Touchstone oil painter Jeanne Garant paints abstractly. For a painter like Jeanne, abstract means to focus on a particular shape and color noticed at any given moment and then to discard the rest. She draws from the jumble of life rather than trying to capture it all in a photographic or three-dimensional way. Garant's attitude in creating the flat or one-perspective paintings, 275 Stripes, mirrors that of New England painter Milton Avery. “I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colors, form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter. At the same time I try to capture and translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea.”
Read moreApril Rimpo: Finding Different Perspectives
April Rimpo
It’s been said that there are about 34 towns in 25 states named Springfield. Five of them are in Wisconsin and at least one is in Massachusetts. The latter is singular, because April Rimpo grew up there close to her grandparent’s home where paintings made by her grandfather graced the walls. When April drew pictures as a child, copying cartoon figures and exploring what the pencil could do, she received positive feedback from the family and teachers.
Read moreElaine Florimonte: Painting Layered Metaphors
Elaine Florimonte
Elaine Florimonte’s day often starts out over coffee in the morning while she touches base with some of her high school art students. They come in early to talk about the parallels between art and life and what to do when something goes wrong in a painting—philosophical stuff. “It’s a privilege to be present in their lives at these moments when 15 to 18-year olds are forming their identities,” she muses, “and I stay connected to about four or five each year, following their progress through college.” In the classroom Elaine teaches techniques and various media while coaching them through the standard processes of making art. Sometimes she picks up the brush and paints on her own canvas to get a point across, a technique she learned from one of her own teachers during her high school days. It was this particular teaching model that convinced her to study art and then become an art teacher herself.
Read moreThe Abstract Icons of Paula Lantz
Paula Lantz head shot copy
Paula Lantz always watches people as she goes about her day--in a restaurant, on the Metro, in a park or grocery store. Or at the mall. These folks aren’t doing much; just going about the business of living, but Paula wonders what each one is thinking or feeling, and makes a mental note of her guesses.
Read more“UNFILTERED” by Leslie M. Nolan
Unfiltered By Leslie Nolan
Within each brush-stroke, a poetic tinge of mystery, a sophisticated flick of intrigue, a provocative expedition of color and form playing along the canvas: welcome to the painted world of Leslie M. Nolan.
Read moreOut of Chaos: Rosemary Luckett
Whether an artist's studio is neat as a pin or heaped full of brushes, tools, clay or wood, disorder characterizes the creative process. A chaotic jumble of ideas spill out of the brain and become organized in drawn or painted forms. Tubes of color sort themselves out, then are squeezed onto the palette in a jumble of mixed hues. A teapot spout, in a box of cast-offs, offers itself to the sculptor as the beginning of a bird with a long neck. A dream works its way to the conscious surface, suggesting a vision that emerges in material form from a chunk of clay.
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