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Melissa Staiger

Nov 12th, 2010 2 Comments


Red Background, Acrylic on Canvas, 30” x 30”, 2010


Florescent Triangle, Acrylic on Canvas, 24” x 24”, 2010


Rebel Girl, 5′ x 5′, Acrylic on Canvas, 2010


Constructivist, Acrylic on Panel, 12”x 12”, 2010


Fractured, Acrylic on Canvas, 30” x 30” 2010

Artist Statement
Being an American, I am a mixture of heritage but far removed from the original lineage.  In the past six months I have been put in touch with my roots in two ways.

First, by being included in an art exhibition where I was the only artist who showed up. The show was titled “Contemporary Traces in Native American Art” curated by Ginny Butera.  I was honored when Juane Quick-to-See Smith (one of the artists in the show) contacted me.  Feeling extremely humbled by the experience, she empowered me to connect to my Cherokee roots and understood how my connection was severed because my great-grandmother had to powder her face to look white.

That was in the spring and at the end of the summer, I went to Switzerland.  (This being the second way).  I went there to meet my partner’s family and was blown away by the landscape and felt very connected to it, almost like I had been there before.  I felt like each mountain seen was digested in my psyche.

These two very real experiences have lead me to create a new body of paintings and work on paper. The paintings on canvas and panel are made with acrylic paint, glitter, textured mediums and varied metallic and pearlescent surfaces.  I use tape to create clear lines for triangles which makes sharp points to reinforce their presence.

I use color to create pulsating combinations.  Experimentation with hues and surfaces pushes the work in constant new directions. Triangles, color, composition, and space are ideas I use to build a painting. I paint intuitively so if that doesn’t formally work, I paint over it and leave the under paintings as traces behind as texture and history.

The triangles can be viewed as mountains, trees, direction, the idea of balance, teeth, and or devil horns.  All of which I think about and then don’t at the same time.  I feel if I start to give the painting a theme in the begging of its creation, it will lose out.  Each of the paintings holds a variety of information, which ends up being very formal.

I give the paintings titles, to clue in the feeling and emotion that they communicate to me. “Rebel Girl” is titled after a Bikini Kill song, which has place in riot grrrl history or rather herstory.  I gave the painting this title because the blue was very rebellious against the red.  The big red triangle reminded me of “The Dinner Party” by Judy Chicago which to me is significantly about presence.  That same idea of presence is what I think about with each shape and color I paint.

Upcoming Exhibit
Melissa’s work will be included in a group show titled “Vicariously Through You” at the Wilmer Jennings Gallery 219 East 2nd Street, in NYC. The exhibition opens on Wednesday, March 9 with a reception on Friday, March 11 and artist talks on Sunday, March 13. There will be a color catalogue of the exhibition with an introductory essay by art critic, Jonathan Goodman

Website
www.melissastaiger.com

Arthur May

Sep 27th, 2010 Leave a comment

all works are 24″ x 24”  oil on canvas

Artist Statement
The work is comprised of abstract carefully crafted paintings. These images deal with reality but at a studied distance. They are involved in formalist issues such as, balance, proportion, and scale. Color is used for it’s emotional impact. Space and spatial resolution are primary criteria. A level of spatial ambiguity is sought, serving to expand perceptual possibilities. We are creating a group of paintings that can serve to reassert the case for a non-minimal abstract art.

Biography
Although Arthur May is essentially a self-taught artist, he holds degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Pennsylvania where he studied painting with George Rickey, and Neil Welliver. He is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome where he presented a one-man show of paintings and drawings at the completion of his fellowship.

Contact
a.may@amaystudio.com

William Herwig

Jul 25th, 2010 Leave a comment

“Les Demoiselles d’Avignon #1″ 96 x 92 in
oil on canvas
2008
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“Les Demoiselles d’Avignon #2″ 96 x 92 in
oil on canvas
2008
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“Les Demoiselles d’Avignon #3″ 96 x 92 in
oil on canvas
2009
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“Les Demoiselles d’Avignon #4″ 96 x 92 in
oil on canvas
2009
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“Les Demoiselles d’Avignon #5″ 96 x 92 in
oil on canvas
2010
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ARTIST STATEMENT
In my work I have been exploring the concept of history and aging in a painting. With this current series, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, I am exploring these same themes and concepts and how they can be applied to an image in the digital realm.

I began with a picture of Pablo Picasso’s painting “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”. The idea was to create a painting that was “aged” digitally. By this I do not mean attempting to create what one would imagine a painting or object to look like after it has been aged over time. Rather, I mean aging as being the application of destructive forces to an object or image over and over again.

When an object is aged, it has been subjected to repetitive, minor destructive forces over an extended period of time; for example, the slow staining of a wall from drips or the rusting of a piece of metal. With a digital image, there are many “destructive” forces that can be applied to cause the image to lose information. With the first painting in the series, I shrank the image down to 1% of its size, and then blew it back up again. When this happens, the computer has to interpret what information to fill in the empty space created between pixels when it is blown back up again. In the other paintings in the series, I applied different ways of “aging” the image, causing the computer to have to make similar decisions.

Applying any of these destructive actions once or even a few times does not alter the image substantially. But when applied hundreds of times, the image loses more and more information to the point where it becomes virtually unrecognizable. Applying this digitally destructive force over and over again is the digital equivalent of an object that has been subjected to the elements over many years.

After the image was created in Photoshop, I painted it in oil on canvas roughly 8 feet square, the same size as the original Picasso painting. By repainting this “digitally” aged image, a strange alternate version of the painting is created. Rather than a painting that has been ripped, stained or discolored over time, the paintings are images that have been aged in the context of the digital realm.

Laura Newman

Jul 13th, 2010 3 Comments

Shards. 2010, 56 x 72″, oil on canvas
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Highbeams, 2010, 32 x 42″, oil on canvas
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Winter Scene, 2009, 64 x 52″, oil on canvas
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Jello Combat, 2010, 56 x  72″, acrylic on canvas
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Pavilion, 2009, 52 x 6″oil on canvas

Artist’s Statement
I am interested in a kind of space that is fresh, airy, vast and open. For a long time, I’ve felt that a painting is alive when I can feel the space in it. I would like to be able to paint air, but in order to paint air I need to paint the things in it.

I aim to locate the point where form takes on meaning—where a triangle can be read as a road in perspective, for example. Each painting suggests a model or diagram, even as it evokes a particular, fictional place.

Website
lauranewman.com

Wayne Adams

Jun 6th, 2010 Leave a comment

1) Not yet titled, 2010 32″ x 24″ acrylic
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2) “Free as Air and Water” 2010 32″ x 24″ acrylic
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3) “Prayer Painting 1″ 2010 60″ x 48″ acrylic
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4) Not yet titled, 2010 32″ x 24″ acrylic
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5) “An Unceasing Revelation of Divine Light” 2009 32″ x 24″ Aluminum Foil, wood stretcher
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Artist Statement
I have been interested for a number of years in how painting can address deeply personal notions through abstraction as well as representational imagery.

Aluminum foil has been a recurring subject in my work for more than ten years. I am interested in the paradoxical quality of aluminum foil – it is common and cheap with the allure of preciousness and beauty – and I am fascinated by the fact that people, like foil, are an ever-changing reflection of their environments.

Contact Information:
email:  wayne [at] waynestead [dot] com
website:  www.wayneadamsstudio.com
phone: 917.403.1619

Maya Hayuk

Sep 9th, 2009 1 Comment

hayuk_pathlightpyramidA PATH FOR THE LIGHT, Installation, A.L.I.C.E. Gallery, Brussels, Belgium June 11 – August 22, 2009

hayuk_blackholeinfoBLACK HOLE INFORMATION PARADOX, 144 x 72″, triptych, acrylic on canvas and wood panel. Detail from SEXY GAZEBO at Cinders Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, February 2009

hayuk_imanHANDS ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, 84 x 60″, acrylic on canvas
This painting was made in collaboration with Iman’s aura, who’s image was projected by video artists, Coodie & Chike.

Artist Bio (courtesy Cinders Gallery)
Maya Hayuk is a muralist, painter, photographer, printmaker, curator, player of records, writer, performer, collector, Barnstormer, video maker, documentarian and lover of life who’s lives in Brooklyn, New York by way of San Francisco, Baltimore, Boston and Toronto. From her large-scale murals to small works on paper her obsession with symmetry and her collection of images of mandalas, playing cards, hexes, totem poles, Ukrainian Easter eggs, quilts and bandanas play out in works that espouse the traditional as well as the innovative. Embracing both sexuality and spirituality via symbolism evocative of radiantly woven geometries to the beckoning parted orifices of the body, there is something very classic rock, punk folk rainbow peace, freak out about Maya Hayuk that is very hard to put a finger on, but really it’s all about love. Her vividly bold geometric works evoke the process towards continuity and wholeness whose forces seem bent on maintaining the triumph of this love over evil. Along with her solo work, Hayuk frequently collaborates with other artists and musicians.

Website
http://www.mayahayuk.com

Upcoming Exhibit
Circle of Plenty
Sept 11 – Oct 11
Opening Reception Sept 11 from 7-10pm
Cinders Gallery
103 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211
http://www.cindersgallery.com