Molly Williams - figures in art textiles

I use a range of textile media howvever I particularly enjoy felting fibres and fabrics together to make a flexible, tactile medium for my artwork. I am currently developing a method of felted sculpture. In
addition I am interested in the history and development of textiles and clothing.

I also create surface designs for textiles and use digital technology to weave and print my designs.
Molly Williams

Michael Reedy

Michael Reedy is an Associate Professor at Eastern Michigan University where he teaches all levels of drawing for the Art Department. He received his MFA in painting from Northern Illinois University in 2000 and a BA Cum Laude from North Central College in 1996.

Portraiture and the human figure have been central to his artistic practice for the past fifteen years. Reedy identifies a particular interest in depictions of the human body that fall outside the canon of art history, such as cartooning and medical illustration. By mixing influences from both within and outside the accepted boundaries of fine art, Reedy aspires to locate unique areas of resistance, which he believes essential to the production of new meaning. His more recent works have also been heavily influenced by a growing fascination with the role of spectacle within contemporary pop culture. In these works, the final images are manipulated digitally to provide a stereoscopic 3D effect when viewed with the proper red/cyan glasses and tap in to the play-like celebration of day time soap opera narratives with an evenly weighted sense of enticement and superficial sensationalism.

His work has been widely exhibited across the United States in a variety of local, regional, national, and international exhibitions, recognized with numerous awards, and can be viewed in many notable private and institutional collections, including Clatsop Community College, Minot State University, Shippensburg University, and the Hoffman Trust National Collection in association with the San Diego Art Institute.
Michael Reedy

Carl White, paintings as silent poetry

Painting has been described as silent poetry, and the best thing about paintings, often, is their silence. It is this silence that allows our own inner voice to starting talking ~ to react, to feel, to consider the art we are viewing. In the silence of looking at Carl White’s work, my own inner voice was speaking loud and clear. As an art historian I am struck with a sense of wholeness looking at White’s work. A vast world of art experience is explored here in these works. A classical marble sculpture, perhaps Greek or Roman, is set against an ochre background and scraped through with vivid alizarin crimson. I am in Italy at once, yet I know I am looking at new Canadian work. Then, a fragment of a portrait bust sits against a beautiful plaster wall, subtle with grey and gold that moves from ancient to new through the telling brightness of lead white, gesso, and intentional drips of paint.

The background is touched by passages of script here and there, and with the word “Paris,” I move to another country steeped in art history. A vivid splash of indigo, a colour so rich in its history as a pigment, mars the delicate figure of Hypnos, depicted in watercolour on a supple piece of handmade paper, and a bronze horse gleams against the landscape of an ancient city while a marble lion sleeps in the foreground. Art history as a field of study, its understanding of colour, its metaphors and symbols are all here; the historical developments in the use of pigment, art discourse in its iconic treatises that are housed in archives across the world and written in beautifully penned longhand, all come to mind. Bronze, marble, ink, oil paint, all the trappings of the artist’s studio are presented in their historical forms in White’s work. Yet the presentation of these things is firmly grounded in today. There are gestural bursts of paint, lines that can only be contemporary, forms that speak of now. Thus Carl White transcends time.

White’s interest in mythology and art history is at the core of his work. His images use Greek gods, famous portraits, and attributes of historical figures as jumping off points. A hand positioned like a Michelangelo hand, a Rembrandtesque figure, a Dutch lace collar, the Greek, Latin, French and Italian languages are all used to draw on collective social memories of art and history. Shaped by his painter’s understanding of technique and medium, colour theory and practice, White presents world art as his art. Using subtle techniques of paint to create plaster, gilt, calligraphic and sculptural effects, White’s work is very contemporary in its approach, yet layered with history both in terms of content and subject, evoking ideas of classicism and modernism at the same time. Baroque and Renaissance style brushwork and play against the abstract swirls and gestural marks of more recent periods of art history. Sfumato contrasts with dripped paint. Ideas of decay; literal, allegorical and metaphorical, come to mind as subtle memento moris.

White’s work is also poetic. The act of writing poetry and the act of making a painting are similar endeavors with an intertwined history. Each seeks to elevate the viewer/reader with images/words that move, elevate, inspire. Each requires brevity, clarity of purpose and directness. In each, success depends on the artist’s mastery of their tools; poetic rhythm, rhyme and meter equal painterly composition, harmony and balance, and in this White succeeds. “Painting is the successful communication to others, through the medium of form and colour, or a worthy of idealized experience in the world of form and colour. Poetry, we might define, as the successful communication through spoken or written words, intensively or rhythmically arranged, of a passionate experience.” Carl White’s own passionate experiences gained through a life long relationship with art are presented with intensity and rhythm of form, colour and text. “In the way that a poet would seek to understand language with the goal of approaching the sublime, I have tried to understand painting with similar purpose,” says White. “I am painting poems, images that dance between realism and abstraction, text and flesh, with the hope that the viewer experiences rather than views.” White achieves this effect well, as we are drawn into the worlds of art and history in all their rich fullness when looking at his work.

Carl White is a graduate of the Alberta College of Art where he studied under Richard Halliday and Charles Malinsky. Since graduating, he has been the subject of numerous solo shows in Alberta and British Columbia and participated in many group shows in Western Canada. His work is held in numerous private collections as well as that of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and EnCana. His public commissions include the National Press Building in Washington, D.C., the Marriott Hotel in North Bethesda, Maryland and the Hyatt Regency Resort in Cambridge, Maryland. White is a member of The Artist’s Circle and was nominated for the 2005 Sobey Award.
Article by Lisa Christensen
Carl White

Synthia SAINT JAMES

Synthia SAINT JAMES is a world renowned multicultural visual artist, award winning author/illustrator of 17 books, popular speaker and architectural designer who has garnered numerous awards over her forty plus year career, including the prestigious Trumpet Award and her first Honorary Doctorate Degree from Saint Augustine’s College, both in 2010.
She is most celebrated for designing the first Kwanzaa Stamp for the United States Postal Service in 1997 for which she received a History Maker Award and for the international cover art for Terry McMillan’s book Waiting to Exhale.

Last year she was commissioned to create two paintings to be presented as awards. The first was created for the “Mosaic Woman Award”, one of which was presented to Dr. Maya Angelou on October 28, 2010 in National Harbor, MD. The second was created for His Excellency Nelson Mandela’s for a Lifetime Achievement Award from Africare, which was accepted for him by his daughter and grandson on November 5, 2010 in Washington, DC.

On the evening of Monday, May 23, 2011 at the Providence Health & Services Excellence Awards Dinner in Seattle, WA, 10 Limited Edition Remarques (fine art reproductions with original drawings) of her painting, “Sisters of Providence”, were unveiled and auctioned off. An amazing $126,000 was raised from this Live Auction for the Sisters of Providence Mission in Chile. The amount was then matched by a corporation for the total of $252,000.

Synthia SAINT JAMES has already completed eight college engagements throughout the United States and has several more scheduled. She is currently working on a commissioned painting for Coppin State University School of Nursing, Baltimore, MD for their annual fundraising event which will be held on September 17th.

Synthia SAINT JAMES, international award winning artist and designer of the first United States Postal Stamp for the Kwanzaa holiday, has to date written and or illustrated 13 children’s picture books, 3 poetry and prose books, 4 children’s activity books, a cookbook, and a postcard book.

She is the recipient of The 2008 Woman of the Year Award for the 26th Senate District, and she has garnered numerous other awards including a Parent’s Choice Silver Honor, a Coretta Scott King Award, and an Oppenheim Gold Award all for her books.

On January 30, 2010 she received the prestigious Trumpet Award for “The Arts” in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the first painter to be so honored. This year she was also inducted into the National Organization of Women Business Owners - Los Angeles, Hall of Fame in March.

She received her first Honorary Doctorate Degree (Doctor of Humane Letters) from Saint Augustine’s College, Raleigh, NC on May 8, 2010 the Historically Black College where her foundation, The Synthia SAINT JAMES Fine Arts Institution, is being established.

She created an award for Africare which was presented to His Excellency Nelson Mandela for Lifetime Achievement on November 5, 2010, and she created an award for Diversity Woman Magazine’s “A Mosaic Woman Award”, one of which was presented to Dr. Maya Angelou on October 28, 2010.

Her paintings grace the covers of over 70 books, including books by Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, New York Times bestselling author IyanlaVanzant, and books by Terry McMillan, also a New York Times bestselling author whose books have been published worldwide in several different languages.

Barnes and Noble licensed her artwork “Brilliance” for merchandise, including tote bags and journals, in celebration of Black History Month 2009 to sellout audiences. So for Black History Month 2010 they released new merchandise, including tote bags, journals, and tumblers featuring her artwork “Butterflies Dream”.

Her architectural designs include a 150 foot ceramic tile mural for Ontario, California’s international airport, 6 - 9x4 foot elevator doors for a building in California’s State Capitol’s East End Complex, Sacramento, California, stained glass windows for the West Tampa Library in Tampa, Florida, and a 4x7 foot ceramic tile mural (inspired by Dr. Maya Angelou’s poem “On the Pulse of Morning”), commissioned by Gibson, Dunn, Crutcher LLP for Cowan Elementary School in Westchester, California. She was also commissioned to create the 3x6 foot painting that hangs in the Women's Center of Glendale Memorial Hospital in Glendale, California.

SAINT JAMES has completed numerous commissioned signature images for non-profit organizations including the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters (which hangs at the Vulcan Station in Brooklyn, New York), Children’s Institute International, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, the Harlem Book Fair, the United Way, and the National Education Association. She unveiled the poster that she created for the Center for Disease Control at the United Nations on World AIDS Day 2005, unveiled the original painting that she created for the Metropolitan AME Church (Harlem, NY) at the Schomburg in February 2006, and unveiled the 20th anniversary painting for the 100 Black Men of America, Inc. in June 2006..

In reviews her artwork has been described as “ebullient”, “bold”, “creates paintings that remind one of Matisse cutouts in their clear line and intense color” and “joyful”.

She was honored with the 2004 Woman of the Year Award in Education by the Los Angeles County Commission for Women and she is a proud recipient of The HistoryMakers Award. Fall of 2006 she received both the MOSTE Inspirational Women Award and the Samella Award for her artistry, and designed the "We See You Award". SAINT JAMES is also one of the women included in Dr. Cynthia Jacobs Carter’s National Geographic book, Africana Woman: Her Story Through Time.

She has created signature paintings for Children's Institute International's "Project Fatherhood", Susan G. Komen for the Cure's "Circle of Promise" campaign for which she now serves as a National Ambassador, and “Crowns” for Regina Taylor’s play Crowns.

She is a member of the cast of M.K. Asante’s latest documentary “The Black Candle” which screened worldwide, and she is also a member of the cast of “Breast Cancer Examined: An African American Perspective” which aired on the TV One Network.

One of her original paintings was donated to the permanent collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York, by the House of Seagram, and another original painting to Spelman College by Dr. Walter Allen.

SAINT JAMES, a self-taught artist and popular speaker, credits the creator and her ancestry (which includes African American, Native American, Haitian and German Jew) for her artistic gifts.
Synthia Saint James

Francis Olivier Brunet, contemporary figurative painting France

Francis-Olivier Brunet est né en 1962 en France.

Après une courte carrière de sportif de haut niveau, Francis-Olivier Brunet se consacre à la peinture depuis 1983. Bien ancré dans la création contemporaine, son champ d'investigation va de la performance (Paris-Pékin 1985) à l'illustration (Rira bien le dernier, ed Voix d'encre, 2006).

Son univers est peuplé de créatures semblant venues d'une région mal définie qui serait limbes ou ténèbres, silhouettes à la fois précaires et fragiles, lourdes de tout le poids de leur humanité passée, envoyées par le peintre à notre rencontre, avançant péniblement, sujets en puissance ou en impuissance, aux membres dystrophiques ou frappés d'agénésie, aux gestes tremblés, amorçés...
Francis-Olivier Brunet

Kathleen Krishnan, painting from life

From article by Ed Huyck
Growing up, Kathleen Krishnan loved to draw. In elementary school, she was the go-to gal when someone needed illustrations for a science project. As she got older, Krishnan was able to explore her skills at a Waldorf high school for two years, falling deeper in love with art. Life interceded. Going with the wishes of her family, Krishnan looked to a more practical occupation and became a teacher. It was a job she loved during the three decades she taught, often working with immigrant students as an English as a second language instructor.

Still, the itch was there and 12 years ago, Krishnan began to follow her first dream and began a new career as an oil painter. With training, a lifetime of observation and her knack for observing and understanding physical details, Krishnan developed a signature style that merged all of her interests.

Her art "captures people midstream, in everyday activities. They are often looking a bit introspective. The paintings are not just about the people, but the whole composition. I want to capture a moment we can relate to, but also create a beautiful composition," she said.

To that end, Krishnan employs a variety of techniques. Her goal is to not exactly capture scenes from life. Instead, she will look for elements that can be combined into a full composition. So the central figure may be drawn from one setting, while the surroundings and other key elements are from other spaces.

As a painter, Krishnan does "use reference material. I will paint a flower or a chair. When I compose my own paintings, I'll take pictures of myself posing or other people. I take pictures of my neighbors. I will change the details when I compose my paintings. I believe in using the reference material, but I'm not a slave to it."

The paintings in the exhibit are drawn from four different series that Krishnan has worked on in the last few years, including older sets like "Beach Dreams" and "Children of the Fair" and more recent pieces centered on interior portraits and ones that examine outdoor group scenes, including ones inspired by a recent trip to Barcelona.
Kathleen Krishnan

Stephen Janton, portraits in oils

I am a realist painter who enjoys the challenge of painting the human form. I have been so influenced and impressed by the Old Masters, the Dutch “Little Masters” and the best of the French academic painters of the nineteenth century. They carried oil painting to its highest pinnacle of technical perfection. In addition, having grown up in Wilmington Delaware, I was exposed to the Brandywine School and the artists Pyle, the entire Wyeth family and my friend and guide George Weymouth.

Portraiture and the human form have always been my main interest and I have developed a good
sense of form during my many years studying and working as a Physical Therapist. My works in still life and landscapes tend to be more experimental with a sense of realism. I attempt painting what is real to me…what I see.

In doing a portrait, I enjoy finding the composition that best describes the individual’s personality and I include the person being painted in that process which makes for a more successful outcome. I frequently utilize the technique of a single light source in my portraits as it helps create greater depth. I rely primarily on the techniques of traditional oil painting but have tested my deepest level of patience by painting in egg tempera and appreciate the quality of skin tones created by the unique process.

Artwork should stand on its own merits – or fail on its own shortcomings if it does not succeed in registering favorably upon the viewer’s sensibilities. Quality is the central issue, as it must be where art is concerned. I am doing my best and enjoying the process in my attempts at creating quality in my artwork.
Stephen Janton

Ulla Wobst, German figurative painter

Having always been interested in getting close to the essence of man I 'm attracted by psychical or philosophical themes, not so much by political or social ones, although there are exceptions. Thus my paintings have mostly to do with man's basic themes such as life, love dream and death as well as with literature and foreign cultures. All in all and above all I'm fascinated by everything inexplicable and mysterious between heaven and earth.
Ulla Wobst
Dortmund, Germany

Max Ferguson

Max Ferguson learned the discipline for his meticulously rendered oil paintings while doing animated films as a teenager, graduating from New York University film school when he was 20. But it was while spending a year at an art school in Amsterdam that his interest switched to painting. He was, and continues to be, greatly influenced by Dutch 17th century genre painting. While in Amsterdam, after only painting a few months, the City of Amsterdam purchased one of his paintings. Back in New York a short time later, H.W. Janson, author of the classic text History of Art, also acquired one of his paintings.

He often paints older models. "While my fellow art students were painting nudes of young women, I was painting octogenarians with canes."

He has worked on a number of series over the years, including the subways, Coney Island, nocturnal imagery. Most of his subject matter focuses on scenes of a rapidly disappearing New York. "It is not so much that I am nostalgically looking to the past, but looking to the future to preserve aspects of urban life for future generations that are quickly evaporating. Many of the images that I have painted are now either gone or renovated beyond recognition. It is both very gratifying to know that I captured them, at least in paint, but crushing to realize that they are now gone."

Ferguson tends to shun fashion. As he puts it, "Today's avante-garde is tomorrow's passé. I am not a fashion designer from Milan, I am a painter from New York. It is not so much that I am consciously a contrarian, but it would seem that the louder and larger the work of my contemporaries grows, the quieter and smaller my paintings become."

"My work is essentially autobiographical," says Ferguson, with his two most frequent models being his father and himself. "The more personal you get, the more universal you become."

"My paintings are generally populated by a solitary figure. In one sense it is a soliloquy. But there is someone else involved; the viewer. So it is more like a dialogue. It is that silent, emotional pas de deux between the two in which I am most interested." "I am of course concerned with the technique and more cerebral aspects of painting, but more so with the emotional, psychological sides of the imagery. I try to think visually, but paint viscerally. Technique minus soul equals zero."

His paintings are in many prominent private and public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The British Museum, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

MAX FERGUSON: ON PAINTING
My preference is to work from life.

Unfortunately, with most of my subject matter, that is somewhere between impractical and impossible. I generally make photographic studies which I then use as reference material in my studio. These are merely a jumping-off point, and I often combine elements from many different photographic studies and modify them.

I then draw a number of studies until I have the final life-size cartoon.

While I approach every painting a little differently, I usually begin by transferring the lines of the drawing to the panel. I then do a rough, thin underpainting layer, using burnt umber, black, and white. After this, I paint one or two more layers of underpainting in color. Then I paint the final layer in color.

With each successive layer the painting becomes increasingly detailed and polished. While most of the decisions are made prior to beginning a painting, often changes are made in progress (note that the buttons on her pants are eliminated after the monochromatic underpainting).

I use sable brushes that are intended to be used for watercolors; it is the only way I can achieve the desired results.

The oil paintings generally take between two and four months to complete.
Max Ferguson

Carolyn Bloomer ceramics

I make wall works that combine clay forms with paint, paper, wood and found objects.

I love the unabashed naturalism of the Venus of Willendorf and I sometimes appropriate her to use in my work as a stand-in for Mother Nature, all mothers, or, sometimes, just Woman. My porcelain vessels embody space and light, and sometimes contain hidden messages from my world; images and expressions from everyday domestic life, playfully interpreted by me.
Carolyn Bloomer

Chris Woods Pop Realism

Chris Woods has been a professional artist since 1990. He has participated in numerous solo and group shows over that time in Canada and the United States. Chris employs his friends as models and explores the impact of consumer culture on the individual. He works in a hyper-realistic style in an effort to create vivid and lucid works with an intense, mythic quality.

His latest series of paintings 'Superfortress' is set to show in April 2012 at Gallery Jones in Vancouver, BC. He will have a solo survey-show at the Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford BC in the summer of 2013.
Chris Woods

Mariana Palova, imaginative artist, Mexico

Mariana Palova is a young Mexican woman born in 1990. She is finding in the positive, vivid and colorful metamorphosis her cosmogony. Mariana plays with the transformation and experience’s influence getting surrounded by a certain aura and holding special devotion for elements of nature, analogies, monster-like humans and the astrological environment giving birth to a whole new and even fist stage of her artistic work.

In spite of her young age and short experience her work has quickly gotten involved with important art guilds, generating both rejection and praise, evoking a sensitive work, overflowing with passion and with a life’s philosophy based on the beauty of the human’s metamorphosis and the charm of her imagination, refusing a sickened and hideous world that ironically glorifies in a traditional way the contemporary art.

Her work has been exhibited abroad in countries such as United States and Mexico and in South America, Europe and Asia, and in both printed and on-line publication.
Mariana Palova

Maggie Toole, Circulism, colored pencil portraiture

Maggie Toole
Circulism
Using colored pencils, I draw no lines at all...only varied, overlapped and intertwined circles. Building seemingly transparent layers, incorporating all color.

As in pointillism, the distant viewer's eye fuses these into realistic shades of human flesh, hair and life.
Maggie Toole

Brittany Lauren, acrylics and encaustics

Brittany Lauren graduated from Sheridan College where she received her certificate in Art Fundamentals and an Advanced Diploma in Crafts and Design, Glass.

Most recently, Brittany has been exploring new mediums and taking encaustic workshops at R & F Paints in New York to refine and expand her paintings. She finds that working with wax allows you to work quicker and easier because the medium is fairly forgiving. You can build layers upon layers without the waiting time. Drawing from her inspirations in cultural differences, she explores the essence of African tribes and tries to capture their raw nature.

Brittany participates in local exhibitions and continues to create custom work for luxury cottages and local interior designers.

Artist Statement
I am a painter inspired by the keepers of Africa. Tribes that connect to the land and animals living in total harmony. Their traditions and dreams significant to everyday life. These are the people who truly understand and portray natural beauty. I try to capture the emotion that is engraved in their faces by painting. Painting allows for such a rawness that photographs cannot provide.

I use acrylic paints in my work because they’re the most versatile. Applying washes, glazes and scrubbing the canvas allows me to create depth and a certain roughness in the faces. In some cases I use encaustics because it also has a natural layering effect that I love to work with. By creating these emotions I feel people have a better chance of connecting and responding to my work which I feel is important when it comes to art.
Brittany Lauren

Help fund a worthy young South African student's international studies

My name is Didintle Ntsie, I am 24 years old, I am from a township in South Africa called Ga-Rankuwa. I'm currently studying social entrepreneurship in Sweden under the International Youth Initiative Program together with 40 other students from all over the world. This campaign is aimed at getting financial assistance to continue my studies in this enriching and unique program.

The Impact
I am an aspiring Social entrepreneur and believe that social entrepreneurship has the potential to add so much more to so many more lives. Some of the most important solutions to global stability lie within this sector.

There are many examples of social entrepreneurs that have made a difference in the course and direction of humanity. I do believe that I have what it takes to be a positive, strong force in this realm.

The finances from this campaign will go towards paying the rest of my fees which will allow me to focus fully on what is being offered on the program.

I am the only participant from the entire continent of Africa, I strongly believe that my presence on the course is of high importance. My presence brings a different aspect to conversations and discussions as do all the other participants from the different parts of the world. I feel that it is my responsibility to do my best to ensure that my voice is included.

I am a firm believer that money (or the lack thereof) should NEVER be allowed to prevent people from reaching for the nourishment (of any kind) that they seek. Money should never prevent us from giving our best and from receiving the best.

Since being a part of the YIP program I have grown in ways I never previously thought possible, a whole world has been opened to me where deep questions and challenges have been presented to me probing me for answers and solutions to those questions and challenges.

I am nowhere near discovering all that this program offers and believe that continuing on the course is essential for my journey of life. With continued funding, I plan to go to Bolivia where I will be working with an organisation that works with indigenous people of the area and helping to restore their culture and beliefs as well as teaching them their rights. I will also get the opportunity to live with the different clans in the different parts and work with my hands and help them wherever help is needed.

If I don't raise enough money, I may not be able to continue on the program.

What I Need:
The total program cost is $11,000

My family has put together $5,800 (which consists of a loan my mom took from the bank as well as donations from other relatives)

A good friend and mentor from Australia donated $1,000

This leaves an amount of approx $4,200
The program cost includes
Meals (Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner from Monday through Friday when on Campus at YIP
Accommodation (single-sex, twin-share bedrooms on campus)
Materials
Travel to international internship
Transport (public and excursions)

Here is the link to the campaign!
I hope you may find time to help by making a contribution or simply by passing it along and making a lot of noise about it to friends and family!

Other ways to help
Please share this with your friends via social networks: let them know that you donated too!
Twitter: @TheDidiness
Blog:http://swedishgarden.wordpress.com/podium-of-gratitude/
Quote of the week: "You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love." - Henry Drummond

Paula writes: We made a donation to Didi who is a young friend of ours from South Africa. Any little contribution helps this energetic young mover and shaker further her international studies and would be greatly appreciated, please donate before Jan 16 if you can help her out and help the global good karma. 3000 people read my 3 blogs in November, just think what even one dollar each would help her out with....