Beaux Arts of Central Florida

My work follows in the tradition of the “Abstract Expressionists” movement in which the painting process is the subject matter.

Vibrant, exuberant, and colorful shapes, lines and marks create a sense of energy and mystery.

www.jean-banas.com

My mixed media art is composed of handmade paper using banana leaf fiber infused with dyed and marbleized silks. The resulting piece reveals the silk as it emerges through the paper creating undulating creases and folds. I choose to superimpose these works on copper which I organically patina to correspond to the colors and textures of my art.  My work is then sealed to protect the art, but is exposed such as a painting on canvas yet dimensional in nature.  These works are influenced by the evocative qualities and energy of nature’s everchanging landscape. As the silk bursts forth from the paper  it suggests new life, budding, blossoming, and unfolding an enchanted mystery. I strive to create beautiful mixed media images to uplift the spirit. Working with a varied color palette is driven by the mood I am trying to convey.   I have won numerous awards over the years from being a past veteran of the Art Festival scene locally in Florida and across the US. Select venues include museum exhibitions with The Florida Women’s Museum, The Ormond Memorial Museum, The Deland Museum of Art and The Tampa Museum. My proudest accomplishments come from being part of ART IN PUBLIC PLACES. My art is in the permanent collection of The International Airport in Daytona, Bert Fish Medical Center, The New Smyrna Beach Library, Port Orange Library, The Deland Court House, Lincoln Center and The White House as well as in many private collections in the US. Canada and Europe. For me the creative process continually renews the spirit and brings meaning and depth to my life. Being an artist is a spiritual journey that I believe connects all of us to our innermost being.

I consider my self an experimental artist, specializing in watercolor. Finding new ways to use watercolor with other mediums and on different surfaces, leads me on a journey that has become my passion. When I work somewhat traditionally in watercolor, I am drawn to painting in the “negative” as this defines the positive shapes in such a way as to give my work an unmistakable depth. I also find great pleasure in teaching and sharing my discoveries with others.

–Gail Bokor

Having painted in watercolor for thirty years I switched to acrylics about (seven) years ago. I wanted to do some figurative work and found using acrylics enabled me to capture the little nuances within the human form more easily. Although my work is representational I always try to tell a story or send a message. I sometimes use myself as the model when making a personal statement. I draw on my personal experiences in life and occasionally am motivated by a novel I have read or some other source of inspiration. My work is never just a study of something. I try to go beyond just technique. My ultimate goal is to engage the viewer and make him think.

–Susan Bottaro

I am a figurative artist. Human behavior is the motivation for my work.

Manipulating color, shape, texture, space, etc. elements used for creating art, I “shout” or “whisper” i.e., overstate or understate the point of my content. I want the viewer to ask himself, “What is this artist trying to say.” In the process of wanting what he sees to have some meaning, this viewer, hopefully, will call upon his relevant personal perceptions/feelings to apply in this instance. This projection is the viewer’s effort to satisfy his search for personal or universal meaning in the work.

In my work I strive toward this end.

–Peter Cerreta

www.petercerreta.com

My life-long love of and involvement with horses drives my passion to create equine theme art. Horses are beautiful spirited animals, full of energy and truth. I use the horse to elicit a feeling or mood or to create a story. My one-of-kind and limited edition sculptures are all hand sculpted in clay, mixed media, wax, metals and other permanent media. With my unique mixed-media sculptures, I can indulge my artistic passion to work in three dimensions, sculpting, carving, shaping and painting. I strive for my works to intrigue the viewer, invite a closer look, and exhibit strength, determination and vulnerability. My works are in private and public collections across America and abroad.

–Mindy Z. Colton

www.mindycolton.com

Whether working in oils or acrylics, my interest and primary focus is the human face and form. I become caught up in the configuration and expression of a face, an attitude of body language, and significant attire – seeking the unique human image to describe in my painting. A favored subject for some years has been the indigenous women and children I have encountered in my travels to South and Central America, Copper Canyon and the Arctic of Alaska.

–Constanz Elder

My art is about creating, manipulating, and playing with space using paint, mixed media and collage. As a non-objective artist, how space appears is reflected in the ever-changing internal states of self and experience.

A personal exploration of the attributes of space are part of the process of creating it: open-closed; distant-close; dense-light; infinite-finite; background-foreground; too much-too little; floating-structured; layered-bare.

To the viewer, the resulting work becomes a visual record of the spontaneity inherent in non-objective painting combined with the push-pull power of space to inspire, intrigue, energize, and relax.

–Cheri Erdman

www.cherierdmanart.com

After retiring from a career in business, I resumed my interest in art via courses in painting, drawing and printmaking, at the Art League of Daytona Beach and also at DBCC (now DSC). Initially, I focused on representational art via traditional media, but in the past several years I have gravitated toward computer graphics with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop software. Use of these computer media still require skills in composition, drawing and color mixing to create credible works of art.

–Patrick Flannery

www.kapajen.com

My art is a like my dreams where fleeting moments in time have been captured. Someone, somewhere, an emotion that has registered within my subconscious. I start by doing quick marks in a very raw and fundamental manner, with paint, paper and any other media which I feel a piece demands. I then allow the piece to take me on a voyage without a destination. In short it’s like capturing a dream and transferring it for the viewer to observe.

“Sharing the soul through creativity is a great feeling and it happens every time one creates.”

–N.C. Hagood

The journey in fiber arts is an exciting one, always changing and challenging, never staying still always in motion, such as Nature. A small shell or rock, a unusual twig, a beautiful leaf filled with holes where insects have fed always fill my pockets while on a walk. Nature has always played an important part in identifying who I am as an artist and person. My mind is like a butterfly dancing from one flower to another. New ideas, new techniques, pushing the boundaries, and experimenting are always there pollinating, ready to try.

Using unusual non traditional fabrics continues to delight me, ranging from my ice dyed silks to burlap. Any fiber is fair game ranging from the humble cheesecloth to the finest silks. Upcycled clothing, thrift store finds, clothing off the back of friends, paints and embellishments find their way into my work. I am very much enjoying doing three dimensional work. The sewing machine is my paint brush.

Over many years I have collected textiles while traveling. It could be a torn doily, a fragment of chicken feed sack, a belt from Guatemala or Peru, bits and pieces of the lives of unknown women. Feeling very connected to the unknown artist, my work is evolving again, joining together with theirs giving new life and new purpose to the pieces. I feel a tremendous connection to these women, there is a peace, a tranquility, I feel their smiles as we are Sisters of the Cloth.

My fiber art can be found at the Hub on Canal, New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

www.lindashoffmeister.com

I enjoy creating cities and figures that only live in my heart and not the real world. Perhaps my architectural background sneaks into my work.

I use expressive backgrounds combined with abstracted figurative and urban sketches to give each work an unique personality. I love the use of lines – fat, skinny, broken, any kind I can make – and exaggerated and sensuous shapes in bright colors and energetic quick strokes.

Each piece is fun, funky, and heartfelt, and seeks to speak to the viewer on a very personal and poignant level.

–Carson Kapp

www.carsonkapp.weebly.com

I consider my work to be semi-abstract and expressionistic with an emphasis as a colorist. What is felt is equal to and often more important than what is seen. It is not that what is viewed is seen a little differently, but one may choose not to paint what is seen and instead paint what the artist would like to see. To paraphrase Picasso, we owe a great debt to the photographers. They set us free! I enjoy the painting process that brings about power and movement. Enjoyment is also found in a process that produces a concept that one of the weaknesses of acrylic and watercolor is also a strength. This being the high degree in lack of control. Therefore, there is a need for a willingness to both maintain and alter many of the very factors that attracted me to the mediums initially. Paradox ranks at of near the top of many, if not most of the scales of creativity.

–Don Kennedy

Landscape and scenic subject matter is my primary photographic interest. I like to look for viewpoints of objects that the casual observer may not immediately see or take an interest in. Additionally I have developed a fascination with photographing abstractions in nature. Peripheral to photography, but related to the artistic world, I make basic frames for other artists, custom wood cradles for use as a painting or encaustic surface plus I make wood display pedestals for sculpture and other 3-D art.

–Jim Hoolsema

I’m currently working in mixed media – my goal is to successfully integrate realism and abstraction into cohesive paintings and drawings. The colors of Fall, the variety of textures in nature, fossils, and ancient artifacts all inspire me and influence my work. I look forward to and embrace the journey – the process of creating, the challenge of resolving problems, and the setbacks and successes along the way.

–Sharon LaDue

I believe the authentic experience one can have is with nature. I am fascinated by the intricate designs created within the small space of one’s vision. The lines, forms, colors and textures of the natural elements are what motivate my art. As an artist, I reach deep within myself in order to express as image inspired by nature, or man’s interaction with it, that will touch the viewer as it has me, or cause the viewer to go on and look more closely at the wonders that surround us.

–Carolyn Land

www.perceptionsbycaland.com

I have been sculpting for over 20 years, first in the UK and then here in Florida. My interest lies in the human form – I enjoy expressing its beauty and movement, and capturing emotions in both faces and bodies.

My medium is earthenware, which is hand built, fired and usually finished with paint to give varying effects. I have also worked in concrete and stone.

–Marilyn Leverton

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Renee Schwadron Lewis always loved the combination of texture and color. The confluence of cultures in NYC was especially an influential part of her life. Lewis received a B.F.A. in Fabric Design from the School of Art at Syracuse University. As part of the University’s Foreign Studies Program she studied Art History in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In her focas on Fabric Design (which included silk screening and weaving). Lewis developed an eye and proficiency with repetitive patterns – which continues to be a theme in her current work.

Her Post-Impressionist style drawings are created with a combination of oil crayons, color pencils and pastels – producing bold, stunning colors and creative themes capturing the colorful nature of women. At the core of her work are women – empowered, strong, yet vulnerable, linked to others, each other – and beautiful from within.

Lewis is an award winning artist and is represented by The Hub on Canal, New Smyrna Beach, The Dancing Crane Gallery in Bradenton – and has exhibited work at the Morean Arts Center, St. Petersburg, the Orlando Museum of Art with the Artist’s Registry, The Gallery at Mills Park, Orlando, City Arts Factory, Orlando and the Gainesville Fine Arts Association Gallery. She is also a member of Beaux Arts of Central Florida. Additionally, she teaches classes and workshops for children and adults at the Orlando Museum of Art, the Casselberry Art House and The Hub on Canal.

www.reneeschwadronlewis.com

Collecting art has always given me great pleasure. My home is gallery with a wide range of genres – pieces that calm me and inspire me – they have become part of my soul. And now, I create art that I want to share with the world. We all need to surround ourselves with beauty and inspiration reflected in the shapes, patterns and colors of our planet.

Choose art in all of its forms… You will be enriched.

-Babz Lupoli

www.artbybabz.com

Creating beauty and order out of chaos, I find it endlessly challenging and fulfilling to start with randomness and then follow it to see where it leads me. Chance happenings are both catalyst and guide. Alternating between calculated drawing and gestural mark-making; focused exploration and spontaneous experimentation; thoughtful color placement and impulsive splashes of paint, I explore the balance between extremes. These paintings, a record of that dialogue, meld my innate need to create with a desire to evoke a visceral response in the viewer.

www.melissamason.me

My foundation in the arts was built by experimenting with several different media.  With each came an acquired level of skill and knowledge.  In many ways, clay offered me the most freedom.  It responds to physical pull and push resulting in a three-dimensional expression of what has inspired me. Like many artists, nature, travel and life’s experience provide the emotion I react to.

The science of clay and glazes is an integral part of the success in pottery.  Skill on the potter’s wheel and hand building techniques develop only by doing and failing.  I have never given up on my passion for clay and creating.  I can’t…. I have too many ideas that need to be built.  Time ticks on and rolls faster as I chase these ideas downhill, but joyful music and laughter radiates from my soul as I move the mud.

Fire transforms the ceramic structures to the hardness of unrecyclable stone. Now my creations are future relics to be discovered by archeologists in the next era, offering a look into my time on earth.

My artistic life has always been inspired by this quote by an unknown author: “Dreams don’t have deadlines”. 

I have never met a media I didn’t like, and have worked in photography, watercolor, acrylic, mixed media, collage, fabric, fiber, and jewelry. I will basically run out of lifetime before I run out of inspiration and materials. I believe that we do our best work when we give up our attachment to the importance of the results. Therefore, I embrace chaos.

–Robin Moore

My works are primarily non-representational conveying my emotions through abstraction. Shape, color, mark, texture and space are my descriptors. The compositions begin with process and serve as a point of departure. Working improvisationally is challenging and allows me the freedom to experiment with the natural properties of both traditional and non-traditional media. I like the richly processed surfaces that result. They show a history of their own.

–Gretchen Nass

My passion is to create images that stimulate our inner emotions giving rise to our creative feeling for life.

–Lee Nesler

I am an experimental artist. I like to explore different techniques and materials. I collect ephemera and discarded stuff to use in my work. My current explorations are with paper, cloth and paint restrained by a minimal palette. This series all start with a painted black background and then I compose a piece matching old script and images with cloth to created an image that satisfies.

www.artbyomeara.com

I have always been involved in some type of artistic pursuit, first in high school and then at Scripps College where I minored in studio arts. I began my career in 1972 when I started a needlepoint design business. I specialized in custom and liturgical work, along with creating a signature line of designs which is still distributed nationally. After retiring  I turned to painting full time, with acrylics as my medium.
 
My Landscape and Bird Series are based on memories I have of growing up in the Midwest, living on an eighty acre farm in Minnesota and traveling further north to summer on Madeline Island in Lake Superior. My intention for these paintings is to not represent any specific place or thing, but rather to create an emotional sense of place, one that evokes a feeling of stillness and calm.
 
My work on paper is influenced by my growing interest in abstraction. I create my collage material by using acrylics and mediums applied in various techniques to very thin paper. I incorporate pieces of this material into my work, which produces added texture and color interest. Memory Series are simply layers of paint applied to thin paper with no additional support other than the paint itself. They become fabric in a sense.
 
I summer on Madeline Island in Wisconsin where I maintain a studio and gallery, and winter in New Smyrna Beach in Florida where I  share a studio with three fellow artists.

www.katherineparfet.com

Manipulating self-painted paper by sanding, tearing away, gluing over and repainting, gives me a feeling of being totally creative. Handwork experiences with a grandmother, my mother and my older sister stir up an innate drive to create using a tactile technique. I find collaging and decollaging in a minimalist, abstract style very exciting and fulfilling as suppressed images become manifest onto the primed board or heavy paper, which I use as a canvas.

www.bettymorrisparker.weebly.com

Painting is to me like breathing, filling my lungs with fulfillment. Nature is my muse in painting, poetry, and sculpture.

I strive for unique compositions using mixed media, acrylic paint, collage and bold colors. I create stylize figure paintings that reflect emotions and or humor. These paintings are whimsical or mysterious that express my vision about the human condition.

www.facebook.com/Barbara-Perkins-Artist

The majority of my work covers a massive heap of issues such as hierology, irreverence, hypocrisy, pareidolia and assorted materials that are rarely put together and crammed into a single frame.

facebook.com/meshimages42

twitter.com/meshimages42

My artistic influences are varied. I have always been interested in the past. When my mother told me about her childhood in Depression era rural America, she sparked my ability to visualize her stories.    I think this gives a lot of my paintings, especially over the last 10 years, a feeling of American Regionalism of the 1920s-1930s, yet they utilize surrealist devices such as transparency, juxtaposition, and transformation.

Over the last year, I began taking photographs around Green Springs and Gemini Springs Park, and began to peel away the natural and social history of this area. I want to suffuse the resulting body of 12 paintings with the sense of history that is held in the dense humidity of these two parks. I strive for a dreamlike, surreal quality that suggests an underlying spiritual resonance.

 Many of my paintings are based on odd things I’ve seen out my car window during my road trips across the United States and Peru, where my husband is from. This is usually the starting point to begin a narrative fed by my imagination.  

Sometimes the image is inspired by something I’ve read. For example, one of my recent paintings, titled Insomnia, describes  a blog post I stumbled across, in which a woman lamented the fact that her hens would not roost at night as they were supposed to; they kept running around, chasing moths. The resulting painting metaphorically expresses my own sleepless nights.   

www.clareradiganart.com

I work in layers over an abstract colorful background, gradually teasing out my favorite subject matter: the effects of sunlight on boats, people and water at a given moment in time. I try to keep most of the painting very loose and use an airbrush to soften various areas and to create transparencies. The intent is for the expressive abstract underpainting to show through the final representational painting.

As an artist painting in both oil and watercolor, I express my love of the painting process. My inspiration usually comes from nature especially from flowers and the human figure as seen in my many portraits. From these, hopefully, something pleasing to the eye has been created using color, shapes and patterns.

–Jane Rockhold

I began painting as a very young child. I love all things beautiful and believe the important thing about a work is that it is beautiful and invites the viewer in and holds him/her there for a passage of time. I paint in the classical tradition of using transparent and semi-transparent glazes which allow the light to pass through the scenes on my canvas creating air and atmosphere. And, of course some mystery is important too.

–Amelie Rogers

I remember that since I was a child I read and wrote poems dedicated to love, life, freedom and God. Throughout the years this poems inspired my imagination and brought me peace.
The poems transform into colors and become the transition into my canvas filling them with romantic feelings, and even melancholy.

My paintings are a reflection of my stories, God is the support of my hands and my heart, in my canvases my faces are expressing the intimacy of my soul.
My Fabrics are my meditation.
My space is my tranquility.
My birds are my freedom.
My colors are my poems.
The poems of colors that illuminate my imagination.

I work with low fire, stoneware and porcelain clay, using various surface finishes to create mysterious anthropomorphic sculptures.

My sculpture can be interpreted the same way that one would interpret a dream. Human and animal forms interact and unite to show we are all made from same “clay.”

–Fay Samimi

I enjoy the creative process of art making whether it results in abstraction or contemporary realism. To me art is timeless and is not dependent upon specific techniques or content.

My figurative paintings are created on multiple sheets of layered plexiglass. Each sheet of clear plexiglass contains a part of the final image. The effect creates a 3 dimensional kinetic painting that moves and changes as the viewer’s perspective changes.

I’ve been influenced by the 1960’s optical and kinetic art of Israeli artist Yaacov Agam. Also the French Pointillist painters of the 1880’s, American photorealist painter Chuck Close, and the dramatic lighting of Dutch master Rembrandt van Ryan.

My aesthetic focus is to create an image of drama, beauty and sensuality. Not just with the subject matter, but with the composition, materials and application of color. An image that is fun to view with unexpected surprises. I'm adding textural drama and contrast to my recent paintings with the addition of soft exotic organic papers that contrast nicely with the smooth and shiny plexiglass.

I love watching the dance and delight of the viewers eyes while discovering the movement, harmony and depth created by layer upon layer of images in my paintings. I am constantly reinventing the way I create images. Always searching for a playful bridge between the 3 dimensions of sculpture, and the 2 dimensions of painting.

www.robertshirk.com

As I travel, I am intrigued by the surfaces that surround us. It could be a ceiling, a floor, most often it is a wall. My intent is to interpret these surfaces in a way that will evoke a response in the viewer. There might be words, remnants of notices, or playbills. There might be layers that are being exposed because of age or climate. There surfaces are a history lesson a warning of what may be coming, or what has been. A surface can be elegant or tawdry, happy or sad, substantial or crumbling. The response to the art will vary from viewer to viewer.

www.antoinetteslick.com

Creating figuative clay images allows me to connect past experences in my life with the present and possibilities for the future. My inspirations comes not only from my small town upbringing, but from having grown up in a family of strong women who allowed their softer sides to shine through, especially via strong bonds with other women and with nature. The inner strength and endurance of women is an ongoing inspiration in my art.

Creating figures of women that convey personality and purpose brings me enjoyment and satisfaction that I would like to transfer to those who view my work.

www.sculpturekat.com

My painting centers on the representation of the human form as narrative. Exploring the body, through inventive gestural mark making, creates a history in each work and imbeds emotional context. Observing and drawing people provides an unending source of ideas for me.

Through a long history of making art and extensive drawing skills from a background in graphic design and illustration, has provided a life experience that produces a broad visual field.

Ultimately, my goal is to create a piece that transports the viewer into a world of their own visual imagination.

My paintings start with a big-bang of colors, which swirl into quiet spaces and are sometimes obliterated and reformed into new creations. The canvas is my edifice, where my meditations and my prayers are heard. Since I have no end image in mind, my hands and mind are free to explore where these layers take me.  Acrylic paints and mediums lend themselves well to my process.

Ultimately I want each one of these paintings to touch a chord within me.  Then, I believe I can touch you.

www.lillianverkins.com

I love to experiment and extend the boundaries of contemporary watercolor and experimental mixed media techniques. Hopefully my paintings will set a mood and draw the viewer’s eye to explore and enjoy.

www.maryleevoegele.com

As an artist, I have tried many mediums. I think I have finally found one that satisifies my curiosity. I am now working with fiber. I like to combine fiber and canvas to create a sense of old and new. The pieces pictured here are all done on twelve inch raw canvas. I use thread and color to create a painting within a painting. I like to work in series and now that I have finished with the white raw canvas, I plan to use black canvas and experiment further with this method.

As early as I can remember I was an observer. Many questions intrigued me then and continue to intrigue me now. Why do people do as they do? What motivates their actions and reactions? What makes us all tick? Whether it is an elderly woman’s feeling of isolation, the outsider’s anxiety when courting a new friend, the conflicting joy and sadness of the surrogate mother, the unforgotten lives of those who have passed, these deeply empathic connections are sensitive glimpses. While I assume the objective position of the observer, these glimpses open a small window through which I also look inside my own emotional life.

www.beauwild.com

Various processes in nature, cause deterioration of natural and man-made materials. I am inspired and intrigued by the result. Using a camera macro lens, I capture images of mineral seepage and lichen growth on aging rock, or the peeling paint and rusting metal of old machinery. Highlighting the lines, textures, and colors that combine to bring character and interest to those images, I create vivid, abstract art, that showcases their amazing beauty, and intricate designs. I hope my work excites the viewer’s imagination and opens their eyes to what an incredible world surrounds us!

I produce art in a variety of visual media and styles, ideas and meaning stem from my past and present professional, military and personal everyday experiences. I prefer message art; satire, humor and irony. I continually explore new visual media and methods. Currently I focus on innovation in monotype and monoprint printing. My overall effort is to produce meaningful art in the creative spirit of the twenty-first century.