Painting: Color Dominates 2012

First, an artist wants you to see.  Keep going – think.  As the viewer, feeling a response to colors comes easily. Working harder, examining and exploring the chromatic decisions each artist made will give you a sense of the internal conversation, the conflict or stillness each artist resolves in her own way.

Colors are oft manipulated to be representational, evocative, expressive, motivational, inspiring. Colors carry weights and intensities. They are loaded with societal, political and sexual values, loaded with cultural connotations. An artist works with all of this in mind and guides the viewer to further understanding of boundaries and collisions, suffering and celebration, inspection and revelation. The artist’s mastery of color grows exponentially over her career.  Explorations bring conscious choice, manifest in those brilliant decisions available for viewers to explore in this show.

As viewer your role is to see the work not just with eyes and heart but with brain. Examine the artist’s choice of intensity of color, the application in hazy layers or staccato bursts, the edge vs flow from one color into another.   Analogous hues can rest calmly together, gradations can move the eye gently in one direction, and complementary colors jar each other, butting heads like rivals and challenging the viewer’s focus on that conflict.

 -Hylla Evans

Laura Tyler, Heart on a Chain

5x4

This painting is based on gesture drawings of botanical subjects: leaves, stems pods and flowers.  I use color to evoke emotion and transform shape.  Non-representational color helps obscure the literal plants these pieces came from and transform them into something new.

Joanne Mattera, Diamond Life 2

17x17

The chromatic geometries of Diamond Life are quiet and self contained. In each painting I set up a dialogue between the restraint of the composition and the sumptuousness of the color, abetted by the luminant materiality of encaustic. Each work in this ongoing series finds its particular balance between structure and surface, between organizational rigor and the juicy swipe of the brush. Formally, the diamond shape asserts itself, pushing rigorously outward while remaining resolutely poised.

Lynda Ray, Graylight

12x9

Color is the structure and force in my work. The physical quality of the color is what I respond to as I balance the elements across the plane.

Russell Thurston, Sinuous

There's always a relationship to nature and science, and in this case I was thinking about particle physics, fractals and fields of energy. The vivid red color references the human body - blood cells, muscle fibers and tissues.

Toby Sisson,The Relationship Between Grief and Celebration V

12x18

I’ve always been attracted to desaturated color, I think it’s my preference for whispers over shouts, intensity without volume. For me that translates into complex blacks, warm and cool whites, and grays in a melancholy tint or shade. I can get lost in the beauty of gray alone. Formally, it’s both darkness enveloping light and light emerging from darkness. Conceptually, it’s a liminal space, ripe with potential. 

Milisa Galazzi, Threads of Time 4

12x12

I elevate domestic work or quilt making to the level of fine art by visually referencing the basic elements of the quilts: color and thread. I like the idea of analogous colors being used in these paintings as metaphors for the way in which we humans connect to and influence one another. The thread lines in these paintings refer to the ways in which we are tied to one another. The series title, "Threads of Time" refers to the generations of women who have passed along these quilting techniques by teaching the younger members of their family these time honored traditions.

Sandra Quinn, Harmony

22x24

Color resonates with music. I feel its flow and rhythm while painting. Notes are like single colors, their order and phrasing making a complete melody. In Harmony, saturated colors float in an atmosphere of subtle nuances and space. Just as notes recede, only those colors and marks that are essential to the whole remain. 

Paula Roland, Peony, from For the Bees

4x6

There is an overlay of the senses and conceptual thinking.I believe we first perceive the world through our senses. Primal pink encaustic (the color within the womb?) and amber-colored wax, with its tactile and aromatic qualities, help awaken our sense-memory. The colors engage us, draw us in, just as flowers attract bees. I hope that these works stimulate memory, emotion, and new thought in the viewer. 

Beverly Rippel, Pink Cap Gun 1

50x52

The color pink plays an integral part in revealing the many metaphorical dichotomies found in this monumentally sized cap gun: feminine vs masculine, playful vs deadly, visceral vs plastic. It presents the light and dark side of humanity as it co-exists in a toy/pistol.

Fanne Fernow, Saffron 1

12x12

 From my "saffron series," these are monochromatic pieces to honor the robes worn by many monks and nuns that are dyed saffron. The saffron is harvested from saffron crocus flowers. As the dyes are added to and as the robes are repeatedly washed, the shades are saffron nonetheless.

Charyl Weissbach, Metalscape 1

6x6

The colors that dominate these paintings are fiery reds and orange painted against cool blues and gold so as to create a thermal landscape. These paintings are called MetalScapes because they combine metal with pigmented wax. Together these materials uniquely convey nature's vastness and mysterious allure, a significant theme in my compositions.

Ruth Hiller

I find the underlying color in the orbs intriguing, because I never know what exactly I will find. These are infused with fluorescent pigments that glow, especially when lit with a black light. I am interested in seeing what " bubbles up" from underneath.The top coat of color usually just speaks to me and I have to paint it. I usually do not plan them in advance.

 Jorge Bernal, Mass Ascension

24x16

All design elements are important when designing and painting, but the element that best describes my soul, who I am and how I feel is color.

Lisa Pressman, Balancing Act

24x24

There is a bit of a play going on.The red is so strong.It is the thin line of the mark that holds the yellow brushmark of the color play. Discovering color was the reason I became a painter. For me color vibrates, creates a mood, a story and  breathes  life into my work.

Lynette Haggard, Rhythmo No. 19

10x8

The Rhythmo paintings are about sensuality of paint, and are intended to evoke thoughts of reminiscence. With a focus on process—painting, scraping, skins, layers, worn surface, aging and marks these pieces flirt with color and dimension.

The green piece is painted over a base coat of black, which helps to punctuate the negative space on the surface. 

Alicia Forestall-Boehm, Tesserae II

The interplay of colors in my Tesserae paintings creates harmony and a sense of balance. While the repeating, flowing lines bring a contrast to the dominate colors of the tiles, they set a visual path that gives rise to a calming sense of rhythm. 

Sherrie Posternak, Depuradora (Filtration)

The colors here are not as important individually as their juxtaposition on the graphic plane, and as their layering on the relief plane. I’m playing with the perception of flow, density, weight, focus, and rhythm through the use of color.

Depuradora (Spanish), or Filtration, describes my attention to the ideas of contamination and cleansing.

Scott Nichols, Blue

36x24

My current series of encaustic paintings is inspired by my travels in Southeast Asia, where centuries old temples are adorned with spectacularly bright frescoes. My work seeks to recreate their ethereal reverence by exploring the architecture of color, texture and materials.

David A. Clark, Flow Series Red Arrow #10

There is something about the vibration of certain colors that supports the intention and the impulse of the arrows in my work. In many ways the color is the impulse or the vehicle that carries the impulse in my work.

Kim Bernard, Epicycloid

36x36

George Mason, Constellation

Color is a fact; no belief required.

Joan Stuart Ross, Forest for the Trees

24x24

 Seen and unseen layers of green suggest the canopy and duff of the forest.

Laura Tyler, Rethinking the Fossil Record

5x4

This painting is based on gesture drawings of botanical subjects: leaves, stems pods and flowers. I use color to evoke emotion and transform shape. Non-representational color helps obscure the literal plants these pieces came from and transform them into something new.

Deborah Winiarski, Wild Peaches

24x24

There is a direct relationship between color and feeling. In autumn of 2009 I worked monochromatically and felt the glow of the changing foliage.  Hence, the orange. I read a poem for the autumnal equinox which began, " . . . We'll live among wild peach trees . . . "  The title, color and imagery came
together at once for me.
In a picture book by Dr. Seuss called "My Many Colored Days" there's a description of how he compared the 'mood', or color, of the day to his own emotional barometer setting. It's similar for me.  At that point in time, when I began 'Wild Peaches,' I was feeling full, ripe, autumnal, bountiful -- very 'orange.'

Ahavani Mullen, Inside Clouds

11x14

The use of color in this piece speaks to me as being very other-worldly and yet has an organic glow to it. It feels soft and ethereal, rich and transparent.

Patricia Dusman, Winter

5x5

Color sets the mood and tone of each piece and is the most important part of these pieces. The colors of winter are mostly white mixed with the blue grey sky and the peeking through of evergreen. The swirling of these winter colors represent winter storminess.

Toni Youngblood, Thank You, Mt. Etna

Thank You, Mt. Etna is named after the fiery eruption of the Sicilian Volcano, Mt. Etna that I witnessed on a visit to the nearby town of Taormina in 2003.

Kay Hartung, Sea Sensations

Blue is my anchor color. I feel the movement of the sea and the darkness of the night sky. 

Pat Spainhour, Gulf Stream

Gulf Stream is about contrast in color...the pull of green and red, and the push of blue and orange. This tug of war is continued through the use of line in the suggestion of both calm and exaggerated current.

Dayna Talbot, Affinity 2

20x20

My recent work has been about creating mood with color and form. We live in a world that has become so connected, and with so many options, that it has created a state of confusion. “Affinity” is one in a series that is connected yet disconnected.  I used line as a divider to create balance and order. The composition has active and passive areas. Working with a focal point from the center outward, I chose bold primary colors for their strength and saturation. The composition is active with line, boldness of color and texture, yet passive with clean concentration of colors.

Alan Soffer, Landmass

17x24

This painting is from the NOW series, which was meant to explore vivid colors, not always my approach to art making.

Gay Schy, Colvos Sunset

I use color to create a feeling. This usually involves a quiet meditative space that promotes self reflection. I rarely use primary colors, instead mixing different colored pigments into my wax medium.I also use different colors in order to create dept and transparency.

Cherie Mittenthal, Stormy

6x6

Recently, I have been very taken with the simplicity of the bay and how my choice of color lends itself to a more even state of mind. I love gray days and what they bring. (not that I don’t love a good sunny day). My work has taken a more introspective feeling and I believe that is about the colors I choose.

Louise P. Sloane, Twilight 

48x54

As light passes through the layers, the depth of color is accentuated. This painting, Twilight catches its name as it evoked,for me, that moment between sunset and darkness.

Winston Lee Mascarenhas, Square Impressions 2

10x10

When studied carefully, blue at its heaviest, darkest, most blue-black does not crush viewers or deprive them of sight, but rather draws them in to the ever expanding dome of the infinite night sky. Space unfurls limitlessly hurling us into a starless night. Delicate structures and roughly drawn squares help you find your way as your eyes adjust to the darkness. Otherwise, we are lost.

Jeff Schaller, Woman in Black

36x60

Black dominates this painting; it is within this black where color and texture play. There is more: cooler black dots repeat against a flat field of warm black speckled with bright pink. Warm black then swirls with red highlights. The smoothness of the background creates a surface shine for yet another shade of black splattered on top. A spontaneous texture subtly leads around this sea of blacks merging into the woman’s black dress. Black is no longer an empty void that surrounds the woman. It is the space that holds the viewer captive.

Nancy Natale, Blues for Etta

48x60

In regard to the color, I wanted to use some powerful blues with color that came from blue record album covers, some painted over with encaustic gesso and others with blue encaustic paints,to make even deeper blues. The brown colors I developed were just as important since they contrast with and enhance the blues. The dense brown/black of tarpaper and the sheen of copper also contribute to the play of light across the work.

Gregory Wright, Visceral Response

40x36

In my series Forces, I explore what compels us and the motives behind our actions. These can be represented and defined by various colors. Red is the color of passion and emotion; it evokes a visceral response. Orange is the color of warmth, growth, and expansion; it provides a fertile ground for development. Yellow symbolizes clarity, truth and intellect deep within; it can awaken the soul. I incorporate these philosophies to influence my imagery.