Lele Galer - Artist
Mostly for my paintings I'm known for
trees.  A certain type of trees.  Like I like
the forest kinda midway.
I don't like the root systems and I don't so much
like the leaves.  So what I really like are
tree trunks. 
And I know that sounds weird, but when I
go into a forest I'm always taken by this huge
sense of... it's like a cathedral for me.
I find it very spiritual and they just seem so
strong, anchored in the ground and there's
sort of a cool sensation.  I mean like it
feels cool...
in the air in the forest and anyway that's
what I like so I aim for that.  It just happens
also to go with... 
a pretty contemporary aesthetic where
you're working with strong verticals and then
you have this mish-mash of background
stuff that creates the sense of depth.
So painting I'm really looking for texture and
color.  And so right now the forest structure
works for me.  I enjoy it. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience
www.gallery222malvern.com

Nathan Durnin - Artist
I think it's really exciting artwork.  My work
is going to be mostly landscapes that focus
mostly on kinda large spaces.
So I work on a lot of skyscapes, kinda like
big areas in Valley Forge.  So I think they're
gonna see a lot of exciting work.

Gallery 222 Malvern
2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience
www.gallery222malvern.com

Jeremy McGirl - Artist
What I've been drawn to right now in the
work and what keeps me... is like the layers...
And kinda having this overall idea that
letting the piece kinda evolve and have a
little bit of an organic flow. 
But I love the layers and the idea of like
information and one layer passing through
another layer. 
Whether it's building up different layers of
graphite and pencil or like the mixed media
piece behind you... 
where it's a bunch of cut paper, transfers, 
oil paints and there's gaps and smudges
and areas that are affecting the previous layers.
And so, I view them a little bit like
information and experience to where each
layer contributes to the previous layers... 
but it also changes it at the same time
and sometimes it conceals things and other
times it reveals new things. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience
www.gallery222malvern.com

Joseph Sweeney - Artist
Art done on location using the color that you see
in the landscape at the time you're doing it.

So, it's a specific time, a specific place in
specific day or color that happens
during that day.

You paint what you love so that's where
I go to the beach.  I'll go to the shore.
I'll go to places where... 

I like the environment.  I've painted in Montana.
I've painted in Ireland.
I've painted in Bermuda.
Gallery 222 Malvern
2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience
www.gallery222malvern.com

Sue Ciccone - Artist
Everything I paint is something that I've
experienced.

So generally a lot of the work I do comes
from photographs I've taken as a reference.
But it starts with my eyes.  I see it...

and then it goes to my heart and then it
goes through my hand onto the canvas.

I think it's about making a connection though
with an animal too.  When they're really
inquisitive and they look at you... 

and they connect.  And what I love to do
is paint them so that the viewer feels that
connection as well.

So that, it's as if they're feeling what I felt.  That
kind of... I get a euphoric feeling when I
connect with creatures.

And I think most of us do.  I think it's a
neat connection.  So and I think when people look
at my work they connect to the eyes.

The eyes are like the windows of the souls, so.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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www.gallery222malvern.com

Paula Sargent Mintzer - Artist
So my first thing I do on the canvas is I
put a heart in the middle of the canvas.
And I think you can see it was under here.
This blue heart and then I write words
on the canvas.  
I just write them down.  Love, wisdom, 
freedom, whatever words come to me.  
And it's totally spontaneous, intuitive. 
And then from there, I apply many colors
around the canvas in a very specific way.
It's so much richer when you can see... 
colors coming from underneath when
your looking at it with the finished product.
Letting these colors peek through.
I methodically put them around the canvas
and I try to put colors that compliment
each other next to each other.
And then I specifically add all the colors
around the edges, because I think in an
abstract painting... 
when I do a lot of editing, part of the
richness of the painting is seeing little snippets
of color peeking out of the edges of the painting...  
because if I've edited it in here, it gives you a
place for your eye to rest.  But if you have, with
these snippets of color...
showing through and on the edges, it makes
it that much richer and that much more
interesting.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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www.gallery222malvern.com

Kristi Gilfillan - Artist
I think my art really strives to touch on
the emotions of the viewer.
I think I try to create images that either
put you in a place that you wanna be and so
that you want to bring that into your world...
and hang that in your home and look at that
over and over again or it's something that
really touches you know your heart strings.
Or, you know, a lot of my dog paintings or
things like that... that... that really play on
people's emotions
But I really just... I want them to be
colorful and you know make something
that's happy to... to view.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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www.gallery222malvern.com

Nancy Bea Miller - Artist
Well, my art is representational.  I'm
very interested in what things look like. 
To me that's super exciting.  The
texture.  The colors.  How things
interrelate.
I'm very interested in the beauty of and
the strangeness of the natural world
and that is also people's faces... 
landscape.  I used to say that my art was...
my art is about the everyday and seeing
the interests, the beauty, the wonder...
the strangeness of the things we just take
for granted... like horse chestnuts that you
just pick up on a walk in your backyard. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience

Jeremy McGirl - Artist
What I've been drawn to right now in the
work and what keeps me... is like the layers...
And kinda having this overall idea that
letting the piece kinda evolve and have a
little bit of an organic flow. 
But I love the layers and the idea of like
information and one layer passing through
another layer. 
Whether it's building up different layers of
graphite and pencil or like the mixed media
piece behind you... 
where it's a bunch of cut paper, transfers, 
oil paints and there's gaps and smudges
and areas that are affecting the previous layers.
And so, I view them a little bit like
information and experience to where each
layer contributes to the previous layers... 
but it also changes it at the same time
and sometimes it conceals things and other
times it reveals new things. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience
www.gallery222malvern.com

Jan Wier - Artist
For someone walking into Gallery222,
I would describe my art as...
colorful, expressive, loose.  Nothing
too precise.  I like things that are a little
imperfect and almost a little unfinished.
Because I think we are all just a little
unfinished at the end of the day. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience
www.gallery222malvern.com

Monique Sarkessian - Artist
In addition to oil painting, I'm an encaustic wax painter. This is an ancient Greek and Roman technique and you use beeswax with some assorted waxes...plus pigment and damar crystals and so, you heat up the wax.  It's a pretty low temperature. It's low 200's and you paint it on
or brush it on or you can use metal spatulas or different tools... 
to get it on there.  And then you use heat in between the layers to stick
the top layer onto the previous layers. It's... sounds simple.  It's temperamental, but you can get some wonderful textures. I can stick things in it.  I can scrap into it. I can do different things.  Like this actually has vintage sewing patterns... but I just have so many layers of wax that it's kinda hard to see them at this point.  

Gallery 222 Malvern
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So my work, now, can be characterized as constantly pulling away from the form.  I spent my whole life studying the form and now it's my goal to move it out of.  Using the figure as a way to find space.  In seeing it that figure comes and goes when it pleases.  Just constant adaptation, constant mistake, constant destruction.  I think that's how I talk about my work.

 It's rooted in geology and geological processes.  Using those as a metaphor to understand my own processes.  When I was in school, I took a class in geology and it just kind of clicked.  Thinking about the processes that goes into forming rocks.  The time pressures and multiple minerals that go into forming all the different kinds of rocks.  Those are kind of the same things that go into making a print.  It takes time.   It takes pressure.  You have to run the plate through the press and they're only kind of a certain few elements that you can use as your starting point.  So, I made that initial connection and just kind of kept running with it. 

So I’m ceramic artist and work in tile and sculpture.  So rolling out of wet piece of clay, figuring out the size, what size do I want to make.  Ripping and tearing the edges, building up from there.  What textures? What do I want to say? What's my, it's a certain language, I feel that I use with these, these objects that I'm using two stamp into the clay or even using client itself and letting the clay speak more for itself.  This is a brand-new piece this actually just came out of the kiln this morning and this city form this is part of the

alphabet city series.  This was inspired, the whole alphabet city series was inspired by the White Hill  Towns of Spain and had collected some old Philadelphia printing block letters and of course I'm a collector of found objects.  Finding things there's always little things rolling around the bottom of my car that I find parking lots.  Even you know before we throw out the trash my husband has an interesting shoelace or knots on his shoes that he throws away cuz they ripped.  I salvage them and use them somehow in clay.  Old bike chains or wheels bobbins, house keys so using those textures and those stamps to create the city for me it's it's, a, it's a problem solving.  Looking at all of my you know dumping out my bucket on the table and say okay this is what I'm going to use.  Stamping it in, figuring out whether a rip and tear clay, do I add it on top?  The love stamp, this love stamp has to do with the title city of Brotherly Love for this one. 

It's impressionistic.  It's definitely representational, however I don't want to.. I want to be able to make a statement with my art without overstating.   I want to use as few marks as possible to tell the story.  You can see here I have very few strokes defining the light side in the dark side of the face. It's not blended together.  I don't blend and make the curve like you see in a photo.  Like there is a photorealist way of painting.  That is not the way I paint, I am much more of an impressionistic painting.  I use pieces of color of different values to create a form and a value is light to dark.  Those are the values, light medium dark.

In my current work I am much freer.   I am losing edges.  I am, I'm having more fun. It's more of a dance

My art, I'd like to describe it as realistic or representational so really trying to get true-to-life.   I feel like it’s going to connect best with the viewer when they sense that it's a real thing.  So if I'm painting a floral about like if I was painting this rose, you know I want to paint it as real as possible so the viewer feels like they can smell that rose  and you know since the memories and things that come to them when they're thinking of a rose. Or if I’m painting a fruit, I want them to be able to reach out and grab it and take a bite out and really get that sensation of its a real-life thing.  The may have a different memories or experiences compared to me but at least want to try and connect from that way.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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I dug these oil pastels out that I'd I've gotten some from an art teacher when I was in high school.  He said to take these and just sent them with me.  I had those and I got some more later on.  I had a couple little boxes and then decided to try take them out and started fooling around with them.  Using them the way you are sort of taught to use them which is a trying medium you know you drawl with them,  write with them.  They're kind of like adult crayons.  You can do these things and then I thought well what else can I do with them.  So I started suppressing them to the paper or scraping them off or scratching into them and then I found that you can make all these different textures, different layers.  Having such a small size,  I could I could start a piece and it could change over and over and over again until it was finished thing.  They start with just fields of color and then playing with then I'm looking for shapes in them saying what will go next, what will go next to this and then after a while it turns into a field or desert or mountain or a harbor
Gallery 222 Malvern
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To make this paint I'll normally find a location and I really enjoyed getting to

take the time to wander around a stream and choose all of the different rocks and find the largest selection of colors that I can.   I mean it's mostly in this location, reds and browns and yellows so it's definitely an earth palette but there's so many variations of yellows and so many different reds and different grades.  Then I have a piece canvas cloth and a hammer and I crush it.  And using a big tile and a mortar which is a heavy glass grinding object,   I make it into a thick paste and I use it to paint pictures.  Maybe it piles up in these waves where you kind of lose a lot of your hard edges but every single rock works differently and has a light shimmer and its own way of finding itself onto the canvas.  And I find it so rewarding and also just so fun to be able to go out there and like really have this like alternative physical experience of that space.

Denise Sedor - Artist
When I do my abstract work, I start
out with a lot of marks and lines...
with pencil, graphite, oil pencils and then
I start with transparent colors
depending on my mood. 
I'll pick the colors, they're kinda intuitive
and then I'll do transparent painting
and then I build from there.
I find that with my abstracts I don't build
as much as some of my other paintings.  Some
abstract work I build more... 
some I don't.  The line work I think has less.
Some of my other abstracts, there's lots of
paint under there. 
And I like that you can see a history
of what's underneath. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
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www.gallery222malvern.com