Gary Love is a new photographer to the Art Show this year. Love focuses on nature, capturing the grandness of the world we live in. Working in vibrant color, he has an eye for the geometric, patterns, and line as they occur in trees, grouping of pebbles, or the desert. Wherever the scene, you feel like you are actually standing observing it yourself. While Love has no formal training, he has been photographing landscapes for years. It is important to him to photograph "no more than what was actually before [the] lens at the time of the shot, nothing more-nothing less"--he'll never remove an object to create a composition and the colors in his photographs were not changed digitally. Love shoots in the United States and worldwide.
Carol Fitzsimmons takes horses as the subject for her watercolors. She places the horses on abstract backgrounds, incorporating shapes and words. Fitzsimmons first draws the foundation of the painting, and takes that beginning as a time to explore where the painting will go. Her latest series is the BEGIN AGAIN SERIES, works addressing the nature of constantly beginning again in the cycle of our lives. She also paints dogs; all her animals are beautifully rendered with dramatic shadows. The horses show themselves to be powerful, but are never anthropomorphized. Fitzsimmons doesn't paint with a simple moral in mind, she more so ruminates on how life proceeds through various situations good and bad.
There is an urgency and quickness to Christine Bartling's jewelry designs, verging on a harsh physicality. Brash and bold lines of yellow and white gold and sterling silver twist to create earrings, rings, necklaces and more. There is a feel of art deco style in Bartling's work, but this look is entirely her own, and very contemporary. Extra flair is added with stones such as diamonds, tourmalines, pearls and sapphires, and the use of ebony and Corian Marble (as seen here on the above earrings). She often combines metals of different colors and finishes within one piece. Bartling first designs her jewelry on paper and decides on her materials, then uses traditional goldsmithing techniques to create the pieces.
England-born printmaker Linda Adato's style of softened realism looks as if it belongs in an illustrated book for adults. Her city-scapes and capturings of place make the viewer want to know more about the scene. Occasional abstractions add delight. Adato is another artist showing the familiar skyline of New York City in a unique way. Overall, her scenes have a sense of privacy and solitude, places for deep thought or simple stillness. Adato uses the printmaking technique of intaglio, where the artist first etches below the surface of the plate. While creating, Adato places import on color and lighting, but she often starts a work with shapes and forms. At the 2011 Armonk Outdoor Art Show Adato's work won first place in the Printmaking/Drawing/Pastels category, and we are looking forward to seeing her again this year.
"Wizard Old, Wizard New, Wizard One Plus Wizard Two"
Joel Beckwith
Joel Beckwith is a Vermont artist with a haunting style. His subjects include people and animals. The animals are often presented against a simple background, whereas the people seem to live in a perpetual circus, their lined faces almost ghoulish. His etchings are a little scary, but also a lot of fun. He works both in black and white and in color. He also paints, with watercolor and acrylic. Beckwith has been a working artist for decades after graduating from Bowdoin College, and he is now the Artist in Residence at the Elaine Beckwith Gallery in Jamaica, Vermont.
Prince Duncan-Williams creates silk mosaics of beautiful texture and color. Duncan-Williams's abstract style involves the dance of many shapes and lines, both hard-edged and fluid. With the abundance of shapes interacting on the canvas, it is no surprise to find out that Duncan-Williams lists Pablo Picasso as an inspiration. There is a great sense of movement in many of the works, and jazz music is another inspiration. Duncan-Williams has a whole series on jazz, showing dancers and musicians in action and sometimes just the instruments themselves. He also has series on religion and his native Ghana, where he combines traditional African art and modernism, among others. Duncan-Williams's family has been working with silk thread art for generations, although he originally studied architecture. For each work, he hand-lays the rows of thread, changing directions to create depth (in the above work you can notice how he used this technique to create knuckles and fingers on the musicians' hands). While most of Duncan-Williams scenes are bursting with color, the few works in a more subdued palette do not lack in power. He is a new artist at the Armonk Outdoor Art Show this year, and we're pleased to welcome him as a new member of the Show.
Charles Wildbank paints on a grand scale. Working and living in Long Island, Wildbank creates energetic work. His paintings are colorful and lush, with an amount of gloss. He studied at Pratt Institute, where he first explored photorealism. His latest series, HADO, is more fantastical and abstract, but still full of detail and a joyful energy. The series was inspired by Dr. Masuru Emoto, whose research stated that thought can make a visible mark on matter. Whatever Wildbank's subject--nature, people, trinkets or fruit in still life--his work is always fun and beautiful.
Judi Offenberg creates colorful and enchantingly patterned paintings on silk. Offenberg was a textile designer for sixteen years and continues to incorporate that influence into her work. She loves exploring color, texture and detail. Flowers show up often in her work, bursting with energy. Patterns will overlap and combine. Some of her subjects are physical things--vases with flowers, trees, a chair--decorated with her patterns, and sometimes the pattern itself is the subject of the painting. She uses steam-set dyes for her intense colors, and gutta resist to keep dyes from blending with one another. Her canvas is pure silk.
Gwen Bennett's work may very well be one of the most colorful at the Art Show this year. That is because this newcomer to the show makes extravagant feathered masks. Bennett's interest in feathers lies in the way feathers have been used historically in ritual and magic. She has a background in biology and has been working with feathers since the 70s. The feathers are all in their natural color (except for the ones she dyes black) and come from many different types of birds, including parrots, peacocks, turkeys, and pheasants. Some feathers come from bird owners--when their pets molt yearly--while others are from feather dealers. Don't worry, she washes and steams feathers before using them. Large wing and tail feathers create the majestic size of the masks, and throughout the process Bennett puts great care into symmetry. Her masks are extremely durable, and can be used as decor or worn.
Deborah Falls' flowers and plants snake across her raw silk canvas in a subdued palette. Delicate details bring the flowers to life. Falls paints idiosyncratic plants, ones with extravagantly curled petals and leaves that twist in loop-de-doos. These plants are lush and full of personality, her style is playfully sophisticated. The raw silk that Falls paints on gives an interesting texture and an awareness to the inherent flatness of the subject. Any flower lover would be delighted by this unique take on the subject.
Stephen Wilson's impressionistic photographs give us a fractured and distorted world. Wilson works with digital photography and shoots reflections on water's surface. The explanation is simple, but the outcome hardly is, the movement of water and the camera's shutter speed create beautiful imagery. Wilson also occasionally uses photoshop, to exaggerate colors. The subject that is in the reflection is not always readily apparent, making some photographs more abstract than others. There are buildings, bridges, trees, flags and more. One project had him photographing in Venice, which must have been a constant delight. Wilson is a new artist to the Armonk Outdoor Art Show in 2012, and we look forward to welcoming him.
