In our travels, Mr. F and I have seen some beautiful sights from the highway. During our time in Yosemite, we often found ourselves driving through the park from the valley up to our campground after nightfall. There was something that completely enchanted me about the mountains silhouetted against the night sky and the way the headlights lit up the trees to a surprisingly bright green. In these paintings from her Roads and Carousel series, UK artist Sarah Shaw captures that magic to be found in the night.
These paintings seem to glow with that mystical light that happens when the landscape is lit artificially, spotlighting small sections and leaving others to blackness. How true that seems sometimes in life.. we focus our light, our attention on what is in front of us, the needs of that moment, while the periphery waits in silence for its turn.
I like to think of life like a puzzle. We are given all these disjointed bits yet they fit together in a way that is unique to our own personality and experience. These collages by Cincinnati artist M Michael Smith remind me that though we may draw from similar backgrounds, our piles of pieces are only our own.
As we grow and mature, we add to our “piles” and though the pieces being added might be similar to others’, our pile is particular to us. That piece that peeks out from the bottom of your pile, significant, but only barely, maybe at the top and center of my heap. In his artist statement, M Michael Smith reveals that touch is central to his work. I’m of course giving my own interpretation, seeing these collages as symbols not of physical touch but of how our lives are touched and molded by experience.
Most artist statements today are filled with thoughts on motivation and meaning. I think we’ve somehow become uncomfortable with the idea of just making art for the sake of creating. There must be some kind of deep intellectual thought behind those marks! And perhaps there always is on one level. For an artist like Rose Masterpol, the reason they create is for the pure pleasure of the process.
The advent of photography freed painters from the need to represent. We can, instead, fully revel in the action and process of the painting itself. Full immersion into pure expression, building layer upon layer of mark and color until what we see is fully pleasing to the artist’s eye. The viewer then, is left to find what it is that those marks mean to them, engaging the outsider with the intimate creation.
Some people find horizontal lines soothing. Maybe I’m weird, but I almost always prefer vertical lines. Perhaps a nod to the soaring peaks of the mountains I love so much? Textile artist Nike Schroeder takes full advantage of verticality in her string sculptures and I can’t get enough of them.
The tactile quality of the string and the way it hangs seems to give a nod in my eye to indigenous garments and weavings. There is also an intriguing sense of color field painting to each piece, as the individual string colors shift gradually, almost imperceptibly to create depth, line and shadow. The nature lover in me sees moss silently drooping in fog, a waterfall cascading over a cliffside. Silent representations of a world of life.
To see more of Nike Schroeder’s work, please visit her website.
There is work that enchants us for a moment, we think, “oh, that’s very nice!” but then move on, maybe occasionally coming back to it. But then there is work that is completely mesmerizing from the moment we see it, drawing us in and nearly drowning us in its magic. These watercolors by Seattle artist Jeffrey Simmons have me utterly hypnotized with their radiating forms and precisely blurred lines.
These pulsating forms have an incredibly cosmic quality, like stars shining brightly in the blackest night. The shifts in color are so incredibly subtle, that I find my eyes moving almost imperceptibly between forms, diving down into the depths and then emerging to the feathery banks. This is watercolor taken to another universe, devoid of tradition and full of possibility.
To see more of Jeffrey Simmons‘ work, please visit his website. You can see his work in person at Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, one of my favorite spots in my favorite city.
On the way back to the Coast from Yosemite, Mr. F and I decided to spend the day in Napa Valley to do a little wine tasting. Serendipitously, we happened to pass through St. Helena where there were a few galleries I couldn’t wait to peruse. As we walked into Caldwell Snyder Gallery, Mr. F and I were both immediately drawn to the enigmatic work of Cole Morgan.
One of the best things about gallery hopping with Mr. F is when we’re both intrigued by the work of the same artist and share what we love about it. Morgan’s use of circles and shadows, along with carefully crafted yet spontaneously appearing layers give his work an interesting crypticness. Spheres seem to float yet are grounded with shadow, so which is their reality?
I am always amazed at the way an artist’s mind will interpret a given subject. I believe artists “see” in certain palettes, even when looking at a thing that is obviously one color, the artist feels it as another. Such seems to be the way of Australian abstract painter Jo Davenport, whose expressionistic interpretations of landscape, instead of being literal regurgitations of a scene, are spontaneous bursts of color and mark.
As we transition from summer into autumn, these paintings remind me of how utterly changeable and temporal our landscape is. As branches, grow, then break, soil erodes, flowers seed, and light changes, a given scene will never be exactly the same as it is in one exact moment.
While Mr. F and I are camping in Yosemite, I’m resharing some posts you might have missed the first go ’round! Enjoy!
Our memories of places and experiences are not simply visual recollections of what we saw, but a culmination of all that our senses absorbed at the time. The sounds, the smells, our impressions of and reactions to our surroundings. It is in this intuitive way that Portland artist Karen Silve translates her own memorable moments into abstractions of rich layers, swirls and drips of paint.
Market VI, acrylic on canvas, 50×60
Open air markets are cacophonies of stimulation– full of mounds of colorful produce, people talking, laughing, fragrances of coffee, freshly baked pastries and other yummies– all swirl around us. ( Can’t wait for the market here to open for Spring! ) Silve captures the friendly frenzy in her Market Series. ( above & below )
Market IX, acrylic on canvas, 42×46
For her Sacred Places series, she explores the impact of a different kind of stimulation, those stolen moments found when we are surrounded by the quiet of nature. Being in Portland, Silve has access to some of the most spectacular natural spaces in the world ( can you tell I love Oregon?! ). A favorite of hers, and mine, is the Columbia River Gorge, whose lush and quiet beauty she captures in paint.
Sacred Veil II, acrylic on canvas, 58×68
Through our travels, many times I find myself feeling like I’m a bit more attuned to my location and experiences. Perhaps because we are experiencing new places so often, that each one seems enchanting and special in its own way. But there are also times when we fall into the repetition and monotony of every day life and forget that each place and day is unique. Karen Silve’s intuitive expressions of her experiences are reminding me to be fully in each moment, immersing myself into making of a memory.
Market VII, acrylic on canvas, 50×60Morning Glow, acrylic on canvas, 48×48
To see more of Karen Silve’s work, please visit her website. In Portland, her work can be seen at Portland Fine Art, but check out her website for representing galleries in New York, Washington, DC, Chicago, California and the UK. Featured image is Yellow Rapture, acrylic on canvas, 96×48. All images are via the artist’s website.
While Mr. F and I are camping in Yosemite, I’m resharing some posts you might have missed the first go ’round! Enjoy!
Just the other day, I was saying to Mr. Forager, “Can you believe it’s been almost two years since..” We seem to say that to each other a lot these days. Time just moves really quickly, especially when you’re looking back. In her work, Toronto artist Monica Tap investigates the line between movement and perception, resulting in dazzling abstracted landscapes.
Six Ways from Sunday: Tuesday, oil on canvas, 100×60
Tap bases her work on Quicktime videos of the streaming landscape as seen from the windows of cars, buses, and trains. Reproducing that magical effect of obscured color and light we so enjoyed as kids.. staring out the window as the world passed us by.
Six Ways from Sunday, oil on canvas, 100×60Six Ways from Sunday: Thursday, oil on canvas, 100×60
During those long car or train rides, we couldn’t wait to get where we were going, so often we enjoyed just letting the blur go by. But as adults, I wish I could just stop the blur sometimes and enjoy it for the wonderful time it is.
Six Ways from Sunday: Friday, oil on canvas, 100×60
Is life moving too fast for you these days? Or maybe, like me, you’re impatiently waiting for a change and things don’t seem to be moving fast enough?! Want to see more of Monica Tap’s intriguing landscapes? Visit her website here.
Kickin’ off a new month with a holiday ( for most of us ) and a new Featured Artist, you say? Well, I’ll take that! I’m excited to feature the abstract work of South Florida artist Brenda Hope Zappitell all September long!
These abstract intuitive paintings have such a delicious rhythm to them, they almost seem to pulsate! Brenda paints on a large scale, most paintings clocking in at more than four feet square, giving her work an enveloping nature. There are also subtle layers of paint and beautiful little pockets of color and line that become so much more powerful at a larger size.
To see more of Brenda Hope Zappitell‘s work, please visit her website and watch the blog all month long! Click over to the Artsy Forager Facebook Page to see what gorgeous Zappitell is gracing our cover, along with an album of some of my personal favorites.
