before traveling to Florence, Italy.

In 2006, he completed the Angel Academy of Art in Florence studying under Michael John Angel, a student of artist Pietro Annigoni.

Santos’ work reflects both classical and modern interpretations juxtaposed within one painting. His influences range from the Renaissance to the masters of the nineteenth century to Contemporary Art. With superb technique, he infuses a harmony between the natural and the conceptual to create works that are provocative and dramatic.

Among Santos’ solo shows are “Syncretism” at Eleanor Ettinger Chelsea Gallery in New York; “Beyond Realism” with Oxenberg

Fine Arts in Miami and “New Impressions” at the Greenhouse Gallery in San Antonio, among many others. The artist has received numerous accolades, including first place in a Metropolitan Museum of Art competition, and he was recently presented with the 2013 Miami Dade College Hall of Fame Award in Visual Arts.

Teresa Maria Rojas graduated from the University of Havana in 1957 and studied acting at Sala Prometeo. After leaving Cuba in 1960, she went to Venezuela and then to Miami in 1963. Rojas began working as a professor of theater and acting at Miami Dade College (MDC, also formerly known as Miami Dade Community College) in 1972. In 1985, Rojas founded the Prometeo Theater, a bilingual theater group at MDC, serving as its artistic director.

During her teaching career, Rojas has performed, produced, and directed over ninety plays. In recognition of her teaching, she has been endowed with three teaching chairs. One of her former students, Nilo Cruz, wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning play in the drama category, Anna in the Tropics. Rojas performed in the play when it returned to Miami after its Broadway debut.

Rebecca Venn

Portrait of Victoria Selbach | watercolor on paper | 11 x 14 | 2015 Rebecca Venn is a Wisconsin based artist. She is well known for her figurative artwork and portraits.

She taught Life Studio at UW Parkside, and a variety of workshops at the Charles A.Wustum Museum in Racine, Wisconsin and The Clearing in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin. Rebecca has won various awards, CONTACT for further information

including First Place in the National Figurative Juried Exhibition in Woodstock, Illinois. She has work in the permanent collection in The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut. Her artwork is in numerous private collections throughout the United States and abroad.

See Victoria Selbach’s bio in the following page.

Victoria Selbach

Leah Yerpe is an accomplished New York based artist who uses multiples of the human figure in her work. Different poses that twist and float in an improvised dance fall on a ground purged of contextualizing marks. This fluidity contrasts with her hyper

fastidious drawing technique. The bodies of models are caught as if formal elements in a collage while they transform into symbolic figures. Yerpe captures the kernel at the heart of the story, the core that resonates human experience.

Victoria Selbach is a New York contemporary realist painter best known for her larger than life size nude depictions of women. Here Selbach attempts to capture the ethereal grace of this great creative talent. As part of the 2015 Goddesses series Selbach frames the sitting artist in the guise of an Apsara, a divine female spirit, the muse. To see the Goddesses series and a full archive of work visit victoriaselbach.com.

Portrait of Leah Yerpe Daivika Apsara | acrylic on canvas | 60x28 Laukika Apsara | acrylic on canvas | 60x28 I find myself caught off guard when I look up and encounter an overwhelming radiance. I’m in awe of vibrant strength and honest fragility. I’m starstruck by a woman completely at ease in her own skin, bathed in a contented glow. A day spent frolicking in astounding light while chasing the perfect shadows is the starting

point of every painting. Capturing the intricacies of individual women feels to me as a powerful merging of empathy and paint. My work deepens my understanding of myself, the women I am close to and sends me on journeys to uncover and embrace the diversity and complexity of all the women we are.

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Judith Peck

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Portrait of Joshua Gray | oil on board | 11 x 14 Known as a allegorical realist, Judith Peck has exhibited her work in venues nationwide including the Portsmouth Museum in Virginia and the Masur Museum of Art in Monroe, Louisiana awarding Peck the juror’s award, Context Art Fair Miami, Arte Américas Fresno Art Museum in California, and a solo at the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts in New Castle, Pennsylvania. She has received the Strauss Fellowship Grant from Fairfax County, Virginia. Her paintings have been featured numerous times in PoetsArtists, as

well as The Artist’s Magazine, American Art Collector, iARTisas, Combustus, Catapult Magazine and The Kress Project book published by the Georgia Museum of Art. Judith Peck’s work is collected internationally and can be found in many private collections as well as in the permanent collection of the Museo Arte Contemporanea, Sicilia and the District of Columbia’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities collection.

Joshua Gray

Joshua Gray is the author of several poetry books, most recently Steel Cut Oats (2015) from Red Dashboard Publishing. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and featured on VerseDaily. He lives with his wife and sons in Kentucky.

Dented Childhood is a tumor that won’t go away.

I thought I had a healthy childhood,

Played ball with my friend and neighbor Seymour.

I had no friend, no neighbor Seymour.

Seymour was me, forced to play by myself.

But I loved the smell of my leather football; It thrilled me to hold it, throw it, catch it, feel it, tight

In my palm. When the ball landed on the body of a parked car, The injured vehicle would shake a fist at me, cursing, “mutant!”

I figured if I dented that Jag good enough,

Its owner would be relieved from the anxiety

He faced every day, trying to keep his car immaculate.

Not even the sound of my mom calling me to dinner

Would stop me from throwing that ball. There, on the street,

I could taste the homemade pizza on the dinner table. To this day I look in the mirror and see myself -- my sister -- staring

At me, calling me Pizza Face. Like the hot lava of Hell’s volcano, I’d melt my sister’s puny brain, I would.

Then there’s my father, who after dinner would get up, And I would feel his words like heavy luggage,

And hear ice cream melt my tongue, as he’d say, ‘It would behoove you to grow up.’

In manner my father and I were always arguing tete-a-tete.

We will argue into eternity, with the silence of words.

I wanted a younger brother to keep me company in this

Neurotic innocence of mine. Time for some chemotherapy; Even as my cancerous youth brews in my head, still.

Previously published in FreeXpression

Maria Teicher CONTACT for further information

Portrait of Alyssa Scott | Copper in Full Bloom | oil on wood board | 16 x 16 Maria Teicher born 1983 in New Jersey, is a Fine Art portrait and figurative artist residing in Philadelphia, PA. Using historic and personal symbolism, her works blend together contemporary concepts and an honest connection with those around her. She received her MFA in 2013. She exhibits regularly in Philadelphia, New York, and California. She recently finished her second solo show with Arch Enemy Arts Gallery in her home city. Maria is part of the BeinArt Collective and will be showing at Copro Gallery with them in February of 2016.

When Maria is not painting and drawing, you can find her

teaching, photographing, and writing in her blog or for The Art Is Not Dead, a Philly based arts and creative community website she co-found with writer/musician Brian Dougherty.

Alyssa Scott born in Philadelphia is a graduate of Hussian School of Art, majoring in Illustration and minoring in Graphic Design. Working primarily in graphite on a variety of surfaces, Alyssa’s work focuses on the figure and its ever so slight distortion of anatomy, which helps create a dark somber mood. She currently resides in West Chester as a Freelance Illustrator and has shown in galleries in Philadelphia.

Shana Levenson

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Portrait of David Jon Kassan | Those that Inspire | oil on panel | 14 x 18 Shana Levenson (1981, Houston Texas) is a nationally known contemporary figurative painter, best known for her non traditional portrayals of the quirkiness of parenthood as well as portraying long term HIV/AID survivors. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design at The University of Texas at Austin, and is currently pursuing of a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Art in San Francisco. She has studied under artists such as Costa Vavagiakis, David Jon Kassan, Warren Chang, Teresa Oaxaca and Zack Zdrale. She also teaches at the New Mexico Art League as well as private kids and adult classes in her studio David Jon Kassan (born 1977 in Little Rock, Arkansas) is internationally recognized contemporary American painter,

filmmaker, and philanthropist best known for his life-size representational paintings. Kassan is a drawing and painting instructor because of his steadfast commitment to the age old discipline of working from life and creating compelling expressions of the human form, giving painting/drawing seminars and lectures at various institutions, and universities around the world.

In 2013, Kassan founded the Kassan Foundation in hopes of giving grants directly to unprivileged talent in both the visual and musical performance arts. Kassan works can be seen in many public and private collections worldwide and is currently (2014) represented by Gallery Henoch (Chelsea), New York, NY. Kassan lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Sharon Pomales

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Portrait of Jennifer Balkan | Summer Jen | oil on panel | 14 x 11 | 2015 Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Sharon Pomales is a realist artist working in oil and pastel. Since moving to Ohio in 2012 she has exhibited at various galleries, institutions, and museums nationwide. Her work has been featured in various publications.

Sharon is a member of the Portrait Society of America, Oil Painters of America, National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society, American Women Artists, International Guild of Realism and is a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America. Her work is represented

by Lovetts Gallery in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Jennifer Balkan has taken art classes at Laguna Gloria Art School, the Austin Fine Arts School and at the Art Students League in Denver. Jennifer currently paints in her studio and in life painting groups. She has been teaching figure and portrait painting in oils to private groups of students since 2005. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and in Europe and has been featured in a number of art publications. She has most recently and proudly been named “Best Visual Artist of 2015” by the Austin Chronicle’s Readers’ Poll.

R. Jay Slais

R Jay Slais is an engineer, inventor, and writer living with his wife Susy in Washington, Michigan. His poetry recently appeared at Blue Fifth Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Poets/Artists, Press 53, 53 Word Story winner, and Shot Glass Journal. He has received nominations for The Pushcart Prize and Sundresses, Best of the Net and is grateful to Robin at Big Table Publishing for publishing his chapbook.

Love Solstice After her smile fades a bee sleeps in my mouth.

The sunset has no teeth.

Lips are frozen; a window thick with frost, all night, the cold finds lost needles.

Widower in the wind, horny fleas construct their brothel on the wing of a flightless dove.

Breathing is a fierce storm when the sky is full of wet eyelids, the language of torn dead leaves, like the scurry of mice around the feet of a cold weathered monument.

Her loss is a suffering that will never be carved on the subterranean stone.

In the absence of flowers, a bewildered man, even the fault line shake of morning wake does nothing but loosen the frail balance of growth.

A single seed, endosperm cap weakened to permit radicle emergence, drowns in a rush of Spring rain, never to root in soil; the echo of sad voice despoiled by time and tears.

Waving at my shadow on concrete, a gaunt gray man, lacking contour waves back.

That lonely walking dove one eyes the sun seeking nothing but warmth, a voice, a seed to split.

We are blinded, unable to find the threshold, her name, only a memory on my mouth.

Rachel Moseley

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Portrait of Albert Ramos Cortes | Extra Territorium | oil on wood | 9 x 12 | 2015

Rachel Moseley is a representational figurative artist from California. She received her MFA from the Academy of Art in 2010 and her BFA from Chico State in 2007. After completing her MFA, Rachel began working as a freelance illustrator, focusing on developing her oil painting skills in her free time, and eventually transitioning into Fine Art and shifting her focus from client based projects to personal work. She has exhibited her paintings across the United States and abroad, and has been teaching and building curriculum for the Academy of Art since 2011. Rachel currently lives in Las Vegas with her husband and splits her time between Nevada and California.

Albert Ramos CortĂŠs was born in Barcelona and grew up in a nearby town, Argentona. He moved to San Francisco, to study illustration and Fine Art at the Academy of Art University in 2004.

Since graduating Albert has won many awards for his paintings and drawings, his work has been published in magazines and books and he has participated in shows nationally and internationally. His work depicts a realistic representation of his memories of people, places and situations he left back home, as he tries to paint them before they are lost in time. He currently lives in the Bay Area and teaches for the Academy of Art.

Terry Strickland

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Portrait of Carly Strickland | The Guardian | 36 x 24 | oil on panel | 2015 Terry Strickland devoted herself to painting full time in 2005. Her work has won numerous awards and has been widely exhibited, collected and published throughout the US. A book about her award-winning portrait series, The Incognito Project, was published in 2012. The ongoing series in which she plays with the concept that a choice of costume may reveal or conceal is at the heart of much of her work.

Terry is a speaker at the TEDx Birmingham event of 2016. She lives in Birmingham, AL with her husband, Daniel. Born in FL and raised on the Space Coast, Terry graduated from the University of Central FL with a BFA in Graphic Design. She had an interesting and varied art career, working in the imprinted sportswear, gaming and publishing industries, and as courtroom sketch artist.

Terry’s highly realistic and refined figurative paintings have received recognition from, appeared in or been written about by The

Huffington Post, The Artist’s Magazine, Drawing Magazine, American Art Collector, The Art Renewal Center, The Portrait Society of America, International Artist Magazine, Huntsville Museum of Art, the Mobile Museum of Art, PoetsArtists, and others. www.terrystricklandart.com Carly Strickland, a Savannah College of Art and Design graduate, is a digital illustrator and book designer based in Birmingham, Alabama. Her favorite word is awesome, and her favorite topic of conversation is Star Trek. She is very small and probably has a complex about it. She currently lives with her husband who gets her things from top shelves, her step-cat, and her fat, orange tabby who loves lasagna.

She’s art director of Matter Deep Publishing, an independent publishing company. She has published four children’s books since Matter Deep was launched in 2011 and has two more in the works.

She is also Matter Deep’s book cover designer.

Sylvia Maier

Sylvia Maier attended the School of Visual Art, The National Academy of Design and the New York Academy. She studied at the Art Student’s League with Ron Sherr and Harvey Dinnerstein, and is a recipient of the prestigious Greenshield Award and numerous merit scholarships.

Her paintings have been shown at the Parish Museum in South Hampton, Rush Gallery, The Corridor Gallery, Lincoln Center, solo shows at the Forum Gallery in Frankfurt, Germany, and in numerous other solo and selected shows throughout the U.S. and Germany.

She has worked with the US State Departments’ Art in Embassies Program. Her paintings have been to several “art for life” events, organized by Russell Simmons to bring art to underprivileged urban kids. Her work was featured in the Wall Street Journal.

Her client list includes Mars (the candy company) and M&M’s

Poem by Sylvia’s mother dated July 7, 1962

has commissioned her several times for the Super Bowl events, commercials. Her clients include Jeep, the TV show “White Collar”, Art For Films, and the “Dan Zanes and Friends”. She has worked with Spike Lee on an exhibition of paintings as well as on a public service announcement/commercial to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - for which Spike chose 30 of her paintings.

Sylvia Maier is a native of New York City and her work is very much influenced by her experiences of growing up biracial on the Upper Eastside of NYC. She has been drawing since the age of 7. Today, Sylvia Maier’s art bridges the gap between cultures as expressed in her latest body of work: the currency series and still life paintings.

Sylvia Maier lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

On the right: Several paintings of Sylvia Meier’s Artists Friends and Performers | oil on canvas | various sizes

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Judy Takรกcs

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Judy Takács began her art career in 1986 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration and Portrait Painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art. She has curated and exhibited in solo, group and juried shows at the Butler Institute of American Art, Zanesvile Museum of Art, Salmagundi and National Arts Clubs, as well as at art centers, colleges and galleries throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and South Carolina.

With eight Best in Shows to her name, her paintings have won awards throughout Northeast Ohio and recognition from the Portrait Society of America and the Art Renewal Center. A Signature Status painter with the Akron Society of Artists, Judy is also is archived with

legendary Cleveland artists at the Artist Archives of the Western Reserve. She chairs the New Media Relations Committee on the Cecilia Beaux Forum of the Portrait Society of America and has participated in the Women Painting Women exhibitions.

In 2013, Judy the Ohio Arts Council granted her the Award for Individual Artistic Excellence for her ongoing traveling painting project, Chicks with Balls: Judy Takács paints unsung female heroes. As a lifelong painter of people, Judy has found that fascinating individuals find their way into her paintings. Her goal is to depict a living, breathing soul whose presence invites viewers to linger, connect and think.

Portrait of Joe Ayala | Secure the Perimeter | oil on canvas | 30 x 30 When I start a portrait, I humbly begin a long-term relationship with the face. Relishing new faces, I have staged large scope painting projects that put me in touch with populations who are happy to pose; fascinating elderly and octogenarian nuns have sat for me at retirement centers while I listen to their tales as I paint.

And, my ongoing epic traveling portrait project, Chicks with Balls: Judy Takács paints unsung female heroes, spotlights unsung female heroes from my community topless, yet covered; holding balls to symbolize their strengths and struggles.

Over the years, I have also made it my goal to paint the artists of Northeast Ohio. In Cleveland, we have a rapidly expanding, rich and vibrant art community, often overlooked while art spotlights mainly shine on the coasts. I draw inspiration…and eager models… from the fascinating cast of artistic characters right in my own back yard, where I live and work as an artist myself.

Joe Ayala’s work combines classical portraiture, editorial illustration and modern cultural themes with a

strong sense of narrative drawing, realism and drama.

Harry Sudman

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Portraits of Brian James Dickie and Ammunition | oil on panel | 12 x 12 Harry Sudman was born and raised in Chicago, IL. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Southern Illinois University with disciplines in drawing and painting. Sudman also attended the Atelier Neo Medici, located outside of Paris, France, where under the tutelage of Patrick Betaudier, he studied and refined traditional realistic painting techniques. These techniques became the foundation for the style he uses to execute concepts which explore contemporary culture and attitude.

Manos Gallery, and his work has been published in PoetsArtist, Artvoices and the Dutch magazine Massad. www.sudmanart. com

Sudman presently exhibits at Rosenthal Fine Art in Chicago.

Other Chicago galleries that have exhibited his work in the past include 33Contemporary, Las Manos, and Hokin Kaufman. His work has been exhibited internationally at F.I.A.C. (Paris France), ExpoChicago, and Art Spectrum/Artspot (Art Basel week, Miami).

Performance artist Ammunition expresses herself through numerous disciplines including Fire Dance, Angle Grinding and Burlesque amongst others. She received the 2011 Performance Artist of the Year by RAW Artists Chicago and the 2015 Gogo Dancer of the year award by Chicago Nightlife. She has a constant presence and following in Chicago and has performed nationally in the past as well.

Sudman has curated exhibitions at 33Contemporary and Las

Brian James Dickie, born in Canada, has spent much of his life in the Chicago area. He is a non conforming renaissance man and a well known figure in the Chicago underground culture and nightclub scene.

Steven DaLuz

Portrait of Thomas Dodd | charcoal and mixed media on paper | 14 x 10 Steven DaLuz is known for figurative works and imagined landscapes, using a process he devised with metal leaf, oil, and mixed media. Born in Hanford, California, Steve retired from the Air Force after living 13 years abroad. He completed a BA degree in Social Psychology, and an MA degree in Management, before earning a BFA in 2003. His drawings and paintings are represented in private and corporate collections in 26 States and overseas.

He was a featured speaker at The Representational Art Conference, 2014, and his work was in the International Masters of Fine Art exhibition in 2014.

He has exhibited internationally, and his work has been published in art books, and magazines, such as Art in America, American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur, The Huffington Post, Encaustic Art, Professional Artist and The Artists. He curated an entire The Power of Drawing issue of PoetsArtists, released in December, 2014, which featured 100 drawings by 50 artists from across the globe. DaLuz was a finalist for the prestigious 2015 Hunting Art Prize. He is represented by AnArte Gallery in San Antonio and The Marshall Gallery in Scottsdale, Az.

Thomas Dodd is a visual artist and photographer based out of Atlanta, GA who has developed a unique style that he calls “painterly photo montage� - a method he employs in editing software in which he crafts elaborately textured pieces that have a very organic and decidedly non digital look to them. His work often has mythic and quasi-religious themes that pay homage to Old Master art traditions while at the same time drawing from psychological archetypes that evoke a strong emotional response from the viewer. Although his artwork resembles paintings, his pieces are entirely photographic in nature, fusing many images into a cohesive whole His larger works are often presented in a mixed media form that adds a depth and texture that complements the photography beautifully. Thomas has had numerous exhibitions of his work in many cities in the USA and around the world.His photographs have been featured in many magazines, on book and album covers and he frequently teaches workshops and webinars on photo-editing and marketing for artists.

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Michael Van Zeyl

For Michael Van Zeyl, portraiture is much more than a one-sided translation of the artist’s point of view taking form in a subject. It’s an engaging visual dialogue that renders a soul in light, shadow and pigment, continuing the conversation for future generations.

While technical skill is only part of Michael’s gift, his experience has honed his craft to the highest standard.

His talents were apparent when he was a boy and he spent subsequent decades mastering a wide range of painting techniques. In particular, 17th century Dutch and late 19th century impressionist styles have resonated with him and surfaced in his own works.

His formal training began at the American Academy

of Art in Chicago, continuing on at Chicago’s Historic Palette & Chisel Academy and the Art Students League in New York, where he studied with the most accomplished artists who also paint directly from life under natural light. Michael is currently a faculty member at the Palette & Chisel and has been a popular instructor for several years.

Michael’s work is already appreciated in many public and private collections such as the United States District Court, University of Chicago, and DePaul University School of Law. He has received awards from the Portrait Society of America, Art Renewal Center, the Oil Painters of America and was the 2014 recipient of the Dorothy Driehaus Mellin Fellowship for Midwestern Artists.

Portrait of Rebecca Moy | oil on panel | 24 x 24 Rebecca and I have been in group exhibits together around Chicago a few times and I immediately became a fan of her paintings and one-of-a-kind hat collection. Rebecca agreed to pose for me and bring some of her favorite hats to my studio. The only plan I had for this piece was that I wanted to do a profile and give it a feeling of movement or time passing. Rebecca did two sittings over the course of a couple months and I painted the hat on my mannequin between sittings. My paintings are done from direct observation of natural daylight in my north light studio, illuminating and blanketing the form of my subjects.

As one of the rising stars of the Chicago art scene, Rebecca Moy’s passion for self-expression is evident in every piece she produces. Whether it is a larger-than-

life symphony of color, form and texture or a small study in black and white, when Rebecca Moy is at work she is not so much painting as she is composing.

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Santiago Galeas

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Santiago Galeas is an emerging artist working in the

He has utilized his atelier style training and relied

Philadelphia area. Originally from Silver Spring, Maryland,

heavily on anatomy and structure, though reinterpreted

he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

in a personal style. With strong influences from both

in Philadelphia, PA and graduated in 2014. Specializing

traditional Alla Prima portrait painters and the Abstract

in figurative oil paintings, he has a diverse range of

Expressionist era, this distorted imagery often results in a

subjects that address varying concepts in portraiture.

covenant between representation and abstraction.

Portrait of Asim Ali Naqvi | Gregale | oil on canvas | 30 x 24 Gregale refers to a strong, cold northeast wind in the Mediterranean. This portrait shows my model Asim in movement, both with and against the shift of brush strokes moving diagonally across the composition. I’ve placed him in shadow while the space around him weaves in and out of light forms. Traditionally portraiture emphasizes the face in light, though here it is obscured through multiple means. I wanted him to embody the spirit of this wind without being too apparent about it.

Asim Ali Naqvi is a freelance writer and poet. He grew up in New York, and earned a BA in English from Adelphi University. He enjoys working in a variety of mediums, including fiction and dramatic writing. Now residing in

Philadelphia, he continues to write, and enjoys exploring visual arts as a hobby. Asim credits fantasy novels, absurdist drama, and his love for pizza as his biggest influences.

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Jennifer Balkan

Jennifer Balkan grew up in New Jersey and began to draw at a very young age. She studied neuroscience in college and considered pursuing a path in psychology. After living in Boulder and Seattle, she moved to Austin. She attained her Ph.D. in 2001 after conducting anthropological fieldwork in Mexico. Although her experience in Mexico was rich, Jennifer longed for artistic creativity. In August of 2001, Jennifer spent a month in Spain, France, and Italy where she saw masterworks that would become her inspiration. She then threw herself into oil painting and now paints fervently.

She writes “my time studying the human psyche both psychologically and sociologically must have left its imprint

on my brain permanently because I cannot seem to stray too far from it in my painting.”

Jennifer has taken art classes at Laguna Gloria Art School, the Austin Fine Arts School and at the Art Students League in Denver. Jennifer currently paints in her studio and in life painting groups. She has been teaching figure and portrait painting in oils to private groups of students since 2005.

Her work has been exhibited across the United States and in Europe and has been featured in a number of art publications.

She has most recently and proudly been named “Best Visual Artist of 2015” by the Austin Chronicle’s Readers’ Poll.

Portrait of Sharon Pomales | oil on wood | 18 inch diameter I have never met Sharon in person but we have become virtual friends through the virtual painting community that we have both embraced. She paints many self-portraits and/or portraits using herself as her model. Her paintings are dynamic; they have tremendous personality; they have humor; they have passion. Her vigor for painting is inspirational. We are both in our mid-40s. We are children of the 1980s who grew up in the era of double exposure and double portraits. I loved the idea of capturing Sharon with two different emotional expressions in the same picture plane.

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Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Sharon Pomales is a realist artist working in oil and pastel. Since moving to Ohio in 2012 she has exhibited at various galleries, institutions, and museums nationwide. Her work has been featured in various publications. Sharon is a member of

the Portrait Society of America, Oil Painters of America, National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society, American Women Artists, International Guild of Realism and is a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America. Her work is represented by Lovetts Gallery in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Melinda Whitmore CONTACT for further information

Portrait of David Jamieson | Vitreous | oil on panel | 18 x 18 | 2015 Melinda Whitmore received her MFA cum laude in painting from the New York Academy of Art and BA degrees in Art History and Studio Art from Indiana University. She held an assistant curatorial position in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago and sculpts anatomical models for many of the country's top anatomical supply companies. Her work has been featured in American Art Collector, American Artist Drawing magazine, PoetsArtists, Art Renewal Center’s 2013 Salon, Manifest Gallery’s International Painting Annual 3, and numerous exhibitions from New York to Chicago. In 2008, Melinda won the top prize for The National Sculpture Society's Figure Sculpture Competition and in 2010 was awarded the Agop Agopoff Memorial Prize for Classical Sculpture by the National Sculpture Society. In 2014, she was awarded a Purchase Prize by the Fort Wayne Museum of Art Contemporary Realism Biennial.

Melinda teaches anatomy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and in the medical humanities department at Northwestern

University Feinburg School of Medicine. She is also co-founder and principle instructor at Vitruvian Fine Art Studio in Chicago.

David Jamieson began studying painting at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, and received an MFA cum laude from the New York Academy of Art where he was awarded the first Prince of Wales Scholarship from that institution. He has taught figure drawing, painting and anatomy to undergraduate, graduate and private students in Toronto, Chicago, New York City, and at the Prince’s Foundation in London, England. His work has been featured in American Artist Drawing Magazine, PoetsArtists, and David was named a semi-finalist in the 2016 Outwin-Boochever Portrait Competition hosted by the Smithsonian. His work is also included in the collection of HRH The Prince of Wales, in the permanent collection of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, and other private collections in Canada and the United States. David currently paints and teaches exclusively at the Vitruvian Fine Art Studio in Chicago, Illinois.

I’m always attracted to portraiture of an intimate and informal context, where the veneer of the sitter is stripped away and we are left seeing a more honest and faithful representation of the individual. In “Vitreous”, I captured a moment in the studio when my husband, painter David Jamieson, was furiously rubbing his eyes as he worked on a painting. He often does battle with vitreous floaters in his vision, making it difficult to see lighter areas of an image as the floaters pass inside and across his line of sight.

I wanted to represent the depth of sight that he relies on as a painter, not just metaphorically in his artistic ‘vision’, but in the literal physicality and occasional struggle in his own act of seeing.

Thom Priemon

Portrait of Karen Kaapcke | encaustics | 12 x 12 Thom Priemon born in Philadelphia in 1947, studied at the Philadelphia College of Art from 1974 thru 1976. He went on to study painting methods and materials privately with Francis Cortland Tucker. He worked for 10 years with hand printed lithographs, collaborating with George Miller and Sons in New York and Timothy Sheesley a Tamarind Master Printer before returning back to encaustic painting in the 1990’s. His encaustic landscapes and paintings were presented in a one man exhibition at the Woodmere Art Museums and a selection of his still life encaustic paintings were on view at the Philadelphia CONTACT for further information

Museum of Art Gallery. The artist has lectured on The Art of Encaustic’s at the Woodmere Art Museum as well as the South Jersey Artist Association. He won a gold medal in a publishing and book making expo at DREXEL University Gallery. His work was up against the major book publishing firms of NYC. and are in permanent collections of the Department of Defense, Woodmere Art Museum, Smith Kline, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield. His encaustics have been exhibited in Times Square NYC, on Nasdaq digital board, and the length of a 200 story building.

See opposite page for Karen Kaapcke’s bio.

Karen Kaapcke

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Portrait of Robert Bunkin | oil sticks and oil on panel | 14 x 18 Born in New York City, Karen Kaapcke began painting and drawing while completing her Masters degree in Philosophy.

She then studied at the Art Students League in New York City, the Ecole Albert Defois in France, and at the National Academy of Design where she won a full scholarship. She has taught with Parson’s School of Design, the Crosby Street Painting Studio, and currently teaches privately out of her studio. She also runs the Young Urban Artists - a drawing and painting workshop for teens in New York City. Karen exhibits extensively, both in galleries and in museums such as The Butler Institute and Fontbonne University, has won many awards for her work including a first

place award from the Portrait Society of America, and is in private collections throughout the country and in Europe. Her work has been written about in the Huffington Post, PoetsArtists, International Artists Magazine, Professional Artist Magazine and Fine Art Connoisseur among others. Most recently, her work was selected for inclusion in the 50 Memorable Painters 2016 issue of Poets and Artists Magazine. Karen and her family currently share their time between her home and studio in New York City and in France. You can view more of her work at www. karenkaapcke.weebly.com.

See next page for Robert Bunkin’s bio.

Robert Bunkin

Portrait of Karen Kaapcke | Grisaille | flashe on paper mounted on panel | 11 x 14

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Robert Bunkin is a figurative painter who has shown in galleries in New York, nationally and in Italy. He earned his BS in Art from the CUNY BA/ BS Program and an MFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. He has taught art history at Parsons School of Design, and both studio and art history at Wagner College and Borough of Manhattan Community College. He See previous page for Karen Kaapcke’s bio.

was a member of The Painting Center, NYC. He has worked as an independent curator, organizing exhibitions on contemporary fresco painting, portraiture and self-portraiture and other topics. As the Art Curator at the Staten Island Museum, since 2011, he has organized the inaugural exhibitions at the Museum’s new building at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center.

Daniel Maidman

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Portrait of Bonnie DeWitt | Redhead | oil on canvas | 30 x 24 Daniel Maidman’s paintings range from the figure to microflora.

His representational work has been identified with the emerging Post Contemporary movement. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the Long Beach Museum of Art, as well as numerous private collections, among them those of New York Magazine senior art critic Jerry Saltz, Chicago collector Howard Tullman, Disney senior vice president Jackson George, and screenwriter Jeremy Boxen. He has produced paintings in collaboration with novelist China Miéville, poet Kathleen Rooney, actor Martin Donovan, and noted installation artist Erika Johnson.

Daniel’s art and writing on art have been featured in ARTnews, Juxtapoz, Hyperallergic, American Art Collector, International Artist, PoetsArtists, MAKE, Manifest, and The Artist’s Magazine. He

blogs for The Huffington Post. He lives and paints in Brooklyn, New York.

Bonnie DeWitt graduated from the New York Academy of Art with an MFA in 2007. Her works range from intimate to epic, and often include minute detail. Frequently described as Boschian, she deals with classic themes: sex, death, and allegory. She teaches figure drawing for Continuing Education at the New York Academy of Art and is director at Kraine Gallery, an East Village art space whose mission is to support the careers of emerging artists. Her most recent venture has been as creative director for a nightclub of her design: the Red Room, an elegant venue for artists, performers, and musicians in the East Village of New York City.

Debra Livingston studied visual communication and photography and ran her own freelance graphic design studio whilst continuing her fine arts. Debra studied at Griffith University, Australia and has a Doctorate in Creative Arts, Photography and lectures at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. Debra is a mixed-media artist focusing on painting and photo-media using both analogue and digital formats. Her portrait work centers around creating a personal narrative where she explores the relationship between sitter and artist, even though the sitter may not be present, which to ensure that the viewer is left with an indelible insight of the subject being painted or photographed, either from a fantasy or realistic point of view. Debra has solo and collaborative exhibitions and her work belongs in private and public collections.

Reb Livingston is the author of Bombyonder (Bitter Cherry Books 2014), God Damsel (No Tell Books 2010) and Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books 2007). From 2004-2011 she was the editor of No Tell Motel, an online poetry magazine. These days she lives in Northern Virginia and curates the Bibliomancy Oracle.

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Portrait Reb Livingston | acrylic and water color on cotton paper | 10 x 7

Debra Livingston

Michelle Buchanan

Portrait of Richard Frost | Young Richard | oil on canvas | 20 x 24 | 2016

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Michelle Buchanan is a teaching artist in Upstate New York. The majority of her work is based on portraiture.

She finds excitement in painting portraits because an artist can capture the essence of a moment in time or character trait that cannot normally be found in real time.

The privilege of creating a whole new world of color and emotion for the subject belongs to the painter. She hopes to always continue growing and learning as an artist, and as a human being.

Richard Frost was born in Brooklyn,New York and

was greatly influenced in large part by the real, if not surreal-life images of Coney Island, which shaped his perceptions and fascination with people. Most of his education as a teen was acquired through hitchhiking around the country to escape his bleak school years in Florida and dysfunctional family. After a decade of living on the edge in Los Angeles Richard emerged and decided to give art school a try, where he received a BFA at Otis/Parsons. His art has been described as “Norman Rockwell meets the Twilight Zone�, where his subjects wear their internal conflicts on their faces.

ACS GALLERY ACS Gallery Zhou B Art Center 1029 West 35th Street, Suite 408 Chicago, Illinois 60609 ACS Magazine Publisher & Editor-in-Chief renee@acs-mag.com www.acs-mag.com Arts & Cultural Strategies, Inc. Principal Consultant renee@artsandculturalstrategies.com www.artsandculturalstrategies.com

About ACS Gallery ACS Gallery is housed a one of the most diverse art communities and distinguished locations in the Zhou B Art Center/Museum (www.zhoubartcenter.com). This rich artist community makes in-person visits a unique opportunity and culturally rewarding experience. Renée LaVerné Rose is founder & curator offering artists exhibition opportunities and curatorial projects, and artist residencies. The gallery exhibits an eclectic mixture of creative mediums, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs and digital prints. The gallery explores a blend of internationally known to local emerging artists. This fresh range of eclectic artistic styles is inviting for our guest and culturally rich.

Renée LaVerné Rose Gallerist and Curator

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Chicago | Zhou B Art Center | April 15, 2016

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