Tag Archives: Women Artists

Profile Video: French-English Textile Artist ‘Valerie Wartelle’

Video December 6, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

My main fascination lies within the manipulation of fibres and textiles as an expressive art form. Taking the rural environment as my inspiration,I explore long-term interests of texture, colour, layering and process to create contemplative and ethereal artworks.

My primary technique is wet felting; a traditional craft technique using wool tops, hot water, soapsuds and friction to interlock the fibres together. The making is muscular and rhythmic as I lay, pour, roll and squeeze again and again. It seems repetition nudges me into a semi-meditative space – it invites me to trust myself, and let the haptic connections sinuously paint a new space for the viewer to contemplate.

The compositions are built in layers, hinting at what may lie beneath, and use translucency and light to create absorbing moods. These are highly textured felt pieces in which cloth is embedded, prints disguised, and threads unravelled as a painter with her brush. The analogy with painting is significant throughout, making the viewing inquisitive, and challenging people’s perception.

Brought up in France and French Polynesia, I originally came to the UK to study textile design and am now a widely exhibited artist working and living in West Yorkshire. In 2015, I was awarded the Embroidery Magazine’s Best Emerging Textile Artist at SIT Select Showcase, as well as Best Picture in Show at theGreat North Art Show.

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Video Profiles: American Conceptual Painter Lee Lozano (1930-1999)

Video November 30, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Jo Applin gives an insight into both Lee Lozano’s life and her work, contextualizing her practice and highlighting her response to the constraints of constitutional systems, gender dynamics, power, money, and politics.

Created in 1962–1963, the early paintings and drawings on view at Hauser & Wirth Somerset use airplanes as a central image and can be considered as examples of the artist’s passionate exploration of creative energy in its purist form. This focused body of early work exposes a complex and deeply intimate inner life grappling with one-sided gender and societal dichotomies, while other works display a form of ferocious humour and playfulness, exploiting the rhetoric of exaggeration to its most cogent effect.

Her raw expressionist brush strokes create powerful works imbued with a very personal iconography, including genitals, religious symbols, tools and body parts. Lozano’s short lived but influential career remains a source of fascination, lauded by Lucy Lippard as the foremost female conceptual artist of her era in New York. Jo Applin is author of ‘Lee Lozano: Not Working’ and ‘Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture.’ She teaches modern and contemporary art at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

Art, Arts & Literature, Profiles

Artist Profile: American Painter Barbara Rudolph

September 11, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Barbara Rudolph is an Arizona artist specializing in realism oil paintings that most often include a bird. Her painting backgrounds can be either realistic, or contemporary with design elements, but always to showcase the finest of details in her main subject. She will paint many layers, allowing each layer of oil paint to dry in between.

Barbara’s work is often sprinkled with an element of humor, She takes time to photograph and place each object within the scene she paints. “I enjoy getting absorbed in a new painting and letting it gradually reveal its own story”, she says. “The messages and symbolism in my work help to connect viewers to my subjects. I’m always thrilled when someone steps in for a closer look and responds with a laugh or smile.”

Barbara’s appreciation and desire to create art began at an early age. She later earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1990 from her home school of Arizona State University. She first entered the professional world of art through graphic design, which then led her to paint for a variety of fine art publishers for many years to come. She eventually opened her independent home studio where she now works full time.

For more than twenty five years, Barbara’s paintings have been on display in various galleries and also in private collections across the United States and Canada. She is a long standing member of the “International Guild of Realism.” Some of her recent works have been chosen as finalists in the prestigious “Art Renewal Center” Salon competition,” which is the leading revival of realism art.

“Art is such an integral part of my life. It brings me joy to be able to create paintings that bring happiness into people’s lives.”

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Top Watercolor Artists: American Painter Marilyn Simandle – “Choice Light”

September 9, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Marilyn Simandle is an internationally known oil and water color painter. At the age of six, and learning from her mother, a musician and painter, Marilyn started painting watercolors. She has always known that she would become a professional artist.

After receiving her BA Arts Degree from San Jose State University along with decades of discipline and dedicated practice, Marilyn has gone on to share her inspirations with the world. She is credentialed as a Master with OPAM, NWS, and AWS (Oil Painters of America, National Water Color Society, and American Water Color Society). She has authored two books, “Capturing Light in Watercolor” and “Contagious Enthusiasm”, both of which reflect her mantra “It takes a lot of practice to become a professional”.

A native Californian, she now resides in Hampton Cove, Alabama, where she explores all her passions: painting, gardening, and playing the piano. The former flight attendant is an avid traveler and photographer that keep her fully stocked with subject matter for painting.

In her “Painterly Style”, Marilyn tries to convey her own personal beliefs of what art truly is. Her mentors are John Singer Sargent and Joaquin Sorolla. The artist’s role is to make the ordinary extraordinary. She loves to explore the interplay of light and shadow and its effects on the subject matter. Her painting compositions engage her collectors with uplifting shapes, values, and exciting colors, tonal relations and depth. Marilyn believes it is far better to leave a painting more unfinished rather than with too much detail so the viewer can complete the painting. It is more free to view a single brush stroke done with energy and confidence that 100 strokes done with drudgery.

Marilyn often says “You become what you behold”. This is ever so evident in her paintings. Peace, joy, rest and comfort are realized by her followers and collectors through her work. A student of Marilyn’s successful workshops was once heard to say to Marilyn, “You have given me a new insight to painting and have instilled in me courage and inspiration to keep painting.”

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Art: American Surrealist Painter Kay Sage – “Eerily Lit Landscapes” (1898-1963)

April 18, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

From Christie’s article (April 16, 2020):

Sage is renowned for her empty, enigmatic, eerily lit landscapes. Human figures are markedly absent — their presence felt only by the monolithic, architectural structures and unidentifiable, draped objects they seem to have left behind. In this respect, 1945’s Other Answers is a quintessential Sage painting.

In 1939, with clouds of war hovering over Europe, Kay Sage returned to the United States after more than two decades away. Her lover and fellow Surrealist, Yves Tanguy, soon followed her across the Atlantic, despite the fact that both of them were married to other people. In Sage’s case to an Italian prince — her official title was La principessa di San Faustino.

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In the summer of 1940, Sage had her first solo show, at the influential Pierre Matisse Gallery in Manhattan. Then, in early 1943, she was part of the landmark Exhibition by 31 Women, curated and staged by Peggy Guggenheim in her Art of This Century Gallery.

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Profiles: Australian Ceramic Artist Nicolette Johnson – “Enigmatic And Timeless” Objects Of Art

March 28, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

From a Yatzer.com online article (March 14, 2020):

Hand-crafted through a laborious, almost ritualistic process, which sometimes has Nicolette individually sculpting and applying hundreds of protrusions to one vessel for days, her work transcends the dichotomy between artefact and artwork.

Whether it’s a reaction to the intangible aspect of our digital age, or a consequence of the trend-setting power of Instagram, there’s been a resurgence of ceramics in the last few years, both as an art form and a hobby. Perhaps it’s quite telling then that London-born, Australia-based ceramic artist Nicolette Johnson recreationally begun taking pottery classes just a few years ago as a counterbalance to her day job as a photographer.

Fast forward five years and Nicolette has distinguished herself as an acclaimed ceramist artist through the enchanting sophistication and painstaking craftsmanship of her work that channels ancient forms with contemporary precision.

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Nicolette Johnson is a ceramic artist whose work explores symmetry, motifs, and the importance of the artefact.

Nicolette was born in London, England in 1990, grew up in Texas, USA, and today is based in Brisbane, Australia. Working in stoneware and employing wheel-throwing, coiling, and sculpting techniques, Nicolette applies a modern aesthetic to re-imagined ancient forms. Her work is included in the permanent collections of The National Gallery of Victoria and the Museum of Brisbane.

With a background in photographic art and social documentary, Nicolette began studying ceramics in 2015 and is continuing her practice-led exploration into functional and sculptural ceramic vessels, hand-making and firing each of her works in her Brisbane home studio.

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