OUR CONNECTION WITH NATURE — Earth Day 2021

APRIL 23  –  JUNE 1, 2021

This year has had extreme challenges. Many have sought out nature as a stabilizing, nurturing place. How has your experience with nature informed your art? How do you “feel” nature in your art? Pierre Bonnard said, “Art will never be able to exist without nature.”

Gallery Sitka’s annual Earth Day Art Exhibition was launched on April 23rd with our online opening at 7 PM EST.

This year our Earth Day 2021 show is curated by NYC artist Beth Barry.

View the Show on Pinterest

The Show

Curator

Beth Barry

Represented by Gallery Sitka

Artist Statement

When I first flew in an airplane, I was struck by the color, shapes, and shadows created by the light from the sun. The sun influenced everything, infusing the already rich palette of the landscapes and seascapes with what felt like a supernatural light. As the plane moved, the images seemed to move as well. The shapes bounced and swayed in their own rhythmic way. This was all very exciting to me and the experience has informed my artwork ever since. Light, color, and movement are basic elements of all of my paintings.

My work has also been strongly influenced by the coastline of Massachusetts. I grew up there and have always felt tremendous happiness and excitement at the beach. Pleasure is a large part of my process and a critical part of the finished piece. My paintings are places of happiness.

Amy Regalia

amyregalia.com

Amy Regalia, b. 1976 Redwood City, CA, is a large format photographer focusing on urban liminal space. After graduating from California College of the Arts in 2000 she began working as a photo conservator for clients including the estate of Diane Arbus, Richard Misrach, and Robert Adams. With her first solo show, Leavings at SF Camera Work in 2007, she established what was to become a grounding theme throughout her work—a conscious awareness and deliberate representation of the places in-between — imbuing disregarded and deliberately ignored signs of human existence with a presence that allows us to consider the sublime beauty of our quotidian experiences.

In 2009 Regalia moved to West Africa where she completed a series of unconventional street portraits in Dakar, Senegal (Visitor, 2015) and a series of television stills in the Canary Islands (Televisión Canaria, 2013). In 2015 Regalia repatriated, settling in New York. Upon her return, she picked up where she had left off continuing her Leavings series with a focus on the Bronx. She returned to work on the prints of Diane Arbus in 2018. Her investigation of new and untapped corners of her environment, in the Bronx and around the New York Metropolitan area, continues to create new avenues of exploration. She currently lives and works in New Rochelle with her husband and two rescue cats.

Artist Statement

Every year weather events get more severe with massive snowstorms, floods and fires. This past year those events acquired new context as they transpired concurrently with the Pandemic. Made one year into quarantine, these images consist of impressions my body left in the snow on the roof of my building. When recorded by my camera during specific weather conditions the figure reads as convexly three-dimensional, conveying a particular emotion. Nature provided me the canvas and the solace needed to reflect on matters of grief, gratitude and uncertainty during a challenging time.

Angelique Luro

Represented by Gallery Sitka

Born and raised in Maine, Angelique has resided here for most of her life. She is an empathic, intuitive, abstract artist who draws from her experiences as a mother, professional gardener, Reiki healer, and former yoga instructor. Discernment is at the forefront of the creative process for her. Inspired by the love of family, animals, and the natural world, she blends her innate knowledge of color, texture, and line with curiosity and a sense of exploration. She currently lives on a small farm in southern Maine with her husband and their four equines, two dogs, and a cat.

Angelique’s work may be seen at The Art Center, Dover, N.H.; The Art Coop in Kennebunk, Maine; Gallery Sitka, Shirley, Mass.; and the York Art Association. She is a member of the Kittery Art Association (Member Show, March 2020) and the Boothbay Region Art Association. Upcoming and past exhibits include Gallery Sitka Earth Day Show, April–June 2020, and The Art Center, Mixed Media Show July–August 2020.

Angelique holds a BS in Graphic Design from Fitchburg State College (1992), and an AS in Business and Resource Management, University of Maine (1985).

Artist Statement

2020 ‘Frond’ is an observation of ferns unfurling in the summer in fresh shades of chartreuse, lime, and green. This work maybe hung horizontally or vertically.

Anne Bascove

bascove.com

A. Bascove is a NYC-based collagist, painter, and printmaker. Born in Philadelphia, she received her B.A. from the Philadelphia College of Art. In Paris, living by the Seine, she started drawing bridges, an obsession that only intensified on her return to NYC. “From an early age I learned that the world only makes sense to me through art. My fascination with science, architecture, and literature has always driven my explorations. I love to share that exhilaration and curiosity through my work.” She has lectured and arranged events with the Museum of the City of New York, the Arsenal in Central Park, the Central Park Conservancy, Municipal Art Society, New York University’s Fales Library, and Hudson River Museum.

Three collections of her paintings have been published, accompanied by her edited anthologies of related writings:

• Sustenance & Desire: A Food Lover’s.
• Anthology of Sensuality and Humor, Where Books Fall Open: A Reader’s Anthology of Wit And Passion, and Stone and Steel:
• Paintings & Writings Celebrating the Bridges of New York City.

Her political and literary work is in the Permanent Collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum. As a culture writer, she has contributed to Arte Fuse, Stay Thirsty, and New York Arts Magazine. Chosen by the US State Department’s Art in Embassies Cultural Exchange, her work was exhibited at the American Embassies of Sofia, Bulgaria and Muscat, Oman from 2016- 2019.

Collections

Museum of the City of New York, NYC, U. S. Department of State, Art in Embassies, The Norman Rockwell Museum, MA, University of Texas at Tyler, TX, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Linda Lee Alter Collection of Art by Women, PA, Washington University in St.

Louis, MO, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, NYC, The Noble Maritime Collection, NYC, Harry Ransom Collection, University of Texas at Austin, TX, The New York Public Library, Berg

Collection, NYC, The Library and National Archives, Canada, Rachofsky Collection, TX, Time Warner Collection, NY, The Wittliff Collections, Texas State University, TX, Norwalk Transit

District, Norwalk, CT, Oresman Collection, NYC, MTA, Arts for Transit, NYC, Special

Collections at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, Musée de Cherbourg, France

To Be Wild & Perfect by Anne Bascove
Photography & Collage | 16 x 20″

Artist Statement

I always try to be at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for that almost swooningly beautiful event- the  blooming of the tree peonies. The varieties and colors are stunning, one more extraordinary than the another. In my collages, my photographs are integrated with magazine and book scraps, creating a sense of movement and energy. Looking within each blossom, and reconstructing parts that are used for reproduction creates a lively intimacy. Pairing them with natural fauna adds to the celebration of the individual elements as both brilliantly effective and elegant in form.

Barbara Groh

barbaragroh.com

Barbara Groh is a visual artist who has immersed herself in the creative process for over four decades creating highly personal abstract works of art. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums and has appeared in numerous publications and collections. Groh, who holds an MFA from Vermont College of Norwich University, has shared her talents and life experiences through teaching on numerous art faculties, primarily Drawing and Painting. She has moved her primary residence and studio from the countryside in Sweden to her studio in Brooklyn, NY. The many travels between the two continents continue to inform her visual language as her sense of place, space and time are now influenced by a new home and landscape.

Artist Statement

The beautiful quartz beaches of Block Island are smoothed by the continual movement of the waves – ever shifting and forming by the tides, storms, and environmental changes. I walked on to a live performance of colored sea grasses. Tangles and straightened -rearranged with every wave – ebb and flow. With every surge, a new drawing in line appeared in the sand, just for the moment, just for me to notice. MAINE TIDAL STONE: When one goes to the ocean in Maine, the time of day is a significant part of the experience. The incoming and outgoing tides dictate that which is physical and visual. My walks over what was the ocean a few hours earlier was a riot of texture and color. The grey ocean muck, the rocks, and the golden seaweeds were a maze of woven sea life exposed to me, only to disappear, back to another world. The sea verged and then left me.

Barbara Swanson Sherman

barbaraswansonsherman.com

Barbara Swanson Sherman studied at the Art Students League, taught at a K-12 private school for 15 years and now lives and works in Greenwich Village. Her works on paper invite the viewer to experience a sense of fun, whimsy, and possibility. Changes in scale awaken the eye to new ways of seeing and a vision of the beauty and wholeness of creation. To quote Georgia O’Keeffe, “No one really sees…we haven’t time, and it takes time…like it takes time to have a friend.” Here she spent some time with a Bear and an American Bison.

Bonnie Steinsnyder

steinsnyder.com

Artist Statement

Species of orchids are going extinct due to climate change. They are such amazing plants, icons for nature’s artistry. I am inspired by their shapes, gestures and colors, which also suggest narratives to me. Hopefully my paintings will preserve some of the delicate natural beauty of these flowers.

Flowers are also a reminder that winter must end. I always went to the NYBG Orchid Show every spring to do studies, take photos and refresh my painting motivation for the year ahead. Except for these last 2 years with Covid disrupting the event. The blooms are freshness and renewal, desperately needed by people.

Technically, I am exploring the luminous glow of transparent watercolor. The delicacy of petals, surface decorations and bold shapes are perfect for flowing brushstrokes, wet in wet washes and experimental techniques. Paint manipulation both in flow and in aggressive physical attack puts part of me in every painting.

Resume (partial)

Bridie Wolejko

bridiewoejko.com

Bridie Wolejko is a native Bostonian who now calls Lunenburg, MA her home. She has been a practicing artist for over 20 years exhibiting her work in galleries all over the state. She recently went back to school, and earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a Minor in Studio Art from Fitchburg State University. She is now enrolled in their Arts Education M.Ed. program with the goal of becoming a licensed art teacher. She is also a recent graduate of the Fitchburg Community Art Stewards program, and contributed five murals to the Activate Mill Street Project in 2019.  Primarily a painter focusing on landscape, nature, and illustrative work, Bridie has recently tried her hand at collage and is immensely enjoying the interplay of shapes and colors. She will be the 2021 Alumni Artist at the Sanders Gallery at Fitchburg State.

Artist Statement

Based on both the Asian and Native American creation myths of the earth forming on a giant turtle’s back. The third collage in the series continues the theme and features collage pieces including pink rhododendrons, a tarsier, a mosquito in amber, and a butterfly, set on a light sage colored acrylic painted board.

Carolyn Todd

Represented by Gallery Sitka

I am a naturalist who has studied birds, reptiles, and natural habitats in Texas and the southwest for over 40 years. In the last four years, I have studied and drawn plants and trees primarily at Tower Hill as well as teach drawing there for different events.

I was awarded an art scholarship to attend the University of Texas at Austin, where I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. I also earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of Houston in the Fine Arts and Arts Education. I have worked as a secondary art teacher, a private and public art instructor for adults and youth, and an art therapist. I was proud to be selected as the “Artist in Residence” for the National Park Service, Lake Amistad near Del Rio, Texas. The solo show “El Cielo, Las Mesas y El Rio Diablo” was celebrated with Sul Ross State University faculty, local artists, and the public in Del Rio, Texas.

My paintings, drawings, and illustrations are in private collections in the United States, Europe, and South America. I am a member of  Central Massachusetts Women’s Caucus for Art,  Fitchburg Cultural Council, and Princeton Art Society, among others. I have been painting and teaching drawing, encaustic, oil, acrylic, and watercolor painting for most of my art career.

I have been fortunate to exhibit with friends and art colleagues in Texas and Massachusetts. Currently, my teaching includes the Fitchburg State University ALFA program, private students, and adults with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) for the Seven Hills Foundation/Creative Minds program in partnership with the Worcester Art Museum.

Artist Statement

Global is a carved and thickly painted encaustic painting focused on my view of the potential impact of global warming caused by a rise in sea levels on communities and wildlife habitats.

Casey Chalem Anderson

CaseyArt.com

Casey Chalem Anderson is a Greenwich Village native who passionately creates oil paintings of and inspired by the Hamptons landscape and its natural forms. Casey splits her time between Sag Harbor and New York City, immersing herself in both natural and urban artistic worlds.

As a child growing up in New York City, Casey’s parents took her to Greenwich Village poetry readings, gallery openings, dance recitals, avant-garde theater presentations and museums. She began to paint seriously at the High School of Art and Design, N.Y.C., also studying figure drawing at the Art Students League. She graduated from University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in Art.

Casey’s newest works are an abstract series that use the colors of her Hamptons palette in novel, abstract forms that connect, but also inform, her realist works.

Artist Statement

Color and line that relates to the experience of living by the sea.

An expression of the transparent light seen through two on-coming waves at the ocean.

Cecilia André

ceciliaandre.com

Cecilia André is a painter from a family of Lebanese immigrants to Brazil, where she got a BFA and a BAE from Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation. In 1991 she moved to New York, where she studied in art programs of the New York Studio School, Pratt Institute and School of Visual Arts. With an extensive background in art education, André has taught arts in both countries. She sustains a long-time studio teaching practice, and has curated tours of contemporary art galleries for nine years.

The artist has shown in important museums in Brazil, where she was represented by Adriana Penteado Contemporary Art Gallery. In the U.S., she has shown in Saint Louis (MO), South Orange and Montclair (NJ). In NY she had exhibitions at different venues, including a solo exhibition curated by A.I.R. founder Kazuko Miyamoto, at Gallery OneTwentyEight. And she has participated in four editions of the NYC Figment Arts Festival.

Currently she is one of six female artists selected as an AnkhLave Arts Alliance fellow. She received a Queens Council of Arts grant for an outdoor installation at the Queens Botanical Garden that was on view in the summer of 2020. Now, in 2021, AnkhLave fellows come together again, displaying new explorations that are in conversation with the original public works.

Her most recent solo show was in 2019 at Plaxall Gallery, where she presented her work with fabric and transparencies. Her translucent pieces filtered sunlight to fill the space with light and color. In that same year, Cecilia’s light capturing sculptures were featured in the sculpture show ”From Miniscule to Monumental” at The Factory in Long Island City, and she was featured in the group show Art in the Boros VI at Denise Bibro Gallery in Chelsea, representing LIC/Queens.

Last October she was featured in a group exhibition by LIC-Artists at CultureLab.LIC,  “Someone Will Remember Us, even from another time”, regarding the ratification of the 19^th amendment. And she was also on view in the digital shows “Pandemic Proof” and  “Essential Works”, curated by ODETTA Gallery and hosted by SHIM Art Network on Artsy website.

The artist participated in two residencies in Brazil creating site-specific outdoor installations. The first one in 2017 was the Residency Program SACII, at Instituto Baía dos Vermelhos – a nature preserve and amphitheater in Ilhabela. The last one in 2019 was the Art Farm Project, at Santo Antonio Farm, in Amparo.

Artist Statement

I consider sustainability within the process of artmaking. “Pink Discs” upcycles an ornate piece of a well-loved heirloom tablecloth tensioned onto reused stretchers. Built atop of it are nails with transparent disks made in vinyl, which cast colored round shadows. A third kind of circle shape, now painted, competes to complete the ephemeral image where the pink color dominates. The piece plays with properties of light and materials, creating awareness for reuse of materials, and innovation to reduce waste produced in modern society.

Colette Aline Shumate-Smith

Represented by Gallery Sitka

Colette Aline Shumate-Smith was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Seattle. Her mother and Swedish relatives were artists. She decided early on to pursue a career in art and apprenticed with her mother. Through The Bob Hope Heart Institute, Colette’s early sculptures traveled the world when she was 21. A student of Jacob Lawrence, Howard Kottler, Patty Warashina, George Tsutakawa, and Glen Alps, Colette had many influences as she pursued her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Seattle at the University of Washington. In 1982 she went on to Boston University. While working on her Masters at the Program in Artistry at B.U., Colette was influenced by Chris Gustin, Richard Hirsh, and Nancy Smith.

Morning in Maine by Colette Aline Shumate-Smith
Oil on Canvas | 18 x 18″

Colleen Deery

colleendeery.com

Colleen Deery is a New York City based painter working primarily in oils, with a concentration on landscapes.  Her work has been included in various group exhibitions in New York City and state, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, including at the Cork Gallery at Avery Fischer Hall, the Cape Cod Museum of Art, the Queens College Art Center, and, most recently at LABSpace, Hillsdale, NY.  Colleen’s most recent solo exhibition was Homecoming: Irish Landscapes, curated by Veronica Kurian, at the Dobbs Ferry Public Library Gallery, Dobbs Ferry, NY in 2015.  She exhibited as part of the Hullaballoo Collective from 2012 – 2014, and as part of The Women Artist Team in 2017, including internationally at Na Gallery, Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea.  One of her landscape paintings is on permanent display at Foras Cultuir Uladh (The Ulster Cultural Institute) in Gleann Cholm Cille, County Donegal, Ireland.  In 2013, Colleen was awarded a commission to design a mural for the Woodside branch of the Queens Public Library as part of the Greening Libraries Initiative in Western Queens.  She holds a Bachelor of Science Cum Laude in Visual/Fine Arts from the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Artist Statement

Skellig rocks in the fog (“sa ceo”)- located off the coast of southwest County Kerry, Ireland.

Daniel Senie

Represented by Gallery Sitka

Daniel Senie is a photographer, singer/songwriter, and outdoor enthusiast. Having grown up in both the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts and in the concrete canyons of New York City, he finds interesting subjects in both urban and natural environments. Whether it is the golden light of the fading fall, the shades of blue of the ocean deep, or the architectural detail of the urban landscape, he delights in the play of light and color that create images of depth and beauty.

When not found with a camera in hand, there’s a good chance a guitar, harmonica, or other instruments will be involved. He and his wife, Faith, perform regionally, singing their original songs and select covers.

Desmond Johnson

Desmond Johnson is a photographer and engineer living in central Massachusetts that has an interest in a variety of photographic genres but with an affinity for landscapes and portraitures. He loves both the artistic and technical aspects of photography which shows in the aesthetics and beauty of his photographs. He has exhibited his work in the GALA Spring Art Show and the Small Stones Festival of the Arts. His images have received International recognition in the Tokyo International Foto Awards, the B&W Spider Awards and also been published in books and on-line.

Artist Statement

As a photographer, I strive to present the simple beauty and occurrences of nature; the colors of a setting/rising sun, the flow of water, the countenance and beauty of a face. It amazes me how the camera reveals these things that are not quite obvious to the casual observer. Beaumont Newhall once said “We are not interested in the unusual, but in the usual seen unusually.” As such it is my photographic journey to recognize and capture the usually simple and beautiful things of nature.

Cliff at Aquinnah Moshup Beach at sunset.

Diane Churchill

dianechurchill.com

Diane Churchill is a painter living in Nyack, NY with a studio at the Garnerville.

Arts Center in West Garnerville, NY. She is an abstract painter whose primary passion Is harnessing the power of color.

She exhibits frequently in Rockland County and New York City, with occasional forays in other parts of the world. Her most recent show was at the  Ray Lagstein Gallery, Nyack. Since the pandemic, she has participated in virtual shows at the Hammond Museum, New York Artists Circle,  Soho 20 Gallery, PFlag, and the Arts Council of Rockland.

She received a degree in Art History from Wellesley College and attended the Brooklyn Museum Art School. She went on to receive an M.A. in Painting at Hunter College.

Artist Statement

This painting is a reverie in gold and silver.  The calligraphic line is meant to suggest an unknown language and my belief that all of nature is calligraphic.

Donna Rega

Follow her on Instagram donnarega@instagram.com
Visit her website www.donnarega.com

Jersey City based visual artist, Donna Rega, has been putting a point on her skills in abstract painting for the past several years. Her work is inspired through emotional intuition. Having a broad perception on art gives her the freedom to interrelate the elements of color, line and texture creating unique works of art.

Artist Statement

Abstract painting is a personal journey of perseverance for me. Through painting and its process, I allow myself the freedom to express my emotional realm through a perceptible language of art. My expressive work is a visible manifestation brought out from within through the emotional fashioning response to the observations, experiences and backdrop of my being.

Eileen Ferara

eileenferara.com

Eileen Ferara is a multidisciplinary artist who incorporates a variety of media in her work, including printmaking, painting, sculpture, book arts, and paper making. Drawing inspiration from the natural world, her work explores our relationship to the environment. Ferara’s work has been included in many exhibits in the US, recent exhibits include ‘Nature and Landscape’ a two-person exhibit at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City and ‘Freed Formats; the book reconsidered’ a traveling book art exhibit. Ferara completed an artist residency at Fire Island National Seashore in New York and was a 2019 artist-in-residence with the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City. She was awarded a 2017 Puffin Foundation grant for her print project on the invasive seedpod of Trapa Natans L. also known as Devil’s head pods. Her work is in the collection of the William Paterson University Galleries, Memorial Sloan Kettering and numerous private collections. She has an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Artist Statement

The alluring scent of Japanese honeysuckle fills my head with thoughts of my childhood summers, running through the neighborhood to the empty lot up the street in my suburban neighborhood in NJ. The honeysuckle seemed to be everywhere, intertwined with a lot of poison ivy climbing up the trees. I was a wild forager, happily sucking the little bit of nectar from the flower that my mother had taught us to carefully pluck, in order to taste the ‘honey.’ I had no idea at the time that this vine growing everywhere is considered an undesirable invasive species that contributes to loss of our native plant species. Using only the silhouette of the flowers in dark colors in this painting implies that things are not always as they seem while also looking back at beautiful memories.

Emily Stedman

emilystedman.com

Born in New York City, Emily Stedman’s family moved to France when she was in first grade. She has lived in a number of places since, including Swarthmore PA, Tenafly, NJ, and Hartford, Conn. Emily shows at NOHO/M55 Gallery in New York City. Her oil and watercolor paintings, have been shown in group and solo shows including The Brooklyn Museum; The Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, New York; Historic Northampton Museum, MA; and numerous other publications and collections. She was Painter-in-Residence at Bryant Park in the summer of 2016 and created a street art mural for the City of Yonkers. Emily received a B.F.A from Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington and an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

Artist Statement

Every year, In the backyard of the house in Cape Cod, blue lilacs appear as if from nowhere. They explode and then in a hair’s breadth they are gone. So much beauty and preparation for such a short time. They are like watercolor itself—immediate and ephemeral. The cat, not wishing to be seen, relaxes near them.

Jacqueline Sferra Rada

nyartistscircle.com

Jacqueline Sferra Rada, a native New Yorker, lives and works in NYC and Long Island. She began her formal art studies after graduation from high school at The Brooklyn Museum Art School and then received a B.A. in Fine Arts cum laude from Hunter College, NYC.  She has been selected to participate in a number of residency programs, among them, Master Painting Program IV at LIU Southampton, A.I.R. program at Nantucket School of Art & Design, Cil Rialaig in Irelant, Bau Institute in Puglia Italy.  She is involved in the NYC art community as a board member of two artist-run organizations and is a member of the National Association of Women Artists, Women In the Arts Foundation and LIC Artists.  Her work is in many private collections.

Artist Statement

The bare winter landscape emphasizes even more how nature never ceases to surround and enfold us in its perfect and imperfect symmetries.  These dark branches against the cobalt blue winter sky, with patches of pure white clouds floating by, caught my attention on a long, monotonous bus ride, turning a mundane day of necessary travel into an extraordinary visceral experience.  Nature never disappoints – we are always in its midst – we only need to be attentive and enjoy its companionship.

Janet Morgan

My long and varied career includes public art, environmental art and teaching, books, costumes and just plain painting. My artwork has expanded out from the depictions of human and deities to landscapes and trees, inspired by worldwide travel and much time in nature. My study of dance has colored all of my art, making it more visceral and full of movement. I had the honor to do three residencies in Death Valley National Park, producing a children’s book from the images and knowledge gained as a drawing instructor for Brooklyn College Geology Field School. I have painted in Kyrgyzstan, Antarctica, Peru, Patagonia and all over the US, but the pandemic has reminded me of the beauty in my own Brooklyn.

Artist Statement

I have done teaching residencies at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY for 14 years, and the trees on campus have great personalities. This one guard the Sauna, twists and turns and dances every day.

Janet Soderberg

janetsoderberg.com

Artist Statement

I love Ginkgo leaves and made many compositions from them. In this piece, I was playing with the various forms the leaves took. They were splitting, curling, and folding up, and I made a little story from them. From a split-leaf out comes a green and yellow one entirely folded up. Finally, a green and yellow leaf appears with lovely, gracefully curling leaf tips. Amazing!

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Jeanne Borofsky

Represented by Gallery Sitka

Jeanne Borofsky, BFA, MFA, is internationally recognized, with paintings, prints and drawings in numerous museums and private collections. Born in New Hampshire, living in Groton Massachusetts, Jeanne has been a practicing artist for over 50 years. She has (and does) make art with watercolors, oils, encaustics, rubber stamps, collages and prints (traditional, photographic, encaustic & digital). Represented by Gallery Sitka and Gallery Twist, a member of The Boston Printmakers, the Depot Square Artists, the Monotype Guild of New England and New England Wax (past president), Jeanne has also been a digital imaging specialist and graphic designer.

Jennifer Hilton

Jennifer Hilton taught Printmaking and Artists Books at Clark University. She also taught at the Worcester Art Museum, and Montserrat College of Art.

Ms. Hilton has received the Massachusetts Fellowship in Printmaking and Drawing, and Mass. Art Lottery grants.  She was an artist in residence at the Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughn, Ireland, and Great Spruce Head Island, Maine.

Her work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Art Museum, Boston Public Library, Harvard Business School, New Orleans Museum of Art, and Worcester Art Museum.

Jennifer resides in Princeton, MA.

Karin Batten

karinbatten.com

The last few years I have traveled to Vieques, Puerto Rico and Costa Rico to explore the natural environment. It is a magical world of colors, light, and shade. I create from the flora and fauna in plein air, and complete the paintings in my studio in New York. Exploring abstraction, representation and the balance where the two worlds meet. In the process, I cover, expose, restructure, layer, and create texture using magma and gel. I work with acrylic, collage, water-soluble crayons, charcoal, and graphite on canvas. I work spontaneously and intuitively. 

Artist Statement

As the evening approaches the light changes and shadows are created. Calm settles over the land. Painted on graph paper mounted on canvas with acrylic, graphite, gel and crayons.

As I wake up and look at my surrounding of trees and leaves that touch my studio window, I celebrate the light of the morning. Painted on graph paper mounted on canvas with acrylic, graphite, gel and crayons.

Karin Bruckner

kbmatter.com/contact

Born in Switzerland, Karin Bruckner was educated in Switzerland, Germany and the United States.

She holds a Master’s Degree in Architecture from the Technical University in Munich and a Masters of Science in Architecture and Building Design from Columbia University in New York.

After working as an architect in the offices of Richard Meier and Partners and Philip Johnson Architects she focused on her career as an Artist with a particular focus on Printmaking and Mixed Media.

She has exhibited and sold her work worldwide for the past fifteen years.

Karin is a represented artist with Susan Eley Fine Arts and Carter Burden Gallery in New York and is a Teaching Artist at Carter Burden Network.

Kate Shaffer

Represented by Gallery Sitka.

Artist Statement

Our Earth is in crisis. Global warming, Arctic melting, the thinning of the ozone layer, and the extinction of more species in the shortest amount of time ever. What will make us start to be aware of the urgent situation for our earth?

I have begun to paint the beauty of the flowers. Flowers that help the bees and insects to thrive which is the foundation of all life on this planet. Learning to really see the beauty around us will help us appreciate and care for our “Big Blue Marble”.

These paintings are the beginning of a series showing how realism marries with mixed media. It is a metaphor for our relationship with the earth. The earth is the beautiful realism and we, the mixed media. So many different cultures, environments, industry and agriculture. But working together it can be beautiful. We must learn to work with our beloved Earth, it is a symbiotic relationship. As we take care of it and allow it to thrive, so the earth takes care of us and allows us to thrive.

Join me to celebrate the Earth and cherish its beauty so we can continue to enjoy all things green and growing.

Kathy Levine

kathylevine.net

Kathy Levine was born in Queens, New York but grew up in Spain and England. She studied art at Maria Grey College in London, received a B.A. from the State University College at Potsdam and an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute. Her early influences were the people and art from different cultures she saw while traveling with her family in Europe, parts of the Middle East and North Africa. In addition to art and culture, both her parents instilled in her a love of the natural world.

She now lives and works as an artist in New York City. Her awards include a Brooklyn Arts Council Grant, an Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, Artist-in-Residencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Painted Desert/Petrified Forest National Park, an Artist-in-Residence Fellowship from Yellowstone National Park, an honorarium from the Women’s Caucus for Art and a Graduate Fine Arts Fellowship from Pratt Institute.

In addition, Kathy was a founding member of C.A.I.R.N. (City Artists in Response to Nature). CAIRN was a group of New York City artists who explored their individual and collective need to connect with the natural world in a contemporary way. They also organized exhibitions in galleries in New York City and the surrounding area.

Kathy’s work was exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum’s GO Brooklyn Art Open Studio Project. She has also shown her paintings made from recycled handmade cast paper at the Islip Art Museum, Soho Center for Visual Artists, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Garvey/Simon Art Access, Denise Bibro Fine Art, The PanAm Building (now MetLife), The New York Law School, Cornell Medical Center and the Federal Plaza among others.

The following are a few of the collections her work is in: Dun and Bradstreet, The Federal Reserve Bank, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Indiana Dunes National Park, Petrified Forest/Painted Desert National Park and St. Joseph’s College.

Kathy has taught at Brooklyn College, The New School, Pratt Institute, Adelphi University, Dowling College, Fashion Institute of Technology, Suffolk, Nassau and Kingsborough Community Colleges. In addition, she has organized many exhibitions and photographed for the New York Teacher Magazine/Newsletter, Kingsborough Community College, Dowling College and the Chinatown Planning Council.

Artist Statement

The natural world is what inspires and energizes my work. The human connection to nature is of great importance as it affects our well-being and survival.

The human figure combined with other natural elements like leaves and trees in my work conveys the idea that we all share similar qualities and are inter-connected. Even an individual leaf, plant or tree, like a person, is important in that it has the ability to grow, reach out and affect an area greater than itself.

My work is made primarily from recycled paper which is hand-molded over natural and constructed forms to create pieces that are in relief and sometimes three-dimensional. On top of the molded or cast paper, I use oil paints, graphite and some contain water-based photo-transfers as well as other materials. Using recycled paper conveys the regenerative, cyclical quality of life in addition to saving trees.

Madre Tierra or in English Mother Earth was inspired by ceramic tiles that I saw in Benarrabá, a small town in the southern part of Spain. The tiles illustrated and described in writing how since ancient times, the people of the area knew how to care for the land to get the most from it. This piece was cast using recycled paper from a face of a woman on a ceramic planter that I found in the town. The woman’s face became the face of Mother Earth who provides for us if we care for her.

Ksanyx

Represented by Gallery Sitka

Studio: New York, NY
Birth: Kharkiv, Ukraine | 1991

I was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 1991. Growing up in an artistic family (my dad is a sculptor), I started drawing at a very early age. From 2007 to 2011, I studied Graphic Design at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts.

In 2011 I moved to the States, pursuing a career in design while drawing and painting in my spare time. My fascination with abstract shapes and lines may have come from a long experience using my eye as a graphic designer. Design was my focus until 2020 when I started painting large-scale and full-time.

Artist Statement

The Strike Series. The miniature exploration of wave-like shapes in different amplitudes layered over floating shapes. All the elements interact end co-exist in the space, just like all life on the planet.

Lawrence Libby

Represented by Gallery Sitka.

From his earliest years as an Army brat in Europe in the 1960s, Larry was exposed to Renaissance art, and Gothic and Roman architecture on an everyday basis. Back in the States at the age of 13, he took up photography. Entirely self-taught, by 19 he appropriated a bathroom in his parent’s home to use as a darkroom. Living in the Washington DC area during his High School days, Larry often felt his education was better served by riding his bicycle to the National Gallery of Art or the Hirschhorn Museum of Modern Art, rather than attending scheduled classes. A two-decade fallow period followed.

With the invention of digital photography, Larry decided to try photography once again. He claims his major influences to be American only, Grant Wood is considered a Regionalist – better to say something like 20th-century American Realist and Modernist painters Regionalist painters such as Grant Wood, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Winslow Homer, along with great photographers such as Ansel Adams, Edward Steichen and Henri Cartier-Bresson, but it appears his deeper influences predate photography by many centuries. In addition to the Bull Run’s Facebook page and Newsletter, Larry has had photographic work published on various musicians’ websites and Facebook pages. He has also been published in the following periodicals: Time Out New York, Time Out Chicago, Time Out Kiev (Ukraine), Newport (RI) Patch, Shirley Oracle, and Townsend Times.

Lillian Burkart

This artist is affiliated with Gallery Sitka.

Lillian’s studio is in Harvard MA where she throws and hand-builds pottery. Saggar firings are done in her backyard gardens where summer and winter influences abound. Lillian’s path as a ceramic artist parallels her career as a maker of handmade flutes and piccolos. She is the founder of Burkart Flutes and Piccolos of Shirley, MA. It is the use of fire and resources of the earth, clay, silver and gold, that connect metalsmithing and ceramic art in Lillian’s work.  Her attraction to the rich copper coloration in her saggar fired work relates to the warm beauty of rose gold which her handmade flutes are made of. Her life work explores the audio, visual and sensory receptors in us all.

Artist Statement

My current ceramic work reflects my connection to earth, fire and simplicity in form. I strive to elicit both visual and tactile curiosity. The three-dimensional nature of thrown pottery provides me a canvas on which to intrigue a viewer from multiple angles. The silky luster of the surfaces achieved by my techniques invite one to touch, even caress the work. These works are produced in atmospheric firings, which means they are driven by primitive, natural techniques that I control only by adding fuel (wood) and oxygen (atmosphere).

After wheel throwing the vessel, multiple applications of terra sigillata (Latin for ‘sealed earth’) are painted and hand-polished with a soft cloth. The terra sig is made of very fine filtered clay particles that enable burnishing or polishing of the surface prior to a low temperature firing. The earthen colors are not a glaze but are achieved by wrapping the piece in organic materials and salts which are fired all night in a giant barrel of blazing hardwood in my backyard. The encasement (or saggar) keeps the materials in contact with the surface of the work throughout the firing. Hardwood chips and small strands of copper wire add the black elements to the explosion of colors. The fire dances over the saggar through the night permanently imparting the marbled colors to the piece. I surrender to the unpredictable nature of the atmospheric firing and enjoy the serendipity that follows.

Wheel thrown for simplicity, the vessel is intended to be the 3-D canvas of a fiery painting. Pandemic isolation caused the artist to focus on ancient saggar firing techniques, with a contemporary twist. Firing is done in the backyard pit or barrel with burning wood and careful control of oxygen supply. Clay, trees and air, gifts of the earth, are the essence of this work.

Earthly Elegance was made in the spirit of early seed storage vessels, with a very narrow opening to keep animals from raiding the seeds during the winter months. When it was time to plant, the pot would be broken (please don’t!) to make use of the seeds. The marbled effect of the surface is achieved in a primitive atmospheric firing, surrendering to the hours long dance of fire over the clay form.

Fiery imprints are made on the work to evoke a connection to earthen colors, movement, shifting, tension and release.

Linda Cuccurullo

Represented by Gallery Sitka

Linda Cuccurullo’s life-long love and passion for photography began many years ago when she acquired her very first “real” camera – the Konica Autoreflex, which was the first fully-automatic exposure control and Through The Lens (TTL) metering camera, a design feature which subsequently launched the “point and shoot” revolution.

As her passion grew and her technique improved, Linda’s photography began to win awards and has been exhibited in a number of group shows and over a dozen one-woman shows over the years. She has been exhibited extensively in the Cambridge and Boston areas, as well as in various galleries in Gloucester, Hull, Shirley, Edgartown, and Fitchburg, MA, and most recently online. Her photographs are also displayed on her website and on various social media platforms. Winning an MIT photo contest was a great honor for her – the winning image was published at MIT, and many others have been published and reviewed in various newspapers, catalogues, journals and marketing materials.

Linda’s images primarily document the social and architectural milieus of many regions and countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Portugal, Mexico and Indonesia. In her efforts to capture the essence of these unique geographies, she has combined her passion for photography with a love of architecture, food, wine and travel (including the many aspects of natural beauty of those places).

She holds a BA in German and Psychology from Wheaton College-MA and a Master of Library and Information Science (MS) from Simmons College. She has also completed continuing education courses at Harvard Extension School, Boston Architectural College, MIT and Orbitlingua in Orbetello, Italy.​

Artist Statement

These particular images from Chappaquiddick, Martha’s Vineyard, are part of my Coastal New England series.​

It’s impossible not to feel connected with nature when surrounded by the beauty and mystery of this wild and mostly secluded habitat. I have always viewed the ocean as a source of peace, personal calm, and renewal, but never more so than during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. These photographs of the ocean and natural beauty represent an escape from the harsh reality of life and a respite from the consequent stress and fear.

Cape Poge Wildlife Refuge is a 516-acre refuge on Chappaquiddick Island, Martha’s Vineyard. This incredible view of Cape Poge. Gut from the height of the North Neck bluff offers a unique and mysterious perspective on the magical spot below.

Wasque is a 200-acre nature reserve on Chappaquiddick Island, Martha’s Vineyard. This haunting image illustrates the effect of the ocean encroaching on the land at Wasque  – the dead trees are now the only remnants of the ocean’s drastic reclamation of the land.

Marilyn Church

marilynchurch.com

Artist Statement

My art has straddled two very different worlds. I have embraced both painting and courtroom art for over four decades.

After years of observing and drawing at high-profile trials in the tense atmosphere of the courtroom, I realized that the whole truth is never easily knowable. My painting is an exploration of those aspects of people and nature that remain hidden, impenetrable and elusive. My figures are nearly abstractions. The backgrounds are ambiguous and fluid. The movements of vibrantly colored shapes change direction as they pass beyond their boundaries. My courtroom illustrations inform my fine art. I have a passion and attachment to both. Painting abstractions or figures can be as engaging as sketching Bernie Madoff or Woody Allen.

Living by the ocean for so many years, I am influenced by the textures of the coast: seaweed, sand, sea glass and driftwood, and the myriad shades of and reflections of blue skies, bright sunsets and colors that are intensified or bleached by the sun. All of this gets expressed in a variety of media: transparent layers of paint, opaque dried acrylic textures, watercolors, fabric and wood that contrast sometimes, with delicate meandering lines.

Courtroom sketches rarely leave time for nuances, but painting allows for a powerful fusing of the energy of the courtroom with the intuitive and the mysterious.

My works are about reaching out to understand our fragmented nature and the beauty of the fleetingness of life.

I find it hard to think of how to express a scene so filled with such a range of beauty as the beach. The clouds drifting quickly by buoyed by the breezes, the crashing waves, and the driftwood and other strange myriad things the waves bring to the shore. This convergence of feelings inspires to bring together materials with a wide range of weights and textures, from wood to thin muslin to think crusted paint. The bits of warm color add to symphony of sounds and sights.

Resume

Martha Robinson

MarthaRobinsonArt.com

I have been creating art since I was a child. I have a BA in studio art from Connecticut College and have been trained in a wide variety of media. After a nineteen-year career in venture capital, I returned to making art in 2000 with particular focus on oil and encaustic painting, drawing, and printmaking. My work is frequently naturalistic and often symbolic. As a long-time gardener, artist and landscape designer, nature is at times both medium and inspiration. I am especially drawn to the beauty of the rhythms and flows of the natural world as well as larger universal principles in my creative pursuits.

Artist Statement

Naturalistic compositions of drawn images transferred onto wax and watercolor referencing the lyrical flow and transcendence of moving water in nature. A diptych.

Melissa Richard

Represented by Gallery Sitka

Melissa is a visual artist from New Hampshire. Born and raised in New England, her roots in the Northeast run deep. Melissa attended both the University of  Massachusetts and the University of New Hampshire during her Undergraduate studies. After graduating from UNH with a BA in Studio Art, Melissa went on to obtain her MA in Art Education through Boston  University, College of Fine Art. Since her teens, Melissa has had a love for the arts and for working with children. She has taught for over 15 years in various roles from private art lessons to public school teacher, to museum art instructor. Currently, Melissa is working with the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH. Melissa’s art is strongly linked to themes of childhood and memory. Her body of work ranges from small works on paper-heavy with collage; intriguing imagery woven into layers of playful color and rich texture – to large-scale abstract paintings with some elements of collage, vibrant with bold color, frenetic energy, and heavily textured. Thoughtful and deeply emotional, her pieces carry notes of sadness, even a dark undertone all the while being bright with hope and wonder; reflecting the artist’s own experiences with childhood trauma and battles with depression.

Artist Statement

Over the past year, during the pandemic, many of us have turned to nature for comfort and some respite from the news and a means to pass the time being stuck at home. Many like myself began gardening… a lot. I have always had a fondness for nature and a love for working in the yard, but I feel this past year these feelings have grown tremendously. I have even become quite good at keeping indoor plants (something I was horrible with in the past).

As my husband and I spent time together and with our kids in the yard, creating our own little piece of paradise, it seemed the stresses we were under and the problems and troubles facing the world would melt away, for a little while at least. As spring returns this year, and things look more cautiously more hopeful we are returning to the yard and to nature for grounding and stability. Signs of life awakening with each warm day remind us that things will go on and life will remain despite the challenges we have had to face. With our hands in the earth, senses infused with nature’s essence we cultivate the land lovingly, nurturing and growing so much beauty in our environment, we are also doing the same for ourselves. That is the art of the garden.

Mel Smothers

melsmothers.com

Mel Smothers has been painting his series “I PAINTED OVER ANDY WARHOL,” since 2006, first started in 2006 in a Bushwick loft. He calls his concept, “Art about Art.” These latest paintings in his series were painted in isolation during the covid pandemic. They take for their subject lotus gardens he has visited in China and California during unrestricted times. They position the art forms of Warhol with that of nature. Solo, group, public art commissions in NYC, Miami, Chicago, and San Francisco. MFA University of Idaho. In 2006 he was selected for NYC Cooper-Union’s “Emerging Artists of the Year,” exhibition. He has a hard-to-find studio in a old garage, along the shore of East River, NYC.

Nilou Moochhala

niloumakes.com

Nilou Moochhala’s visual practice (art & design) has been channeled into examining issues of cross-cultural change and transformation through different media. Originally from Mumbai, she has been inspired to juxtapose found objects, memorabilia, and use of language to create narratives. Moochhala has exhibited in numerous gallery spaces in Boston and New York. In contrast, her public art project “Storefront Stories,” was based on interviews with local storefront owners that evolved into larger-than-life wheat-paste murals. Her installation “Rhetoric of Opposites” on the Minuteman Bikeway (that connects Cambridge to Bedford) used street typography to juxtapose 25 pairs of opposing words that highlighted the divisive political narrative that exists today. Her Virus Series 2020 is being archived as part of pandemic research projects at Brown University and the National Women’s History Museum. She has been an award recipient of numerous grants including the Massachusetts Cultural Council and New England Foundation for the Arts, among others. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Boston Globe, Print, Arlington Advocate, and Big, Red & Shiny. Moochhala received her Masters of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the Yale University School of Art. Prior to that, she was awarded her Bachelor’s in Studio Art from Mount Holyoke College.

Artist Statement

“Flow” rests in the space ‘in-between’. Between the here of our concrete existence and there of nature; between the unconscious and conscious; between the liminal and formed – and by doing so, we can create interpretations of our collective human consciousness.

Pamela Baker

Pam grew up in Rockport, Massachusetts and has been taking photos of architecture, people, seascapes, and landscapes since she was young. Pam has worked in the fields of art, design, and architecture all her life and has always been interested in fine art photography. She takes photos of her adventures wherever she goes, even if it’s her own backyard. Pam and her husband, Mark, have lived in California, New Mexico, Alaska, and Maine. Whenever they have the chance, they travel to Europe and other parts of the United States to enjoy other cultures, people, foods and taking photos.

Her photographs have been shown in:

• Rockport Art Association & Museum, Rockport, MA
• Newburyport Art Association, Newburyport, MA
• Arts League of Lowell, Lowell, MA
• Rocky Neck Art Colony, Gloucester, MA
• Whistler House Museum of Art, Lowell, MA
• Marblehead Arts Association, Marblehead, MA
• Plymouth Center for the Arts, Plymouth, MA
• Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA

Artist Statement

“…for me, a photo is an instant where you and I are seeing through the same eyes…”

Taking strolls in my own backyard during the Pandemic of 2020 made me take note of all the beautiful flowers in our garden. A woman who had previously lived in our house was a great gardener who planted different kinds of incredible flowers which still bloom every year. I am very thankful to her for leaving behind this type of lasting wonder!

Patricia Gericke

Artist Statement

As an oil painter, I explore the simplicity, color, and light through still-life portraits of vegetables, flowers and food. I paint to remove myself from the chaos of city life and experience the under-appreciated visual drama found waiting at home—the color and light of scattered vegetables or the textures in a slice of cake sitting in its old-fashioned bakery box. While her subject matter may appear to be simple depictions of everyday objects, she is really creating paintings about stillness and the importance of appreciating the quiet richness and depth that surrounds us.

Artist Statement

Hike through the Nature Preserve, a nice crisp Fall Day, I took a break from work and drove to a newly discovered area in my newfound home. It was a rough area left to its own devices and circled around a small pond collecting the fallen branches, raised roots that made you cautious and watch your steps. Who knows what is found under the brush! This is the surprise Nature presents to us.

Patricia Jenks

I am an artist living in Suffield, CT with an art studio at the Indian Orchard Mills in Springfield, MA. I received my BFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and my MFA from the College of Art & Architecture at Clemson University in South Carolina. I have also been a working artist since 1972, with my artwork having been exhibited and collected in the Southeast, Northeast, the West Coast and Canada.

Over the course of my 30+ years of teaching art courses, I have taught at the College of Charleston in South Carolina (1982-1988), Concordia University in Montreal, CAN (1988-1989), The University of Maine at Augusta in Maine (1990-2005), and Western New England University in Springfield, MA (2005-2013).  I also taught art courses at a number of other educational venues in NC, SC and ME from 1976-1997. My first gallery position was at The Halsey Gallery at the College of Charleston as its Director from 1984-1988. From 2001 through 2007, I obtained museum experience by working at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and Bates College Museum of Art in Maine as well as the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in MA. I have just recently retired from the position of Gallery Curator for the Art Gallery at Western New England University held from 2006 to 2020.

Artist Statement

For many years during my artistic career my main areas of specialization were abstract paintings and works on paper using acrylic or watercolor & enamel paints. For the past nine years, however, my interest has turned to using encaustic (hot beeswax) and natural materials which I have been collecting for years in a three-dimensional format to create works that express my continued interest in the physical and metaphysical worlds. I’ve always tried to create a balance between order and chaos in my work in order to bring a sense of wholeness to my life. Stillness and movement, space and containment, contrast and similarity are ways that I try to find that balance between the seemingly contradictory in everyday living.

Waxus Gradus in Viridi! (GREEN steps up!), art piece highlighting that GREEN is so relevant today and needs to be more incorporated into our daily living.

Priscilla Stadler

priscillastadler.com

Priscilla Stadler’s work has appeared in the Hammond Museum, Queens Museum, the New Museum, Flux Factory, Art in Odd Places, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and other venues throughout NYC. Spanning installation, wall work, and community dialogue, her projects have been funded by MoreArt, the Citizens Committee of NY, Queens Art Intervention, and the Queens Council on the Arts. She was a MoreArt Engaging Artist in 2016. In 2017-18, “Almost Home/Casi Llegando a Casa”, her year-long collaboration with Five Boro Story Project and Queens Neighborhoods United, was selected for the MoreArt project grant. Stadler was a 2014 Create Change Fellow with The Laundromat Project. She was selected as a finalist for Dieu Donne’s workspace program in 2010. Stadler has completed artist residencies at the Contemporary Artists Center (Troy, NY), ACRE (Chicago), and Vermont Studio Center. She is part of the Spliced Connector artist network on artsy.net.

Artist Statement

Grounded in science, but also in the intangible, the Rooted series uses line, movement, pattern, and layers to envision communication among fungal networks, tree roots, and soil. In Songs of Trees, George David Haskell writes, “To listen is…to touch a stethoscope to the skin of a landscape, to hear what stirs below.” Using the stethoscope of creative imagining, in conjunction with reading works by biologists and botanists, inspires me to continue researching, while engaging in a process of visual listening, learning, and sensing.

Regina Silvers

Artist Statement

I draw, and I paint what I draw. Whether realistic or loosely abstract, my subject matter reflects what I find vital in my immediate surroundings, bearing witness to my interests, passions, and concerns. 20-odd years of walking and hiking in the Catskill Mountains inform my nature-based paintings. Originating with on my on-the-scene hiking notes, this series manifests my response to the beauty of the natural environment

Retaining the essential forms of the subject matter, I heighten the colors, narrow the focus, and strengthen the dynamics, to encourage viewers to share my experience, and value the “ordinary” beauty of our environment- while we still have it.

Cooper’s Swamp is a small section of Cooper’s Lake, separated from the main section of the lake by a stand of trees- primarily birch. This secluded spot harbors beavers, egrets, flocks of redwing blackbirds, and other species, throughout the year.

Rennie Keller

etsy.com/shop/TheKellerSpectrum

Rennie Keller is an artist, designer, and educator who specializes in both traditional and digital visual art. As an artist pursuing a career in graphic design and studio practice, she plans to collaborate with fellow artists and the community to generate meaningful experiences through art and design.

Artist Statement

This piece was inspired by the mesmerizing lines and shapes water creates in a constantly shifting shallow tide pool. The beach is one place in nature that is full of so many immersive sensory experiences that can bring us back into the moment. This piece is dedicated to the mindful experience of wading through inch-deep waters dappled in sunlight.

Richard Crowe, Jr.

Just someone enjoying the mental, creative and physical outlet of painting…

Artist Statement

For my youngest daughter, who is mesmerized by Monet’s waterlilies.

Sandi Daniel

sandidanielphoto.weebly.com

Sandi Daniel is a local as well as national award-winning artist. She has lived and worked all over the United States. Ms. Daniel has exhibited extensively throughout the US as well as Japan. With over 75 successful exhibitions she is a seasoned professional artist. Her work has been shown in museums, galleries as well as academic universities, including the Hecksher Museum Bienniel and the Steinberg Museum of Art at Hillwood. Sandi Daniel is a graduate of the University of Michigan where she received a bachelor of science in Zoology and Hallmark Institute of Photography where she studied commercial photography In addition to making artwork Sandi has also run children’s art programs and curated shows for Vision Gallery in Arizona.

Artist Statement

Lush gardens and nature have always been an inspiration in my image-making. Combining traditional methods with contemporary techniques enables me to record and reinterpret the world. I work on an intuitive level and consider an image successful when it is transformed beyond the reality of the camera into a personal connection with the wondrous beauty the surrounds us.

Sandra Taggart

nyartistscircle.com/artists/sandra-taggart

Taggart lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago. In addition, Taggart did graduate work in Educational Psychology at NYU and Hunter College, holds a certificate in Computer Science also from NYU and studied botanical drawing at The New York Botanical Garden. In 2011, Taggart constructed the book “A Sketchbook for the Short History of the Universe” that was exhibited widely in the United States. In 2014, she was the recipient of a CAF Grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council. Taggart had a solo show at FiveMyles Gallery in Brooklyn in 2014 followed, in 2016, by an enactment of her performance piece, “About Time”. Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries in the United States.

Artist Statement

The Green Heron found in much of the United States and Mexico is a much smaller and more secretive relative of the Great Blue Heron. It forages for fish and small amphibians on the banks of small bodies of fresh water. The Green Heron is one of the few tool-using birds in the world. It sometimes uses “bait” to lure its prey. It breaks twigs into small pieces or creates fishing lures with bread crusts, insects, and feathers then drops these onto the water’s surface and waits for an unsuspecting fish to swim close – voila dinner.

Shira Toren

shiratoren.com

Shira Toren is an American-Israeli artist. Born in Tel-Aviv. She moved to New York City to study fine art and design. Toren received her BFA from the Pratt Institute and An Associate Degree in Art Therapy from The New School. She Attended classes in Paintings and Printmaking at The Arts Student League NYC. Her work explores personal and global themes that reflect upon the environment. Toren is currently working in her studio in Brooklyn, NY, and Alford, MA. Toren’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally.

Artist Statement

Blue wave, and Drifting Water — A Body of water such as ocean has no color of its own but omits blue to us. I was born by the sea, but only recently was able to fully return. Spending time in California over a winter, close to the ocean, I was able to study many different shades of blue and green. Each day I was surprised to be greeted by an endless color-field somewhere between blue and green, and another day between blue and grey. If I sit long enough the day will end and the color will change. Notable is the surface: sparkly with horizontal noise like music notes, Often change from smooth to rough and clam again. It is Coming and going in its own rhythm. The ocean is vast, No deed of banks.

Susan Grucci

Artworkarchive.com/artwork/susan-grucci
nyartistscircle.com

Artist Statement

Since 2001-2019 It has been my greatest pleasure to have has been instructed by Painter, my friend and mentor Brian Rutenberg ( Forum Gallery) at 92Y School of the Arts. He taught me “ An eye not told what to see, sees more”.

For many years, I concentrated on traditional landscapes in a large format. I used my own photographs and sketches as the basis for my work. Photography has been one of my many passions throughout the years.

In 2011, I added smaller canvases and a new technique. My new approach can either start with pencil applied directly to canvas or at some other point. I then use palettes knives and brushes or objects to create an abstract landscape. At that point in the process, I search for figurative suggestions and movement within the paint. Finally, in delicately rendered marks, I address the details of the landscape unfailingly, music helps and guides me as I work.

The process requires time. I find that I am spending many weeks on a relatively small 8 “x 10”, in between painting larger paintings at the same time. Yet for me, the rewards are incalculably rich. Exhilarating freedom, confidence-inspiring command.

Also, the process with Mono-Type Printing is similar, in which I can spend much time adding to my original print. Collage has become a go-to medium for me. The last 5 years I started to use my own prints to add to the backdrop of my prints as well as enhancing the prints with: Oil sticks, Gouache, Enamel, Graphite, Pen and Ink, Tea, Pan Pastels.

The beauty of my studio where I paint and rework Mono-Types, is deep in the Catskill Mountains, New York State, by this beautiful Pond. My daily rituals involve photographing my surroundings from under-foot to the expanse of sky and mountains, Mother Nature’s resources. To take the fragrance and the richness into the studio to interpret my deep love of “Our Connection with Nature “.

Painting, Drawing and Mixed Media involving Nature’s Bounty…It’s a pure delight wherever you turn. I gather my resources from the sky, mountains, lakes and it gives me the greatest pleasure to be a small part of the rich beauty this Earth has to offer us ALL. It never ceases to bring complete Joy.

Susan Lisbin

susanlisbin.com

Susan Lisbin is an abstract, mixed media artist living in Catskill, New York. She has exhibited her work extensively in the New York metropolitan area in solo and group shows; highlights include her solo exhibitions at the Carter Burden Gallery in NY (where she is a member), Ben Shahn Center for Visual Arts at William Patterson University and the M13 Project Room at Howard Scott Gallery in NY. In 2005. Lisbin was awarded a residency fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center and the Hornet Dorset Colony in NY. Ms. Lisbin earned a master’s degree in painting from Montclair State University.

Susan M Wadsworth

Represented by Gallery Sitka

I was born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1955. My parents moved to Arlington, VT in 1971. I earned my B.A. in art from Colby College in 1977 with honors. I earned an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1981 and an M.A. in art history from Tufts in 1989. My specialty is modern abstraction, both in my own work and in historical analysis. I taught at Fitchburg State from 1992 to 2019. I taught studio art and art history, modernism, and Asian art. In 2008, I organized the Fall Foliage Art Studio Tour in the Monadnock Region, and it continues to this day over Columbus Day weekend. I am represented by the Gallery Sitka of Shirley Massachusetts.

Artist Statement

This was inspired by my trip to Kyoto, Japan in July of 2019. I had begun experimenting with ink on the pastel just five years previously, with my first trip to Japan at that time. This was essentially a “walk and draw” and a study for a larger, ten-foot wide mural that I finished during the Covid pandemic in the summer of 2020. This other jpg is of that larger mural, Japanese Garden, Silver Pavilion, Kyoto, available at my web page.

Susan Tunick

susan@susantunick.com

Susan Tunick lives and works in New York City. She received her MFA and BA from Bennington College. Her paintings, sculptures and drawings have been exhibited in many museums and galleries, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; the Aldrich Museum of Art, Connecticut; the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, North Carolina; San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, Texas; the Edmonton Museum Art Gallery, Canada; Paine Webber Gallery, NYC. She has completed a number of private and public commissions. One of the subway stations she created murals for received the National Endowment of the Arts Merit Award.

Artist Statement

Made of glazed ceramic mosaic elements mounted on wood. These pieces are related to a large subway project that I created for 3 locations in two subway stops. These stations, Prospect Park and Parkside, are very close to Brooklyn’s famous Prospect Park. The primary forms in the work are actual leaves from the park as well as ones that I produced of varying scales. The actual leaves impress beautifully into clay and the larger relief leaves use molds that I made.

Teressa Valla

TeressaValla.com

Teressa Valla’s work can best be described as a reverence to humanity, movement, space, life, and the unity of them all. Her painting, sculpture, and photography illuminate the harmony of nature and urbanity and the musical lyricism that connects them. Throughout her work, one can identify themes of dance, community, nature, and architecture. These themes are often entwined with one another, showcasing the affinity between people and their environments, both manmade and natural.

Growing up in Vermont, Teressa experienced a strong connection to earth at a young age, and this bond with nature has served as a stimulus and source of comfort, both personally and artistically. Additionally, Teressa began dancing in her early childhood, contributing to her fascination with fluidity in the human shape and nature. Teressa draws inspiration from these experiences; her work evinces a deep love of movement and form, and materials play an integral role in how and what she creates. Elemental materials that bring Teressa back to her childhood home in Vermont are a staple in her paintings and sculpture, and her photography captures those elements in nature and among humanity.

Teressa’s creative use of material is a unique characteristic of her work. Another distinctive quality is the finesse with which she employs vibrant coloration. Lilly Wei beautifully sums up Teressa’s use of color: “Her images bloom with a fierce joie de vivre, her palette saturated with pure blues, greens, violets, yellows, reds—she is a whiz with reds—and the brilliance and opulence of gold.”

Teressa has long sought cultural enrichment through travel, and exposure to different environments and walks of life has granted her a broader understanding of how humanity and nature interact with themselves and each other.  She is manifestly aware of the sanctity of humankind’s place among the rest of the living world.  Thus, Teressa uses her work, bringing tangibility to her own inner light, to positively affect emotion.  The desire to expand her appreciation for the world and to spread the light within herself has aided in rounding out who Teressa is, as both an artist and member of the global community.

Teressa Valla continues to live and create a block away from Central Park. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Library of Congress, The Museum of the City of New York, Tribes Gallery, New England Center for Contemporary Art, The New York Public Library, and additional public and private collections. National and international exhibitions are numerous, including “Life of the City,” Museum of Modern Art; “Europa,” Instituto de Artes Visuais, Palacio Pommel-Lisbon, Portugal; La Ma Ma, New York, NY; Gallery K&S, Berlin, Germany; Maryland Institute; University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne, England; Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, Maryland; Exit Art; and Atelier Collectivo Pernambuco, Brazil. Her work was shown at the Sato Museum in Tokyo, Japan in “Considering Peace,” an exhibition to benefit UNESCO. Her work was been recognized by The Jackson Pollock Foundation and Ed Foundation.

Artist Statement

The sun gives spirit and life to the plants and the earth nourishes them with moisture. — Leonardo da Vinci

   I recall at about age 4, my grandfather would plant bulbs and tend to the rose bushes near the creek. We were living in New England at the time.

One day I saw color popping from the earth and black beetles hanging onto rose blossoms of peach, butter yellow and velvet red in the back yard.

Astonished, I wondered how does beauty grow? How do these plants know what to do? Does a plant have a brain?  Reverence for nature birthed.

Allured by color, texture and form and seeking truth I return to the elements of our earth anticipating sense altering moments. Can we count on our

civilization to protect endless moments of beauty? For now, I can still be transported into a  wonderment that points to something beyond

our apparent universe. It’s from here with imagination I approach “mixing,” new worlds of paintings into being. This process has continued during Covid.

Multi-Moments of life float in and out of diffused light. This painting has continued to evolve even during Covid. Caves of light

shimmer with hope and somewhere between violet and green nature sprouts into stronger forms. Embedded elemental materials

cast golden shimmer and hug nature with love.

Wendy Moss

Wendylmoss.com

Wendy Moss was born on Long Island, NY and has spent her adult life in New York City. She attended the State University College at Potsdam, NY, where she was an Art Studio Major with a minor in Psychology. She received an MA degree from Pratt Institute in Art Therapy.

After years working as an Art Therapist, she took classes at Parsons School of Design in Textile Design and worked as a colorist in the field. More recently she has studied at the 92nd Street Y in New York City taking classes in: Collage/Mixed Media, Painting, in addition to several intensive workshops in Color Theory, Papermaking and Transfers.

She also works in printmaking using a variety of techniques such as: monoprinting, dry point with carborundum, silk aquatints with multi-colored plates, solar printing, and collagraphs. She has studied at the ASCC (Art School of Columbia County), Inky Editions in Hudson, NY, Manhattan Graphic Center, Inc., EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Studio, and The Carter Burden Covello Center, in NYC.

She has studied with Master Printers, Beth Thielen, Lisa Mackie, Kathy Caraccio and Karin Bruckner at the Carter Burden Covello Center. She resides in NYC and Claverack in Columbia County, NY.

Artist Statement

Circles and more recently spirals, are a driving force in my work. As I create my art, I seek an experience of wholeness, unity and change in the world and in myself. I use color to express emotion and textures; shapes and line become my language. Layers are created for depth; patterns and structures are formed from my desire to harness complexity. My work is abstract, and I employ collage/mixed media and printmaking techniques that include monoprinting, collagraph, silk aquatint, drypoint etching and cardurundum.

My art and vision have been influenced by a number of artists. I am drawn to the improvisation and emotional expression of the Abstract Expressionists: including Robert Motherwell, for his sense of modernism, collages, rough voids and rectangular forms, as evidenced in his series, Elegies to the Republic; Jackson Pollack for his vigorous gestural painting; Lee Krasner for her collages and large canvases brilliant with color; and Lee Bontecou for her powerful, rich organic shapes in her printmaking.

In both collage and printmaking, I enjoy working spontaneously. I’m often surprised by the exuberance and expressiveness that bursts forth in my work and I want to share this moment of delight with others.

Gardening plays a vital role in my life. When I work in my garden only the present moment exists. Texture plays a crucial role in my art, and the garden provides many patterns. As I designed this collagraph plate, I knew the intricate and delicate hydrangea pedals would transfer beautifully.

My silk aquatint print embodies all that summer is. A sublime time of year when the sun is blazing and warm, the sky is blue and filled with clouds, the days are long, and the landscape is green.

Wendy Saemisch-Hannigan

My journey as an artist began when I was quite young.  In a fast-paced world, drawing was a calming refuge. Spending summers at my grandparents’ nature preserve and camping cross-country in mountains, forests, deserts and alongside the sea instilled a love of nature that inspires my work, today.

In college I was exposed to allegorical art. I was touched by the depths of meaning that could be communicated using objects and their qualities in a story-telling capacity. Exposure to political art showed me that art could change minds.

The combination of these experiences has lead me to create images that appeal to the psyche through allegory in a very simple and unfettered way; to bring peace and clarity through the language of nature, to the challenges we face.

Artist Statement

I have created a series of paintings which speak to the soul through archetypal figures, colors and elements. My goal with these works is to speak as nature speaks, to help people find a sense of place and peace. I hope that the qualities that inspired these paintings can bring hope, humor, mindfulness and joy to our lives.

A cow stands in a lush field while the Earth lies visible below. There is a sense of weight, ballast, while the air remains light, balmy. The cow looks at us and is black as a silhouette against the sky as if asking a question. The answer to which is couched in the awareness of the inherent gifts of earth and sky.  Need can lead to greed which clouds one’s vision.  Before taking a step forward we often need to come to a balance point, the fulcrum, where we can exhale, see things for what they are, and take stock.