Presentation of Artist ”Sirenes” Siren Merete Fristad Bærums Verk, Norway December 2013 «The Irregular story» and “A Sublime Colorist Enamored of Light”
Butterfly over Water, Feb 2013 It should be added, however, that here, as well as in other paintings with prominently allusive elements –– such as “Butterfly Over Water” and “Evening” –– it is the underlying abstract armature of formal balance informing her compositions that invariably enhances and empowers all of Sirenes’ paintings. –– Wilson Wong, Art Critic, New York
Presentation of Sirenes • • • • • • • •
Short Biography Sirenes Artwork Exhibitions & Gallery Representation Local Companies exhibiting Sirenes Art Critics & Press Art Books & Magazines Art Awards Contact details ++ The Man Who Disappears, 2011
As a little girl in kindergarten in Norway the artist known as Sirenes was fascinated with color. She loved the tactile sensation of putting her fingers in paint and applying it directly to the paper. And to this very day many of her large canvases are created entirely by finger-painting. These paintings in particular have a smoothness and a lyricism that is always a distinctive feature of her work, but can be seen to special advantage in the intriguingly titled acrylic on canvas,“The Man Who Disappears,” in which the softly caressed pigment, with its subtle tonal variations of earth tones resembles something more like an amorphous mist of light and shadow than a physical surface: an atmospheric miasma conjured with a finesse that calls to mind the 19th century British painter John Constable’s comment about his great colleague and fellow countryman J.M.W. Turner, of whom he once said, “Turner seems to have outdone himself; now he’s painting with tinted steam!” Wilson Wong, Art Critic, New York
Short Biography Siren Merete Fristad, artist name “Sirenes” is living at Bærums Verk with her husband and 4 children, just outside Oslo, Norway. She is originally from Kristiansand and has an education in Technical drawing. In august 2011 Sirenes had her first solo exhibition at Gallery Kan-skje, Frogner Oslo, and in july 2013 she had her first exhibition at Agora Gallery, New York. “I become inspired to paint through silence and peace, by performing yoga, through meditation and by being in nature. I have always been fascinated by colors, even as a child, and as an adult I have found that flowers, clothes and cosmetics all provide me with regular sources of intriguing or delightful color combinations..” Sirenes Artist statement
�I have always been attracted to the different blue colors of the ocean and heaven�, Sirenes Artist Statement
Fantasy, April 2013
Lake at night, March 2012
Dolphins, March 2013
Waterlillies 2012
Boots in River, Dec 2012, Special award winner
Blue Dreams Gallery
Autumn Art Gallery
Light of Love, January 2012 Love, June 2012
Scared Bambi, June 2012
“I simply love the creative moment, experimenting with colors and techniques; trowel, brushes & brooms� Sirenes Artist statement
In Nature with Love, Dec 2012
Mediterraneo, May 2013
Joy of Colour Gallery Merci June2012
Hidden Face, March 2012
“ I am trying to express my inner feelings from my soul in my work, but also relationships and emotions in and between human beings� Sirenes Artist Statement
Summertime, April 2012
Devi, July 2011
Silent Songs, March 2011
Grey Sea, October 2012
Night Life, October 2013
Black & White Gallery “I am very sensitive to the feelings of others, and that sensitivity forms an important part of my artwork.� Sirenes artist statement
No title, September 2012 Hidden Face, October 2012
Exhibitions since aug 2011 Red Dot Art Fair, Miami, United States ArtTourInternational Dec 13 – Group exhibition
Høstutstillingen, CC Vest, Oslo, Norway September Group exhibition
Freestyle, Galleria Wikiarte, Bologna, Italy September 13, Group Exhibition
Elva Rundt, Drammen , Norway Aug 13 – Group exhibition
Degrees of Abstraction, Agora Gallery, New York , United States July – Aug 13, Group exhibition
Limitless Expressions, Studio Vogue Gallery, Toronto, Canada, VividArts Network, ArtTour International June 13 Group Exhibition
Oltre, Galleria Wikiarte, Bologna, Italy Apr – May 13 Group exhibition
Cafe DejaVu , Oslo Norway Aug – nov 12 Solo Exhibition
Elva Rundt, Drammen Norway Aug 12 – Group exhibition
Galleri Kan-skje , Oslo Norway Nov 11 – Solo exhibition
Cafe DejaVu, Oslo Norway sep – nov 11 Solo Exhibition
A Tribute to Picasso, CrisolArt Gallery, Barcelona, Spain June – July 13, Group Exhibition
Galleri Kan-skje , Oslo Norway july - aug 11 Solo Exhibition
Gallery representation & Upcoming exhibitions Expo Wikiarte, Galleria Wikiarte, Bologna, Italy, January 13 , Group Exhibition
Cutting Edge , Florence, Italy Vivid Arts Network, ArtTour International February 13 – Group exhibition
Solo Exhibition, Galleria Wikiarte, Bologna, Italy, Ocober 13
Sirenes will be represented by Wikiarte Galleria, Bologna, Italy in 2014 with several exhibitions in Italy, including solo exhibition in Bologna in October 2014. Sirenes exhibits several artwork on their web-site.
Sirenes will be represented by Vivid Arts Network in 2014, both on their web-site with artworks for sale and in exhibitions in Italy and United States
Sirenes have been represented by Agora Gallery, NYC, United States from july 2012 - nov 2013 Sirenes have beeen represented on Galeria Artelibre, Zaragoza, Spain, since february 2013
Local Companies are showing Sirenes artwork to thousands of customers every week Three local companies have chosen Sirenes to decorate their premises with a continous exhibition, shifting artworks on an on-going basis: •Omland Communication, Bærums Verk Norway, from 2011 •FysioAktiv, Asker Norway , from 2012 •Vest:Helse/ Dr. Kristin Grefberg, Bærum Norway, from 2013
Glazier, January, 2012
I am painting directly onto the canvas, always barefoot, often through finger-painting with the consequence that each painting becomes absolutely unique.”, Sirenes artist Statement
“Sirenes: A Sublime Colorist Enamored of Light”, art critic by Wilson Wong, New York As a little girl in kindergarten in Norway the artist known as Sirenes was fascinated with color. She loved the tactile sensation of putting her fingers in paint and applying it directly to the paper. And to this very day many of her large canvases are created entirely by fingerpainting. These paintings in particular have a smoothness and a lyricism that is always a distinctive feature of her work, but can be seen to special advantage in the intriguingly titled acrylic on canvas,“The Man Who Disappears,” in which the softly caressed pigment, with its subtle tonal variations of earth tones resembles something more like an amorphous mist of light and shadow than a physical surface: an atmospheric miasma conjured with a finesse that calls to mind the 19th century British painter John Constable’s comment about his great colleague and fellow countryman J.M.W. Turner, of whom he once said, “Turner seems to have outdone himself; now he’s painting with tinted steam!” Just as mysteriously allusive in another manner, exemplifying the unique combination of coloristic sensitivity and gestural vivacity that Sirenes brings to bear is a composition she calls “The Fairy.” With a starburst composition akin to the West Coast American painter Jay DeFeo’s legendary canvas “The Rose,” albeit with that artist’s thick oil impasto replaced by Sirenes’ smoothly luminous light blue hues heightened with streaks of pearly white, without resorting to figurative imagery the painting evokes the fanciful spirit of a numinous being. In another large acrylic on canvas called “Joy,” Sirenes conveys an even more elusive subject by virtue of her mastery of chromatic dynamics as vibrant and yet gentle as the music of Ravel. Here, delicately blended and variegated yellows, oranges, reds and pinks, accented with just a few steaks of verdant green, evoke a buoyant sense of the emotion that the title describes. Indeed, with these colors delicately balance at the center of the composition, floating against a beige background suggesting the raw unprimed linen of the canvas itself, Sirenes appears to combine a gestural lyricism that can be compared favorably to the early Abstract Expressionist works of Philip Guston with a chromatic complexity that would do the Color Field master Jules Olitski proud. Her ability to combine these elements so successfully suggests that one might think of her as an “Abstract Impressionist” who often goes beyond the Impressionist goal of painting the effect of light on objects to make the light itself the piece de resistance of her compositions. On the other hand, being a postmodern painter with all the license for free expression which that term implies, she does not hesitate to introduce recognizable subject matter when moved by the desire to do so. One such work is her acrylic on canvas, “Lake at Night,” in which the white flowers and green leaves on the surface of the blue water appear to pay tribute to Monet, but the sense of their being illuminated by rays from the moon rather than the sun lends the composition a more romantic quality in the manner of Symbolism. It should be added, however, that here, as well as in other paintings with prominently allusive elements –– such as “Butterfly Over Water” and “Evening” –– it is the underlying abstract armature of formal balance informing her compositions that invariably enhances and empowers all of Sirenes’ paintings. - Wilson Wong , art review of Sirenes, New York http://www.agora-gallery.com/ArtistReview/Sirenes.aspx
«The Irregular story», Art critic by Denitza Nedkova, Bologna, Italy The motivations for being creative are always multiple, the reasons for each action are the result of a mixture of conscious stimuli and impulses. Art, therefore, is the best field for such moral ambiguity not only in terms of representation, but also in the execution and in its reasons. It is precisely the motions to carry out the work of Sirenes, the artist of the unique style for everything, who shows how the point of encounter with the reality, with the actuality is that of action, of the production. The artist understands that to be a contemporary artist must first be contemporary woman, aware of the casualness of the unpredictable life and of the freedom as being, without the commitment, now overwhelmed, for the fighting emancipation. The tonal painting, rich of color and motion, is all played on the constant intent to remain in close contact with the outside, while using an intimate and not phenomenal work. The big idea of the painter, the one that makes it original, is in the courage to realize the extrinsic with the intrinsic, escaping from the respectability of the real vision of the things. If art by definition establishes an ideal or craft comparison with reality, the artist, is always free to decide its attachment to both the first (art) than the second (the reality). In fact Sirenes do not believes in the need to establish a characteristic creative attitude, but rather chooses a non-linear and abstract path, but always sensitive and "disturbed" from the outside. So begins the way of the irregular art of Sirenes. The obvious negation of form is discredited by a cromia rich of hues and not always of colors, which realizes a language of intrusive volumes , often well defined, that sometimes "have fun" to take a recognizable appearance and to contract itself in restraining lines. But these drawings of figures and things are deceptive because the limiting traits are unstable and they quickly dissolve in the dense mass of colors. The artist shapes the pasta with their hands certainly to emphasize her close relationship with painting, but mainly because no other instrument is suitable to realize her inspirational motions. The formal dissolution leads to infer aniconic and tachisme influences, determined by strong and sensual expressiveness, by progressive abstraction of the poetic language, by an excessive materialization of color tearing the surface of the painting. Formally these characteristics are recognized in the art of Sirenes, but they are less relevant, because the matrix of a dramatic informal intellectual crisis is replaced by a more sentimental, almost lyric ideological model, which determines an inconstant and variable trend of the representation. Therefore It seems appropriate to define this modus operandi as Lyrical Abstraction, able to combine the personal universe with the real world without the seemingly and imposed abstraction from the phenomenal. The expressive an symbolic function of the color is accompanied by its primary function of connective link between spirit, a work of art and nature. The canvas is transformed, in the words of Kandinsky, in Impression, where in the work is still visible the personal and direct impression of the external nature. But do not forget that the psychic and the physical effect of nuances are reconciled by the action and, therefore, by the emotion, that takes shape in the hands of the inspired, the one that can tell the story irregular harmoniously. September, 2013, Denitza Nedkova, Bologna Italy The Art Critic will be presented in the art catalogue «Mondadori» Italy 2014
Art Critics & Press "Softharmonies, navigate the ocean of color. Fires burn in the Styx of thoughts, only to be ferried by Charon, and find the right path. Light trails cross the threshold prohibited. The compositions of visual Sirenes lead us to make this trip immaterial between that and whispered. Lead us to analyze a world based on the dichotomy dark / light. Real dances of light make their appearance on the canvas. The dark, with its endless shadows, we show our eyes. The painting de Sirenes and a painting that reworks the dictates of a very creative psyche and we reported the synthesis of signs through a highly chromatic language learned. A contemporary language, destined to remain in the most important art history books.“ - Art Critic from Salvatore Russo of Sirenes artwork in the International Contemporary Artbook "Segnalati 2013 - published in BrĂźssels May 4th 2013 Januar 2013 - Debbie Chapman, United Kingdom started her online artblog with an introduction of Sirenes http://deborahelizabeth.co.uk/2013/01/05/introductions/ August 2013 - Sirenes is being interviewed in the New York based artblog Artograma by Gigi http://artograma.com/2013/08/07/sirenes/
Budstikka, 2013
Art Books and Magazines
Find more details about Sirenes in Artbooks and –magazines at http://www.sirenes.no/Sirenes-Art-publications_183.html
Art Awards •
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September 2012 – Sirenes received a Special Recognition Award with the painting "Water Lillies" in the Open Art Competition January.2013 - Sirenes was awarded with an Honorable Mention for her participation in the 4th art contest on Artavita January 2013 Sirenes recieved a Special Recognition Award with the painting "Boots in River" in the All Woman Art Exhibition March2013 Sirenes recieved a Special Recognition Award with the painting "Snow and water" in the Abstract Art Exhibition Find more details about Sirenes art awards at http://www.lightspacetime.com/open-2012-art-exhibitionoctober/
Siren Merete Fristad Sirenes Atelie: Jansveien 16 1354 BĂŚrums Verk Tlf: +47 47 88 98 41 Mail: post@sirenes.no Web-site www.sirenes.no Instagram: Sirenesgallery Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sigurdsartblog Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SirensMalerier
Sirenes, Agora Gallery 2013
Sirenes Contact details ++