Radhika Srinivas - Artist

There are way too many techniques in watercolor and I'm

still learning as I do every piece. First of all, I love to paint

atmosphere and mood...and I love urban cities, cityscapes and I love to travel. So as

I travel I see the urban street life. I love to paint them. I

love to paint what's going on in the street life and I like

to capture the mood.The mood and the atmosphere and I like to bring that to my

audience and capture that sense of being in that place and

I want my audience to feel what I feel.

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Radhika Srinivas - Artist

I start off with a very monochromatic look to my painting.

So most of my painting would have just a few colors

with a limited palette...and then I would like to add accents. Colorful accents because

I do like color in my painting. So when I do add color, I go right

into my cadmium reds or my cobalt blues...and my teals and I just attack my paintings with those colors

just in the right spots so that your eye goes to that

spot.

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Radhika Srinivas - Artist

I work with all the mediums. I work with oils. I work

with charcoal, pastel but I would always keep going back to

watercolor because...I love the spontaneity of the watercolor as a medium. So

you would get a lot of happy accidents with watercolor

you have no and how, you do plan with watercolor but

how much ever you plan...you would make mistakes. You have no control because

it's going all over the place and you have to just let it not,

you know, you just have to let it do its thing and paint

itself...and not worry about making mistakes because that's

where the spontaneity of the medium is and that's

what I love about watercolor.

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Valerie Craig - Artist

So I've been painting professionally for 20 years, really painting all

of my life. My dream was to be a full-time painter. Can't believe

I'm getting to do that...and I have been in different festivals and competitions. I have

been fortunate enough to win some different awards even over

in Ireland which is one of my favorite places to paint.But I am continually learning and evolving and I'm just a

lifelong student and I love to take courses. I just really

challenge myself all the time and I just keep thinking I keep

learning the same things but at a deeper level.

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Valerie Craig - Artist

I am a very expressive painter. I love to paint outside and I,

I really respond to weather and to, just to different

atmospheric conditions. I...I love to paint in the snow, the fog, the, any kind of

extreme weather gets me really excited and so I'd say I really

respond to atmosphere and to the environment and

what I just kind of...internalized the energy from whatever is going on outside

and try to take that and put it out in my brush into the paint

and right onto the canvas even if it's through thick gestural

brushstrokes...or vibrant color but somehow from when I was really little,

I just loved crazy weather. My, my other life, I might be

a weather forecaster or a storm chaser.But right now, I just love to stand on the rocks or you know,

and paint the surf or in a snowstorm, paint a blizzard.

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Valerie Craig - Artist

People often ask me, why didn't I go to art school and my parents

really guided me toward, they thought that was really great that

I wanted to paint...and they said you can paint later but you need to support yourself

and I went to school and studied nursing and I'm thankful

because I always was able to have something to fall back on

and on my days off...I would paint or I'd go take a course or take a workshop and I

just kinda really always treated my job, which I loved and it was

how I, you know, earned my way but I looked at it as a means to

paint...and I think it's helpful to have something that give you

a steady income and then lets you be free to study and

learn and to paint the way you might want to.

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Valerie Craig - Artist

I was a nurse for maybe 20 years. I actually went into

administration and my specialty was psychiatric nursing

and drug and alcohol treatment and...I worked at the Malvern Institute coincidentally which

is right down the street from the Gallery. I probably found

a real correlation between the psychiatric part of nursing, I was

not a good med-surg nurse. It was too clinical, too accurate...and what I loved about psychiatry is that there were no

easy answers, often no real clear answers and that's the

same with painting.You're continually evolving and unfolding and that's what I

love about, it's, it's never over. The painting is never really

quite finished

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ANDREA: What was your day to day when you were this young 25

budding artist?

JOHN: I was very fortunate to get locked into a great resident

situation. I was having, I had a...JOHN: six room apartment in one of the city housing units that

have been built in the forties. So that's where I did all of the

work. I never worked outside or on location.ANDREA: Did you go over with other students or were you flying solo?

JOHN: The fellowship I had was very individually based.

ANDREA: Oh wow.

JOHN: They did...JOHN: they did have a confab with us that was called the Watson

Fellowship, Thomas Watson Fellowship. We had a confab

just after I got there. They flew about 30 Watson fellows in from

wherever in the world they were.JOHN: It happened in Salzburg so all I got out of it was a three hour

train ride but some people got flown in from Israel or Africa and

ANDREA: Wow.

JOHN: we met in a castle and it was quite interesting.

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ANDREA: Now you had mentioned before it's almost like

showing an artist who has passed. Meaning that

you could not replicate this body of work even if you

tried.JOHN: Right.

ANDREA: Oh.

JOHN: What they, they are is they're works on paper. I was

doing paintings as well, but I just selected a few of the...JOHN: works on paper. They were made mostly with a dip

pen and then some are colored in with what is called deckfarben

which is a kind of semi opaque watercolor that was used

by the artist who...JOHN: who's influence I was mostly under during that time which

is Egon Schiele.

ANDREA: Oh.

JOHN: He has since become quite popular and well known, but

in the 70s that was just beginning to happen.

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ANDREA: Hi Andrea Strang here. I am with John Suplee at Church

Street Gallery. So John is going to be our guest artist the month

of November. So John, what can we expect?

JOHN: What I decided to do was dig into the archives and I'm going

to be showing drawings that I made during my residence in Vienna

in 1974 and 75.ANDREA: So that would have made you around 25?

JOHN: Something like that, yes.

ANDREA: So a young artist.ANDREA: So this body of work has only been shown once?

JOHN: Yes, when I returned to the United States after about a year

and a half, I took it to my Alma Mater, Hamilton College...JOHN: but this work then has lain dormant since then because

a lot of it was so explicitly derivative that, you know, I didn't really

feel like I could take that much credit for it myself...JOHN: but it was a very special time. As you said, I look at it now

after 45 years and I think I just wonder at the confidence and

exuberance of it.

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Susan Reiser - Artist

My name is Susan Reiser. I'm known in the art world as

Cloud Nine Painter and all of my work, I have one main

ingredient which is love, vibrancy, joy.

I hope that my work gives hope to people. I am definitely

a community driven person. The major of my work, I do

have proceeds going to various charities...

and I want people to know that I've had success with my

art but I really, really enjoy sharing that success for the

greater good of our community and that's pretty much

what being on Cloud Nine is all about for me.

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People are gonna see a variety of everything I do from

Plein Air paintings. I'm gonna bring some that I just did in

Maine. I have some of the area, Valley Forge Park, Ardrossan...

and then a lot of my oil paintings which are pretty much

my inspiration from out here in the country in

Elverson.

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Susan Reiser - Artist

Well right now I can feel the wind in my hair and a light

zephyr on my face and that's what I absolutely love

is to be painting outdoors and to feel the natural environment.

It's exhilarating and it's beautiful and it's energizing and that's

why I love to be out here. In every single nook of this pond,

you can find me on an given day and it's mainly just because

I like to delight in the beauty of nature and...

this is where I get it the most. So it's wonderful to be here.

Even in the snow, it's wonderful to be out here, truly. You

never know what you're going to get. It's always something

different every day.

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Teresa DeSeve - Artist

I like to think that all of the paintings that are going

to be in my exhibit are about places remembered

and especially in the recent summer.

So there are a lot of these paintings are about Chincoteague

Island and then there are some that are places where I

take my students to go painting and this is one

of those.

So this is actually right here in Phoenixville and this is a

painting on the Schulykill River. One day when I was

there with my class a group of children came down...

and the thing that really enchanted me was the little girls

had dresses on. So I just was so charmed by it and the

colors. It was almost as if they had dressed to be in a

palette that really caught my eye.

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People are gonna see a variety of everything I do from

Plein Air paintings. I'm gonna bring some that I just did in

Maine. I have some of the area, Valley Forge Park, Ardrossan...

and then a lot of my oil paintings which are pretty much

my inspiration from out here in the country in

Elverson.

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Alison Leigh Menke - Artist

So I have a shelving system that I built myself and it

has racks that I can pull in and out. So what I do is

go out I...

paint. I bring it back to my car. I pop up the

trunk and I just file a painting away. So it's set in the

back and then I've got sort of like a table that I can

just frame up right there out of the trunk.

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Rachel Altschuler - Artist

I always name them after I'm done and the name

can depend so, there are time's where...

I can tell right away or, you know, maybe towards the

end I think, oh my gosh like this piece, I mean I

painted a hummingbird that looked exactly like

my neighbor who lives across the street, Ginger.

So it was a pink hummingbird and she gets pink

highlights in her hair. I'm like oh my gosh this is

Ginger or...

I look at a piece and I think, you know, this reminds me

of my mom or this reminds me of a family member

or a friend but then a lot of times, I've had a lot of

fun recently I reached out to...

you know my following on social media and I say,

you know, I'm stuck. I need a name for this girl or

guy or whoever...

and so they've been really helpful in kinda helping me

come up with the names and that's just been another

fun way for me to kind of engage and...

get to know people but yeah it's usually after a family

friend or it's a suggestion from one of my social

media followers.

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Alison Leigh Menke - Artist

Well I'd say that, one, I'm an impressionist, so I'm

pretty loose and I'm pretty graphic. I'm chunky.

I love impasto. Thick paint.

I'll do an underpainting that's a mix of all the primary

colors and I'll let bright chromatic color come through

in my painting.

It's not about getting it perfectly right. In fact, I like

things that are a little wonky and if they're all

consistently wonky then you still have...

structure in your painting. But it gives it sort of a,

a chunky, messy impression.

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Alison Leigh Menke - Artist

Well this is "Muddy Creek Falls". I created it up in

Maryland, up in Cumberland area...

and I actually went on a nice long hike for it. I

found myself by the water and I think the reason why

I was attracted to painting this scene wasn't...

exactly the falls and how grand they are, it was the

light that was just slicing across the water, shadow

and light and that design of sort of that V-shape

in the painting.

Generally, I'm attracted to light and shadow. It's

almost as though I'm not attracted to a specific

subject. It's...

whether or not the light hits it in a dynamic way.

Could be an alleyway. It could be trash bins on the side

of the road. It's all about the design in the

scene that I'm painting.

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Bonnie Mettler - Artist

I'm very intrigued by the physicality of things actually, so

I am a realist and, but I'm interested in the margin between

realism and abstraction so...

if the painting is strictly realist it seems like ok well

there's the thing or if it's completely abstract for me

it misses some of the engagement of my mind into...

what happens when I respond to a real thing or a real

person. I'm especially interested in the paint surface.

I like paint. I like what it does when you mess with it.

I find in my paint process that...

I am sort of building toward realism and then that gets

boring at some point and then I'm destroying,

scraping through, making marks that are

disturbing to...

the notion of realism and building back into

enough realism that it has both the tension of sort of

mystery and realism or phsicality or something like that.

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Rachel Altschuler - Artist

When I first got started doing this full-time, I was so

focused on almost like a photo-realism type of...

technique and style because I was trying to almost like

copy what I saw in the picture and so I was using these

really small detail brushes and...

really trying to get every little hair and feather and

everything perfectly into place and they were good

but I felt like there was something missing from

my work and so...

more and more over the last couple of years, I've

really been working towards trying to let my brush

do the work for me. So like for example

in this painting...

these are all just made with one swipe. So again wet on

wet technique, a lot of paint and then one swipe up

and I think when you let you brush do the

work for you...

you know, I think you can create a much more

interesting piece that has texture, that pops,

that just has, there's just something more to it

than what I was doing before.

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Bonnie Mettler - Artist

So this is called "Floating: Happy". This is a woman

who's own artwork is very interesting to me.

And so she came here and sat in my dining room

and she had brought this beautiful glass. I filled up

the glass with wine and as she began to drink wine, my

husband, who's a storyteller, sat beside her...

and he's funny. So he started to just talking to her

and she laughed and she sat just one time for

about three hours and I took a lot of photographs

and from that...

this image of her laughing which you can't get from

somebody sitting the whole time. People tend to sort

of cement down into a serious gaze after a while.

So, so I shifted from what I had begun with her into

this image of her laughing which I really like that I did.

It's sort of twofold about that because it's her engaging with someone...

and also, you know, what happens as you begin to

float loosening up drinking some wine and just moving

into the social milieu.

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Rachel Altschuler - Artist

When I first started my art full-time, I was actually doing

pet portraits for people and what I liked about...

the pet portraits is that you get more of the personality.

You get like their sweet face or their eyes or whatever

and you get the detail and then I also loved painting

the birds on barn wood and so...

I thought how can I incorporate this into something that

I would enjoy more and so then I thought I'm just gonna

do a bird portrait and see how it goes so...

because I've been focused primarily on birds now for

the last five years I've really gotten to know more

different species that I didn't know before and I've

gotten really into, of course, owls...

I never thought that would be something that I would be

interested in painting but then it was like once I painted

one I couldn't stop so...

I think it's really just getting to know the different species

and then of course learning, they all have a different

personality which is of course something that I really

try to bring out in my work.

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Bonnie Mettler - Artist

I really just work in the two, oil and watercolor and I

started out as a watercolor painter because I was very

intrigued by the idea of the fact that...

watercolor has all this beautiful strength of strong

color but it has no viscosity. It has no body so it felt

like painting with nothing to me which was really

interesting...

and eventually I moved to oil. By that time I was

very interested in sort of a thicker, more physical

body of paint to deal with and the idea of being able

to scrape through...

which is much easier to do in oil than watercolor. Not

impossible with watercolor but harder. So that has been

the medium for a while but I, I work in both...

and I suspect that over time it will kind of shift back and

forth one to the other, but I expect to be working

in both until I'm dead.

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Bonnie Mettler - Artist

It's doesn't seem to me as though it's my job to try

and have a person walk away from my show or even

a painting...

with a particular notion. It seems to me as though

painting sort of like a math formula. Painting on one

side. I'm doing that part equals...

reception on the other side and everybody is going to

bring their own personal life story to that. So

completely up to them. You know if they say oh

my God, I love this work...

that's my favorite thing for them to react but it's,

I find that I need to be out of my head to paint and

not be worried about how people will receive this,

what will this mean to people.

But what does matter to me is that I find that I have

a, there's sort of, for any given painting there's a

sense of what is the truth for me, you know, does, so if

I'm making this mark or choosing this color...

does that feel like true to what I'm thinking about for

this or not and if it's not either it takes the painting in a

different direction and I follow that...

or I do something else to get it back into what I'm

currently interested in.

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Alison Leigh Menke - Artist

Well, so I graduated from University of Maryland

with Art and Art History and didn't know what

to do. I hadn't found my niche in Plein Air yet...

and my brother was out in Denver and said, you know,

come out and paint and I discovered this thing

called Plein Air...

and so I grabbed my Dad's car and I drove out to

Colorado for three weeks and it turned into just five

months of camping and hiking and painting...

and I realized ok I love the spontaneity of Plein Air.

Love the freshness of it and the hiking and the camping.

So it's just like my perfect cocktail, I guess, as far as

painting and what I like to do day-to-day.

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Rachel Altschuler - Artist

Really the trick behind the eyes is kind of a less is

more approach. I use a lot of water and that's the

biggest thing...

when you think about an eyeball naturally it's wet,

you know, there's water and so what I do is I put

in the dark shadows first...

and then I always leave kind of like an empty spot

where I know the reflection hits so, and then as soon as

that dries a little bit I take my brush. I get a lot of water

on my brush and then I...

almost like a watercolor painting, I literally take the water

and let it kind of blend all of those colors naturally

together and it kind of does the work for me.

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Randall Graham - Artist

It's called "Spring" and my process with it is I was

using a cold wax medium which is a new medium

that I've been experimenting with a lot.

It's much more abstract then my realism so the cold

wax allows me to be much looser, use different tools.

It's hard to use a brush with it so I might...

only work with a palette knife for five minutes and then

when I feel like I'm doing the same pattern of marks,

I'll purposely change it up. Maybe I'll grab a brayer

or still even brush. Just mixing up the tools...

also mix up the color I'm working with. I might be

doing the pink for seven minutes and I just have this

itch inside and I'll say, ah let me mix up some green and

so nothing is overly important...

for too long and that's how I'm trying to create the

whole image, you know, to be cohesive by giving

everything equal attention and in hopes that there's

interests in every little inch of this painting.

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Al Richards - Artist

Well I like pastels because it's a dry medium. I can

pick it up and put it down pretty much where I left off.

So as opposed to oils or watercolor, watercolor you

really need to finish in one shot, oils you can have

some issues melding the, you know, the new applications

to the old, but being a dry medium...

just doesn't look like you skipped a beat so I like that.

I like the intensity of the colors. I like the fact that

there are different grades of pastel. There's hard,

medium and soft.

Typically you start out with a hard pastel and then

block everything in and end up with

something that's nice and soft.

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Wendy Prather Burwell - Artist

Starting a painting is really fun. There's no pressure

to get everything right. You're just sort of looking to

map things out enough so where you know...

things are and that you like where they are. This

method is, you know, called the Wipe Out and it, it is

really fun because you can get a likeness very quickly

and this is kind of, kind of a mess and I would...

keep it very thin cuz I'm gonna, you know, go over

this with color eventually but making, you know,

setting up where my darks are gonna be.

Wiping out...

the lights really helps give things, you know, a certain

more of a feel for how it's going to look pretty

quickly so it is fun. I probably don't spend a whole lot

of time on this...

anymore but sometimes, you know, especially if

I'm doing a figure painting it's really fun to spend a lot

of time on this.

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Al Richards - Artist

This one's called "Winter Pasture" and this one started

out as En Plein Air event and basically I started,

you know, just with a small one...

and the horses kept coming up to the fence and

blockng my view. So I did my Plein Air piece which

is the small one and then I decided in looking at the

photographs that, you know, I had a...

you know, a shot at doing something larger, so

that's what I used for, for this piece.

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Wendy Prather Burwell - Artist

There are a couple of things that influenced my

still life painting and the first is pretty obvious and

that's my fascination with plants.

Years ago I was taking a horticulture program

down at Longwood Garden and I was thinking

about going into landscape design as a

second career...

but instead of getting pulled toward the bigger

picture like that I started going in for the detail

and I started drawing plants at that time. I ended up

studying...

botanical illustration at Longwood for about 5 years

and for awhile I really loved it. I love that mix of

art and science.

It's very precise and I came to a point in my family life

where I didn't have the attention span so I stopped doing

that, but I still see the influence not just in terms of

subject matter but also in...

the level of detail, the simple compositions I pick

and also my tendency to focus on one kind of

plant as opposed to a mixed bouquet of

flowers.

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Randall Graham - Artist

First it came about where I do a lot of Plein Air

competitions and I have a busy life. I teach. I have

kids all that...

and it was raining really hard one day but that was in my

schedule. I had to paint that day so it was a monsoon.

I was actually driving into West Chester and I was going

to paint in the parking garage and then...

sitting at a traffic light I was just kinda like this looks nice.

I'll try it and it was really just a whim. I didn't think too

much about it.

You know, turned it in and it sold really fast. It won an

award. I was like, oh maybe I'll do this again, so now

I've been getting better at it and really love exploring

different raindrops, different scenes so...

yeah, it was very serendipitous. This allows me to really

just kinda nerd out as an artist and look at the different

light within each little tiny raindrop. Where the light's

hitting it...

and each little raindrop has the whole world so it's fun

to really just focus in and get all that.

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Jeanine Leclaire - Artist

I do like that kind of candid moment where somebody's

having their own private moment and somebody happens

to just walk along and glimpse what's going on...

and it emphasizes that private dialogue that sometimes

we have with ourselves or the objects around us. It's also

how I observe things so I think mainly it's just trying to,

to capture that private moment with individual selves...

and yes being a little voyeuristic in that and

observing that and kind of catching somebody else

just being a human, just doing their every day

life thing.

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Georganna Lenssen - Artist

If I were to sand down this painting, I could paint another

animal or another tiger on top of it and this could be a

kind of a ghost image of that animal behind it...

so you could kind of, if you did one figure on top of

another, you place them a little bit similar, paint one

painting over the other, you kinda get this feeling of

movement...

or after image or it offers a level of dimension to the

painting. It's not that it offers 3D or something.

It just offers another level of complexity to

the painting.

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Jeanine Leclaire - Artist

So I also do works on paper and mainly I do the works

on paper to help keep myself loose. The acrylic paintings

I tend to get really tight and...

and I keep fussing with them until it's anatomically

correct or that sort of thing and I keep wanting to be

looser with my artwork and so I maintained these

drawings...

and what I do is I start with India ink and I'll start the

drawing straight from the photograph directly onto the

paper and I will make some corrections but all the

corrections that are made are made in the India ink...

so it's my first immediate reaction to those images.

After I have the line drawing down, I will go in with

some watered down India ink and pull out some

of the values...

and then I'll do a few washes of color on top to give

you that pop and it's a little bit of a back and forth

between drawing and adding either color or India

ink at that point until it's finished.

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Georganna Lenssen - Artist

Anything that makes a mark is really what it's all, it's

not about the object. It transcends the object. It's

about surface quality...

and you're sort of telling a story here instead of zooming

into capture something, I want to sort of let something

go. I use brushes. I use trowels. I use pallete knives. I

use, you know, I'll just take a piece of...

cardboard, you know, often it's the dog biscuit thing. I

just take the cardboard off and you just make a mark

and it's gonna give you a mark that's unexpected and

that's irregular and that I couldn't get with...

a brush or something which I knew how it would

respond so anything I can pick up that will make a mark,

I'll use.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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www.gallery222malvern.com

Jeanine Leclaire - Artist

The process is I take a bunch of photos throughout my

life and then I print up these photos and I choose ones

that really speak to me on an emotional level...

and then often I'll go back into the computer and edit

them and change their brightness and contrast and

color and then I'll take that and make drawings from the

photograph...

right onto the surface that I'm working on. Mainly

because I love that drawing process and I love the

getting some of that beginning drawing into the

finished painting.

After I do the drawing, then I go ahead and start

applying paint and I start with black, just black paint and

water and I block in the shadows and then I start adding

white and then I start adding colors.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Mick McAndrews - Artist

This painting's title is "You Don't Say". The idea being

these two engineers as they walk into work on this

misty kind of overcast morning...

are just talking to each other. This was a combination

of a number of images and life experiences. Makes me

think of Coatesville Steel out in Coatesville. Makes me

think of Bethlehem Steel up in Bethlehem, Pennsyvlania.

And pictures, images I've taken in those places and

pictures and images of trains and just combined a

lot of that together to create this dynamic painting

using just about two colors that being black...

a little bit of blue and then these highlights of red.

This is a great example of limited palette painting.

So we're not relying on color to make the painting

successful...

we're rather relying on what I think are the

foundational items that make every painting

ultimately successful and that is

interesting shapes...

valued contrast, dark against light and edges. A

variety of edges. By edges I mean where two shapes

meet. So there's hard edges.

There are soft edges and there are rough textured

edges throughout this painting. So travelling around

with the eye hopefully keeps you entertained just

about everywhere...

you look and then we have these directional lines

that lead you into specific areas of the painting.

So there's just, just a lot going on here.

Portia Mortensen - Artist

So the medium is oil and cold wax on canvas.

I use many base layers of oil...

as light as I can to get the transparency until

I'm interested and then I bring the cold wax on top

and almost take away the translucency...

and it's finding that balance of where it's interesting.

Where the opaque talks to the transparent. Where

the depth becomes very...

appealing to me and that is how I go about it

and I just work on it until I am interested

in the end product.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Denise Sedor - Artist

I am showing some, some new work at Gallery222.

I've stepped away from the abstract and I'm

showing some more of my...

representational art. A lot of plein air, some

studio figure work. My work is still a little

abstracty. I try to keep my work

very loose.

So there is an abstract quality but you'll see much

more representation. So you'll be able to see it

and know exactly what it is. Where as

my abstracts...

you kinda have to look into them to see. This will

be like, for example, this I went out to a farm

and I painted this. I scrapped some of it off because

I didn't like how it looked...

So I'm back in the studio and I'm continuining to

work on it. I love to keep it loose so it looks like what

it is but also there is some abstract because that's

just what I do.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Portia Mortensen - Artist

So although I'm an abstract painter, I do actually

believe I'm very much a landscape painter

primarily and horses...

are part of that landscape. They live in the

landscape. I work in the land. There's always heat

and snow and ice and wind and...

all that all body sensation is something I try very

much to convey in my paintings. That is all due to

the horses in my life. I'm not interested in...

a horse, an ear, a mane, a tail. I'm interested in all

the things they bring to the table which is learning

patience, learning balance, tempo, cadence...

speaking a language that is non-verbal. All of

these things are what the horses bring to my life

and to my paintings.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Mick McAndrews - Artist

Well, a nice balance. I mean IT and corporate life

in general is very analytical. Requires a lot of left

brain activity...

so the art offered me the chance to explore and keep

that kinda right brained part of my life active and

engaging and whenever someone says that you're

so talented...

I always try to make sure they understand that it is

much more a matter of hard work then any innate talent.

I worked hard at this for 20 years.

I've enjoyed every minute of it, but it doesn't come

easily for me and I don't think for anybody else.

It's a discipline.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Neilson Carlin - Artist

In that particular situation because she was a

second century Saint and no obviously

photographic reference exist...

in that case I could from top to bottom get a model

in that represents her and then once the model

left I had, I have various mannequins in the

studio...

that I can get dressed up with fabric and holding

props so that I can workout after the fact...

how I want all the supporting still life materials

to go with the model that sat for the

formal portrait.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Alexandra Tyng - Artist

I do not stick to a one process. It's much more, whatever

happens, I just roll with the punches and...

you know if I'm in a situation and I see a great scene

and I don't have time to paint it from life or

something, I just take photographs.

If I have time to paint it from life, I will or if I have my

equipment with me so,

I don't have one...

one way of working and I just have many

different tools in my toolbox and I just pull out

what I can to, to...

paint what I, you know, what I want to paint.

So I think everybody's different. That's why art's

interesting.

Cuz everybody paints differently and they work

differently and they're style is different so, you know,

if all paintings were the same and everybody worked

the same it wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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I call my En Rain Air series so it's kind of a play on words of en plein air which is French term for painting outdoors and painting alla prima which means just one pass so you're not spending multiple layers of paint on top
of each other, you're just doing it one shot.  These come about from me sitting in my family minivan and crunching down in the back.  And when it's raining, I use the raindrops on the windshield to abstract the scene.   So again sticking with my realism but it's kind of my excuse to get into some abstract stuff.   So this one in particular is Fonthill Castle in Bucks County kind of near the Mercer museum.  You know sitting under it with my car window going and the raindrops come down and spread all over the windshield.  It's very difficult to capture this moving thing, so I'm really looking to capture the energy and at the very top there's a little weather vane that's like a witch getting blown in the wind.  So this one's called weathervane just kind of connected it all with crazy weather storm and yeah these really get a lot of interest because people can spend a lot of time looking at different details even though they get a big picture from a real quickly from a distance as they get closer they can see each individual raindrop and they really enjoy having fun with it.  And you know same thing,  I'm just trying to show the viewer sense the feeling of the rain the dampness the wind what's going on the  windshield.  So I really enjoy doing them even though they're little tedious.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Alexandra Tyng - Artist

So with this painting, I took a short trip to

Jim Thorpe and with another artist and we

were looking at workshop possibilities and I just...

saw this great scene and I decided this is

wonderful, but we didn't have time to paint

or draw or anything so I just started taking

photographs

Luckily I paint a lot of Plein Air work outside

and I paint a lot of buildings and

landscapes, so I'm, I use them as indirect

references.

So I use them as color information and I get

a good sense of, you know, what the

shadow should look like. So if I'm looking at

a photograph...

I know what I, what that color should be and so

I'm able to interpolate and use that

information that I have in my head.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Neilson Carlin - Artist

Process might be a little bit different than others

because I have a background in

illustration...

and because of that I'm used to cobbling together

multiple pieces of reference instead of having

a single model in front of me and working

from that.

So in the case of the piece here, there's an

existing piece of reference of the Saint that I'm

depicting that was taken back in the 40's.

and then I had to take that existing photograph and

hire a model for the body and put them together

as well as combining that...

with an image from Auschwitz which the scene

is depicting an image inside Auschwitz,

a scene from figures in Auschwitz and then

combined again with...

the head of the person for whom this Saint offered

his life. So again the process is, it's combining

multiple pieces of reference hopefully into one

cohesive whole to tell the story.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Monique Sarkessian - Artist

I tend to always want to do something new

and I always want to bring people something

fresh...

and there's a whole lot that goes on in me every

day and new ideas. I have so many ideas that I

could never execute even if...

I got no new ideas today, you know, the next fifty

years I would just, I could just keep creating on

the ideas that I have now.

But it's just how my artistic psyche works like there's

just always something fresh going on. So I always

feel like I need to give people something fresh if

that makes sense.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Monique Sarkessian - Artist

I'm very comfortable painting flowers. I could

paint flowers for the rest of my life...

and flowers to me have a very human quality

even though they're not human. Like I just understand

them better and it took me a while to get

comfortable with boats and cars and things like that.

But the more I do the more comfortable I become

with it so, cuz they don't have very simple shapes.

Like you get in and think, oh it's a real simple shape

and then you start doing it and you're like...

it's not. It's got these curves that I didn't expect and

then, you know, so as I get comfortable with

subject matter you see them more and more...

and like abstract was not in my comfort zone. It

took me a really long time to figure out how am I

going to do that. I'm so used to working

representationally...

and then another artist friend kinda gave me some

advice. I took a workshop. You know there were

just a couple of things that, exercises that they had

us do and...

it crossed a bridge for me and I was like, oh I can

do this, you know, it's just interesting.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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So what I'm going to show at Gallery222 this time

around, it's always a selection of European inspired,

local landscapes that might be European inspired...

or ones that I did abroad. There's also going to be,

I'm gonna bring my new selection of abstracts that

haven't been shown very much at all as a lot of

them are very new.

There's not that many things that are going to be

repeated even though the Gallery is large.

There's always going to be surprises.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Kristi Gilfillan - Artist

When you're working Plein Air you really, you've got

to get it right the first time.

You don't get to go back. In the studio, if I don't

like an area like I can try something and go

back. Let it dry a little bit and come back and work

on it again.

Plein Air you've gotta paint really thin because once

you get that thick paint on it's done, like you,

there's no going back or it gets too soupy.

So I personally take a lot more time doing a sketch.

I do a black and white sketch. Work out, you know,

where I'm putting what, you know, lights and

darks and everything...

more than I do when I'm working in the studio.

So that when I get on there I can hopefully try to get

it right the first time or I end up wiping it out and

doing it again...

and in the studio I do much less of that because

I'll let it dry a little bit and come back and mess

with it. So it's kinda that, you know, first shot

gotta get it.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Mick McAndrews - Artist

I think watercolor has unique challenges. It's very

unpredictable. You really never know what you're

gonna get...

and working in Plein Air kinda forces you to work

quickly which is a real good approach with watercolor.

You don't get to...

kinda fiddle around with it, noodle around with it

too much and really ruin that unique spontaniety.

I like to think of watercolor as the medium of

broken promises and happy endings...

because you really never know what you're gonna

get. So like when you paint boldly, you paint quickly,

you paint lots of water, lots of pigment and

hope for the best.

Right? This is not a zero sum game. Sometimes

the painting turns out great. Sometimes it doesn't,

but you turn it over and you try again.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Sarah Baptist - Artist

What I really love about Plein Air is there's an energy

and a spontaneity in being on, on the spot reacting

to what you're seeing.

The lighting conditions, even on a day like today

where it's kinda gray and rainy, the colors react

differently and there's absolutely no other way

to replicate...

that environment in the studio. So it's just really

a matter of reacting and responding to what you see

and it's just a wonderful feeling and it's a real challenge

and that's what I love about it.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Randall Graham - Artist

Well, I've come up with this little method for working

when it's raining of sitting in my car and letting

the raindrops abstract...

whatever scene I'm looking out my car windshield

which is really exciting cuz it's a nice way to kind

of mix realism with abstraction. I like that

juxtaposition of it all.

And you know on raining days the light is kinda

flat so that gives me another reason to kinda

get excited about the scene and look at

different shapes...

and follow patterns of color and light so I actually

really enjoy it, you know. I think it comes out with

pretty interesting results for me.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Monique Sarkessian - Artist

Whether I do Plein Air or I'm in the studio, it's always

about color and about the emotional response

of what happens while I'm painting the painting...

and what I want to get across to the viewers so that's

always like my main question. If I worry about a

competition, I go down...

and that's just not worth it to me. It's really worth it

to me to make the work about what do I really

want to paint about today

and so it starts off with color and then goes into layers

and transparencies and the journey that the

painting takes a viewer on.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Denise Sedor - Artist

The weather. You don't know what you're gonna get,

so it could be windy, rainy as it is today. So you have

to plan on...

whatever is gonna come your way and be ready for

it. To me that's the hardest thing is the weather.

If it's nice out it's easy and you get light and...

you have a lot of, you can look at your painting and

see the light and the dark and on a gray day like

this it's kinda difficult so you have to make it work.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Jan Wier - Artist

In Plein Air, I'm, I'm always drawn to color,

so it's gotta be a scene that has color that

attracts me...

just like I'm attracted to the colors in the flowers.

If it's an outdoor landscape again it's color. It's

the greens. The warm tones maybe in a structure, but

it's always about the color for me.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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I love, I love the weather. I love the fact that it's

unpredictable. I love, it's got a real dynamic

character.

It's got an uncontrollable character which I like

too. It's cool out here. It's nice. I love gray days,

so, but I love really nice days. I'm easy to please as

long as I'm painting I'm happy.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Elise Phillips - Artist

It's great. I'm happy to be able to participate. Come

paint in my own backyard. See my fellow local artists.

Hang out. Paint.

Doesn't get better than that. Well the only competition is

with ourselves. I never think I'm competing with him

or with her.

I'm just competing with myself to do a painting

I feel good about.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Luba M. Caruso - Artist

I think that large scale shows my true feelings, my

textures, my palette. It's more exciting I suppose.

You know the smaller ones are more like my studies,

like even the one behind me. I can't wait to make

them bigger.

I find that the colors come more alive and you

see more, more of the strokes.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Denise Vitollo - Artist

I think, you know, the whole energy of water is like

very uplifting and I like to snorkel. I try to

get a lot of my images from snorkeling and...

like it's one of the most fun activities. As a child

we had a cottage on the Susquehanna River

and I would spend all my summers there...

and to me that was so much more fun than living in a

town or a city. So I would catch crayfish. Go fishing.

Go swimming, boating, row boating. I still love

rowing and to me that is just the ultimate fun.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Jean Uhl Spicer - Artist

Every artist has their own way of handling watercolor.

It has a flow to it as you know. If you prop it up a little

bit, you can cause runs to occur if that's what you want.

If you want running then you lift your board up. My

board is flat right now but it will have a little tilt to it

to allow the blending to occur. It depends totally

on the effect you want.

Some watercolorists will work on an upright easel

and let all the colors run down and do things. If

that's what they want that's, that's fine. So it's

really up to the artist to control.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Luba M. Caruso - Artist

Well, you know what, I try to keep the palette color in

certain themes, in certain styles in elements. Back in the

day when I was a graphic artist and I worked...

under an Art Director, he always picked me to do the

color cuz you'd put them in little families so I would, I

would specifically pick for a certain painting I'd...

strictly keep myself to this palette of the warm grays

to pales blues or I'd go to the warm tones and I'd,

you know, keep myself disciplined in those

palettes of color.

And then texture comes into play, you know, whether

I'm using a palette knife or you know, like you've seen

me using my hands or brushes.

I either lay it on very thin and then I add elements,

you know, like a sculpture and so they, you know, they

both come together.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Denise Vitollo - Artist

I love bright colors. Pastels are actually, I mean some

people think it's chalk, but it's not at all. It's the

same pigment that you would have in oil painting...

like in oil color. It just has a binder. Sometimes it's the

color you have underneath, one of the paintings

I'll have in the show has watercolor underneath

and then pastel.

and I just like to

push it. I like to push color and it's just exciting

to me. It's like, it's like, I call it the pulsation of

energy around me.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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ean Uhl Spicer - Artist

When I look at the subject be it floral or landscape,

I always look for the design element. I have more fun.

I'm not making things up...

but I'll rearrange to make maybe a better

painting design. I'm very strong in design. Now that's

more important to me sometimes than the

actual subject. I go beyond it in other words.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Luba M. Caruso - Artist

As all artists do you, you kind of move on to your

next subject and I have always loved boats and being

that there's lots of boats around me I just started to just

take notice and more detail and so I'm hoping that the

details will inspire collectors that enjoy sailing. They're

moored so you wouldn't really be on the boat.

They're resting. It's solitary. It's peaceful or they're

far away and don't really see but it's really just an

emotion, the observer to look at and say...

Oh, I feel so such tranquilty and such peace.

Being solitarity is not a bad thing.

It's kind of refreshing.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Denise Vitollo - Artist

It's a world of underwater excitement and to me it's

exciting. It's a part of like what I experience underwater

and it's a world that you don't get see very much...

and it's a hidden world and I would expect that people

would see an environment. A soothing environment.

Colorful, but soothing. I would think there would be a

sense of peace...

like a meditative feeling because that's the way I

feel when I, when I'm underwater.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Jean Uhl Spicer - Artist

There will be some beautiful, very colorful designing

florals. That's certainly what I love to do. Now when

it comes to landscape...

I'm more of a person who goes for the mood of the day.

If it's a real sunny day obviously there'll be shadows

and so forth. I also love very moody paintings.

I like fog.

Peggy's Cove is a great example of lots of fog

always rolling in. I won't do a bright day necessarily,

but I will do maybe a twilight. An evening where

the sun is setting.

I want to make a statement about the landscape not

just do a picture of it. I want to say something

about it. I want it to be something. Gallery 222 Malvern

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Joan Spillman - Artist

I guess it's everything. I like mixing the paints.

I like the feel of putting it on the canvas. The

fun of whatever might happen that day.

Sometimes it is definitely scenes or I love to paint

animals and beach scenes. Anything that to me

is beautiful outside. Inspires you to wanna try to

make a copy of that or at least get the feeling of it.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Joan Spillman & Kristi Gilfillan - Artist & Mother/Daughter

KRISTI: Her paintings are very kinda soft and I

wanna say like romantic...

KRISTI: Her use of color is excellent and I think

they just have like this soothing presence and

it's a little impressionistic.

KRISTI: But I think it's, I try to emulate her a little

bit and I think she's really good.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Kristi Gilfillan - Artist

I love the excitement of it. I love, like, packing up the

gear and knowing you've gotta like produce this painting

in a few hours and being outside.

The color, it's incredible how much different it is when

you try to capture it from a camera and to be able to

get out your brushes and recreate it is, is the way to do

it and it's exciting and...

plein air painting is just so much fun and plein air

sometimes they are disasters and you kinda just have

to be like I'm, I'm letting that one go...

But, and that's it. And then it's the next morning like

ok I'm gonna do it again and today it's gonna be

like the masterpiece and you know, sometimes it is,

sometimes it's not.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Joan Spillman - Artist

I painting what I feel like painting at the time.

If someone says, you know, go paint that house

and I don't feel like painting it that day...

then I'm not gonna bother doing it. So it's kind

of whatever hits me at the time, but my subject

matter probably is fairly close to Kristi's. But there'll

be some variety anyway.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Joan Spillman & Kristi Gilfillan - Artists & Mother/Daughter

JOAN: It's amazing. You can, you can paint a painting

and think you know, it's done and think it's alright

and if you put it up somewhere...

JOAN: And you walk by it occasionally and then one day

you walk by and you think there's something wrong

with that and it's nice to have someone else that

you can ask and say...

JOAN: Do you think that maybe that should be

changed? So it's nice to have her anyway, but

I know she'll listen and at least listen to me. She

may not do what I suggest but...

JOAN: But we're both the same way when we

criticize each other and some, maybe we're not

right in our criticism but, but it's nice to have someone

that you know...

JOAN: Will give you an honest answer.

KRISTI: Yeah, you need someone that's not afraid to be

like, that looks terrible.

JOAN: So we do that to each other.

KRISTI: Yeah, we will. No good start over.

JOAN: Right.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Kristi Gilfillan - Artist

Painting puts me in my happy place. So, it's like,

while you are kind of intense in trying to achieve

what you're hoping to in your painting...

the process is very enjoyable for me. It's challenging

when you're going thru the process. Some paintings

go smoothly and that is...

I think relaxing and enjoyable. There are some that you

really have to work at to achieve the result that you

want and that can be sometimes frustrating and...

you know, that challenge to get it just right, but

then at the end when you look at what you've done

with a blank canvas and what you've created, that's

so rewarding to me...

that even if it's not quite what I wanted it to be

just to see that transformation I usually get

satisfaction from.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Joan Spillman - Artist

Sometimes I'll say I'm not going to worry about this

looking like the scene that I visualized I would like

to see...

I'm just going to put the paint on and enjoy doing

it and we'll see what happens and then you can have

really exciting things come out of it that you hadn't

planned on and visioned ahead of time but...

they just kind of appear and sometimes it's terrific.

Sometimes it's a real dud, but it's fun to see

what happens.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Joan Spillman & Kristi Gilfillan - Artists & Mother/Daughter

JOAN: I can't remember a moment cuz I probably stuck

a crayon or something in her hand as soon as

she could hold it.

JOAN: But she always just loved playing with whatever

and drawing and coloring.

KRISTI: She was always in art groups. She was always

going to art class...

KRISTI: and I would always try to go if I could and sit

with them all and paint with them and I thought that

was the greatest thing.

JOAN: She actually, yeah, there were days I had art

class that she didn't feel to well.

KRISTI: I would pretend I was sick...

JOAN: And I didn't want to miss it so...

KRISTI: So I went and painted and they were

lovely and I loved the whole thing. But so I

was always drawing, always...

KRISTI: Cuz we always had art supplies around the

house.

JOAN: They were always out.

KRISTI: Yeah.

Joan Spillman & Kristi Gilfillan - Artist & Mother/Daughter

KRISTI: That's always interesting as an artist too

because I think sometimes, you know, we

finish paintings and you'll, you'll put it in...

KRISTI: You know, a show and you'll be like

no one, no one's gonna like that one and that'll

be the one that somebody falls in love with.

You can't really predict.

KRISTI: And the one's that I think sometimes are gonna

be the ones that someone's gonna take home, nope.

That's not the one. You never know.

JOAN: No, you really don't and I've had paintings

in numerous shows and nobody was even

interested in them and then that one person

comes along...

JOAN: And they just fall in love with it, so you

never know when that one person is gonna be

there and that's all it takes.

JOAN: And then you feel wonderful that somebody...

KRISTI: You found each other...

JOAN: Yeah.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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www.gallery222malvern.com

Joan Spillman & Kristi Gilfillan - Artist & Mother/Daughter

KRISTI: I'm really excited because I feel like we've been

working for this, I mean we've been painting...

together now...

KRISTI: Oil painting together for eight years. You know

I've painted all my life and when my last child went to

school Mom gave me oil painting lessons and since

then we've been painting together.

KRISTI: So it's really like been kinda like this progression

and, you know, developing together and Mom had

gone, she was doing watercolors for years and so

she had just gone back to oils...

KRISTI: Which is what she started with way back when,

so it was kind of like a little bit, well she started ahead

of me, but we've kinda been growing...

JOAN: We started out together. I guess we did.

KRISTI: So that fact that, you know, we've gotten

to here and that we're both gonna be in the

Gallery together is super exciting. I'm so

excited about it.

JOAN: So am I. I mean I've had, my paintings are

in some Galleries around, but to be in a Gallery

with her and I love 222. I think it's the neatest Gallery.

I just love it.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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www.gallery222malvern.com

Kristi Gilfillan - Artist

I do love painting the animals, so I have some

horses. I have a pig. I have cows. I would say

a lot of like Chester County kind of scenes.

Some farms, some barns, you know, Radnor Hunt

type scenes of the dogs and the riders. So things

that you would see local to the area as well as just

a few little throw-ins...

of some sailing, summer type scenes cuz I think

after this winter, we're all ready for a little

summertime feel.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Joan Spillman & Kristi Gilfillan - Artists & Mother/Daughter

KRISTI: I mean I think I've always kinda idolized,

you know, what she's done in the art world since

I was growing up and...

KRISTI: I think the support that's she's given me

over the years has been great. She's always been

a huge supporter of anything I was doing

especially my art...

KRISTI: And having, painting together is great

because we, you know, I can ask her what she

thinks and I know she'll give me an honest

answer and...

KRISTI: She's maybe one of my toughest critics,

but also one of the best. No, honestly I don't

think I would be here without Mom because...

JOAN: Really?

KRISTI: Yeah, because like I said, when she

really got me back into the oil painting and

really got me excited about it and kind of pulled

me in and was like you know you can do this and...

KRISTI: And you know, there's this whole neat

kinda world that you can get into and that's

really what inspired me and got me going, so I

don't think I would be here painting if it wasn't for that.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Robert Bohné - Artist

But I have noticed something and there's from, this

is from years and years of looking at paintings

in museums.

That quite often you'll look at a painting and you'll

notice that the application of color is not consistent

with the brushstroke.

So that sent me on a journey to discover why that

is and for some, some artists will paint over old

paintings...

but there are other aritsts like William Trost Richards,

where you'll notice it one painting after the other.

They're all basically the same thing. You'll notice

that you'll see a brushstroke but...

the color of that brushstroke, it may be orange in

one section and blue in the next section and I

discovered that the reason for that is that they applied...

their primer or whatever they put underneath,

you know, over the canvas before they started their

painting, they applied it in a very rough...

fashion. They didn't smooth it out. They left the

brushstrokes shine from the primer.

So when they painted on top of that you get this

beautiful very painterly effect. So that's been

something that I've been working with now

for a few years.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Gretchen Fuss - Artist

First of all, I'm the quintessential artist in my

mind. I do what I want when I want. So when I

think I want to do an abstract, I paint an abstract.

When a farm scene inspires me, I'll take pictures,

come home and paint it. It will end up being

abstract usually but...

you know, that's kinda what jolts me into painting.

What inspires me. I would say land, sea and sky

always. That's for starts, but as an interior designer...

as well as an artist, I'm inspired by what's going on

in the industry so fine fabrics, textiles, stories in

general about a design that I'm trying to create

for clients...

that could be one. Just something like a song

sometimes will inspire me. I just think of

colors.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Robert Bohné - Artist

So what inspires me as an artist? I'm inspired by

nature and I'm inspired by works of great art.

I like to go to museums. I study. I'm constantly

studying. I'm always a student of art. I'll always

be a student and I surround myself with art.

I have a painting by Henry Ward Ranger,

another one by Bruce Crane below it and

they're beautiful oil paintings. They're

masterfully done.

And it's nice to be able to, if I need some inspiration

or I need to look at somebody else's technique

I have it right here. I can just go look at it.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Jan Wier - Artist

My technique is kind of a loose, impressionistic

technique. I start off my paintings with a lot of

transparent colors...

which gives the painting a lot of sparkle all the way

through to the end. I have a loose brush style and

nothing is super precise, not a realist.

I use layers of paint starting off thin working to

thicker as not really tons of layers of paint. I just

get, I use a little bit of impasto...

usually towards the end of a painting. I don't like a

painting to be covered in a thick layer of paint, but

here and there it really provides a nice pop.

Gallery 222 Malvern

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Gretchen Fuss - Artist
It's still about composition.  It's still about
symmetry and balance in my mind.  So when
I hit those marks I finished a painting.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Jan Wier - Artist
Absolutely, I think the average person should
definitely try to bring art...
into their home.  You don't have to spend a fortune
to have a beautiful piece of art in your home. 
I think people are...
beginning collectors, people that've never
collected before are fearful of art that they're going
to make the wrong choice or it's not going to be
a good investment or it's not going to look well.
But if they love a piece of art and bring it into
their home, an original piece of art,  it's going to
add a touch of sparkle and life that a print... 
or some mass produced piece of art is just never
gonna bring.  Plus they may also create a
relationship with the artist. 
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Robert Bohné - Artist
Well my real passion, if I were, on a scale of
one to ten, ten would be plein air painting.
I love going outdoors.  I love meeting people
and I can talk and paint at the same time.
It's not an issue with me.  
So about four, maybe four years ago, I
started a group called Landscape Painting
Philadelphia...
and it's a plein air group.  Plein air organization. 
We have about five hundred and some members now.
And usually once a week we meet...
and we paint, you know, paint from nature and we
do this year round.  We go, you know, even in
the middle of winter, snowstorms, we're out
there painting.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Gretchen Fuss - Artist
I will work with that palette for a while until
I kinda work that out.  That's how I work with
all of my color stories.  
So I have a purple landscape that I kinda see all
the time in my head.  I keep coming back to it.
I tried to leave it for a couple of years, but then
the pantone color of the year came back and...
so I went for it again and just ended up painting
probably hundreds of paintings in that purple.
It's really funny cuz I try not to.  I'll come
into my studio...
ready to paint something different.  Something
that I thought I was going to paint and with the
abstracts I go into a place where... 
I try not to be too methodical about it before I
come in, but I do have an idea and so say I
wanted to paint in neutrals and blues all of a
sudden I pull out that purple jar...
and I just paint with it.  I can't
stop myself sometimes but those are my best
paintings usually.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Robert Bohné - Artist
Subtle and soft.  I like that.  That works for me.
I mean it's, it seems, I've heard a lot of people
say that about my work.  
But there are sharp edges.  There are edges.  It's
not really as soft as people might think.  I think
they confuse... 
a subtle palette with softness.  So the colors
themselves may be soft but the application of
the paint is not necessarily soft.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Jan Wier - Artist
At Gallery222, people are going to see my oil
paintings.  I work all in oil and they're going to
see lots of florals, lots of bright colors...
and they're also going to see some more complicated
still lifes as well as some very simple still lifes.
And then I also have a collection of cupcakes... 
that people seem to really like and I'm going to have
 at least a dozen of those available. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Robert Bohné - Artist
I assume that they decided on that name because maybe
the palette that I use.  It's a very traditional, classic palette.
So I don't use a lot of vibrant prismatic colors.  I do
occasionally, but I save them for accents in the
painting or to lead the viewers eye through the painting.
It's a fairly traditional technique.  I start out doing
preliminary sketches of what I wanted to paint
and I work out the composition and design and then
from that point I transfer the drawing onto a canvas...
usually by eye.  It's not something I have to trace
or anything.  I can usually look at my drawing and
then put it down on canvas and I usually start with
a very thin layer of raw umber because it dries quickly.
And I sketch with a brush, I put it on my canvas
and then the next step is usually to block in large
areas of color and then I progress from there.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Gretchen Fuss - Artist
This is definitely inspired abstracts and they're
color inspired and some of them are semi-abstract...
and so it may feel like a landscape to a degree
but it would be in a unique color that you wouldn't
see maybe in nature. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Fred Danziger - Artist
I'll tell you the, the big change has been the internet.  
Prior to the internet, there were like a handful of people
and if you weren't in with that handful of people...
You might as well forget about being shown.
You know it was the gallery owners and a few
writers and what have you.
With exposure through the internet, you know,
you can get your work in front of large crowds
of people, you know, virtually and then very often,
not very often but occasionally... 
you make a connection with them in person and
they see your paintings and you know they come to
your shows and things like that, so the advent of
the internet has made a tremendous change I think.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Sarah Baptist - Artist
I've been at this now for just 4 years.  Going
full-time as an artist was terrifying. 
Help from family and friends pushing me and
saying, you've always wanted to do this, I took
that step and I've never been happier.
But, yeah, you learn as you go and what I keep
saying is there's no rule book.  There's nobody that
can say...
You know, people can say this is my experience
but everybody's experience is so different.
My advice to somebody wanting to go full-time
as an artist... I think you have to make sure you are
ready.  You have to be ready to fail...  
as well as ready to succeed and you have to be
able to learn from those failures and just grow
and keep going.  
A support system is really important.  You know,
financially having a little bit of a cushion just in case
is not a bad idea.
But if you really love something, I'd say
try it. 

Alicia Asselta - Artist
No, I mean I definitely, I've never thought of it
as pop art.  I definitely feel like that even though they're...
realistic still lifes, they have sort of an abstraction
quality because of the composition, because
of the bright colors. 
But I was always sort of inspired by more, 
you know, Georgia O'Keefe and even in my
earlier time Toulouse-Lautrec was a big
inspiration, the post impressionists.
So no I never, I would think abstract for sure,
but no I never heard that pop art
but that's interesting.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Fred Danziger - Artist
I call it the impossible stage, you know, where I'm
working on a painting and in the back of my mind
is like...
this is impossible, nobody can paint this.  I don't care
how good you are or how much patience you have.
You not going to be able to paint this, you know, 
and there's that little voice... 
And I think, well, what's else you gonna do with your
life.  Keep after it, keep after it, keep after it, you know.
And very often what I'll do is one little thing.
I'll say well, look maybe I can't paint this whole thing
but can I paint this house.  You're talking about two or
three square inches of paint.  Surely Fred you can
paint this house. 
And I'll forget about all the other stuff because, you
know, when all of this is loose and rough and you're
starting to put all the detail into something like this,
this little house here... 
If you stop to think, all this is still, you know, it's
like it's overwhelming.  So you just forget about all
of that and say alright, all you're doing is painting this
little piece of canvas and making it look like a house.
And then you get that and you have this gorgeous
little piece of canvas and you think, well let's do
the next house.  You know but once I got that done
I knew I... 
had to finish this painting.  You know, I don't care
how long it's going to take you're going to finish
this because this is so beautiful you're gonna, 
finish this painting. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Alicia Asselta - Artist
So once I have my subject down one of the most
important things I feel like in my paintings or in... 
for an artist in general, I think one of the most
important things is composition.  So that's where I
really feel like... 
I have to sit down and take my time and a lot of
times I'll just get it on there and if it's not perfect than
the painting for me isn't going to feel successful...
So I have to often times, you know, erase and go back
and erase, but if I try to rush that stage then I just know
that in the end I'm just going to wind up... 
just painting over it and just putting the canvas aside, 
so that, that for me is like the number one,
the number one aspect. 
And then, and then after that it's just you know, like
recently I've been really interested in the shadows of
paintings and the highlights... 
and where the sun hits the floral or the fruits
and so a lot of it is mixing the paints and
different shadows and highlights.
And I feel like that is the second most important
step is getting those colors mixed properly.
The third step is just... 
finessing it and adding all the detail and you know, 
the real brights and the real darks and then making
sure that I don't neglect...
the negative space cuz the background is such a
big part of it and sometimes artists, I feel like I
spend so much focus on what the subject is that... 
you kinda forget that the negative space is a
really important part of the painting as well.  
I'll feel like it's so great that I'll wanna continue working
on it and I can't tell you how many times then I'm,
you know, frustrated that maybe it was finished... 
before I thought and so that's really like one of the
big questions I always ask myself is, you know, is
it finished.  Should I add more? 
And it's something I struggle with with every painting.
When is it ever ended?

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Fred Danziger - Artist
Well, they will see plein air field studies as I call them and
those are done over a two or three hour period and I'm
most interested in the color and the light in those.
And then they will see a group of very detailed studio
paintings such as this one which involved hundreds
of hours of work.
They're all realistic.  All very much concerned with
nature.  There's nothing figurative in this show.
No figure painting, so it's really very much a
nature-oriented show.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Sarah Baptist - Artist
That's a tough question.  Um, it's kinda, it's a
feeling and it kinda tells you.
And there are lots of times when I'll say  I think
this painting is done, but I really need to sit
and what I'll sometimes do is... 
sit it a little farther back and not in my field of vision
and just live with it.  Sometimes I'll know within a couple
of days, sometimes it takes a couple of months.
And sometime after two months, there will be
something.  It would be like there's something wrong.
I can't figure it out and it will take me...  
two months of kinda living with it and staring at it
and I'll figure it out and if sometimes if I don't figure it
out I say, ok it's done.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Fred Danziger - Artist There's at least 200 hours of actual painting involved in this. There are three or four hours at least just on these chairs for example. And I'm talking about very detailed, I don't use real small brushes but the brushes that I use have a very fine tip on them and so like I'll sit here sometimes with a magnifying glass... and I'll just get in there and just do it, you know. I could have just done the horizontal and the verticals, but I wove them. You know, so that when you look really close up you'll see that as the... things overlap there's a shadow on the one side and a highlight on the other side of each band of webbing and it gives it that, that extra kinda sense of almost a shocking reality. Gallery 222 Malvern 2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience www.gallery222malvern.com

Sarah Baptist - Artist
What inspires me is the structure of the city and
urban landscapes.  
When I look at industrial kind of scenes, I see
a certain rhythm to them.  To the shapes and to the poles.
I love poles and wires.
There is something about... I actually kind of... it's not
music, but it's definitely a rhythm to those shapes
and where they fall in the scene. 
And I will be driving down the street and there
will be a bunch of wires and poles and I will just
go 'wow, that is so cool'.
To me there's an abstraction to it and there's just
a guttural kind of feeling I get when I see
something I wanna paint. 
It's totally visceral.  It's totally like, WOW,
and I'll go back and that's where I'll paint
something. 
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Alicia Asselta - Artist
I definitely don't even need to think about this.
I love, love painting flowers.  They're my favorite to...
paint because I just feel like I really get into the flow
and I'm getting into the folds of the flowers and
the lights and the shadows and I really feel like... 
it's something that I can just make pop and I enjoy the
most.  Farm animals are frustrating for me and I
like to push myself a lot of times...
out of my comfort zone, so that's something, and I just
love farm animals so much that's sort of why I force
myself to do that.
But it's a little bit more painful for me as an artist
to paint it.  It's not as enjoyable.  Flowers are just
more fun
And fruit, I mean fruit is just so much fun to paint
to.  That's second to flowers just because I just love,
again the same thing with the shadows, the lights, 
the darks and playing with all the different color tones.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Fred Danziger - Artist We lived in Malvern for 13 years. The first home that my wife and I purchased was on High Street in Malvern and we loved Malvern and I still do. I think Gallery222 is incredible. I mean it's a beautiful space. I love what Andrea is doing with the way she's set it up to have other events that happen there. Because it's really hard to make a gallery successful, but I think she has a model for it. The garden in the back. When I went and saw the place, I thought this is a fantastic place. I would love to show here, you know. And the fact that it was in Malvern was kind of a bonus because, you know, I had this long history there. So I'm really looking forward to this. I love the whole, everything she's doing there. Gallery 222 Malvern 2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience www.gallery222malvern.com

Josephine Winsor - Artist
In order to be truly creative, you have to have
your mind out of the way.  You have to have
your previous reference points... 
gone so that you can move into something else
that is beyond what you already know.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Rhoda Kahler - Artist
The new material that will be at the show will be...
I'm continuining with this Landscape Series.  They're
very painterly.
I have an illustrator background that I used to
illustrate and I'm coming back with that now
in my clay tile.  This is a whole nother skill set that
I have... 
 and I love the simplistic landscape of the horizon
line.  So I'm putting that back into my tile and I
think what I love about the tiles is that I can create
a three-dimensional drawing.
It's not... I can sketch my design on the clay, but
then I can come back in and make it 3D and pop out
and pull it back in.  Do abstract, assemblage, 
cutting it apart... 
and create a really interesting lanscape, but
using clay.  
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Josephine Winsor - Artist
That's a really hard question because there are so
many answers to it, but mostly for me I get the
initial inspiration from something that I find beautiful.
How much beauty is there in life?  Endless.
It often has to do with my own inner development.
I find that I like to paint about things that where
I have been moved myself...
or I have grown myself and they're often about
spiritual development which is all over the place
in very mundane terms. 
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Rhoda Kahler - Artist
Get a notebook to start off and record everything
you're doing and record the results and it
sounds arduous, but it's so worth it. 
I live by my notebooks.  I have little notebooks all
over the studio that I'll be like how did I glaze that
piece from ten years ago cuz that's the color I'm
looking for.  What did I do?
What did I layer it with?  How did I fire it?
Notebooks are great and limiting yourself.
The clay is so broad.  The ceramics world is so broad.
And there's so many techniques and firings,
it can be overwhelming.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Josephine Winsor - Artist
I'm a very visual person mult-dimensionally.
I see things in my mind's eye.
I see things in other dimensions. 
And so I paint very often what it is that I see
on those dimensions which is known as
visionary art.  I see a vision or I see something on
another dimension and I interpret that through my art.
I would love to have an abstract quality in my art
which to me means that there are shapes that
work together as far as the composition goes and
you can look at the painting... 
and see that there is a thing that works there that
doesn't have to be representational. 
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Rhoda Kahler - Artist
We have a pit down by the pond that we load
everything in with sawdust and combustible
materials so we light it on fire...
and we get this great gassing and fuming and
carbon trapping and you don't know what you're
going to get until you dig out the parts.  So the
next day after you light it on fire
and you let it sit for hours and hours and then you
dig it out the next morning so just start digging
and washing through.  Here's a piece, you can see
got a really fun effect here.
I have another one over here.  These I added nails...
it's always fun...  I'm always interested in adding
other materials and the nails add a fun
component. 
Here we have another little landscape, you see a little
whiter on this side, didn't get completely black which
is a little bit more interesting, but very moody and
atmospheric with the smoke. 
So it's the smoke getting trapped into the clay body,
cuz when these go into the pit they're completely white and
you know, wrapped in organic matter and onion skins and
banana peels, sea salt, copper carb, seaweed...
just all kinds of combustible materials that when
they're lit on fire they gas and those fumes and gases
get absorbed into the clay.  It's very experimental, 
very spontaneous. 
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Rhoda Kahler - Artist
I don't feel limited at all working with tile and
clay rather than a painter's perspective on painting,
cuz I feel like I can push the clay to different limits.
I can push it out, make it more three-dimensional
and sculptural.  I can carve it in.  I can add different
materials which I guess a painter could too.  
Some of the restrictions for me that a painter doesn't
have to deal with is that my clay shrinks.  So if I want a
8 by 10 that 8 by 10 is gonna shrink down to maybe a
7 by 9 or more.
The larger the pieces... so sometimes when... if you see
a piece on the wall for me that's a 30 by 30, I had to
make that 36 by 36 originally and then by the time it
dries and shrinks it goes into the kiln
it's down to a 30 by 30 or something along the math.
But... and then my pieces can crack in the kiln.  So
if I'm making a big piece, it cracks then
I lose the whole thing.
So that's something that painters don't have to
deal with, but I can also melt things and they
can't. 
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Josephine Winsor - Artist
My favorite piece of advice that I would have for
somebody is to be authentic.  That if you have a
feeling that you want to do something... 
to experiment with it and do it because what
happens is the inner critic comes in which we
all have.  I have it.  Everybody has it and it says
oh you shouldn't do that somebody won't like it...
and then the urge to be creative, to be authentic
is cutoff.  So I very often, when I teach art, is
when I have taught art is, I have people just...
go in there and put something on the piece of
paper that feels right to them so they have
the freedom to express.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Rhoda Kahler - Artist
I don't have a problem with that.  I... one of my fears
is that I'm gonna die before I get to make all
the ideas that are in my head.  
I just, I have so many thoughts and I have notebooks
everywhere filled with ideas and sketches and
what ifs.  What if I took this and did that and
what if I tried that.
You know... I get inspired by anything.  It could
be a crack in the sidewalk and I'll be inspired
by it or a tree root or it could be another
piece of art.  It could be a painting.  
It could be the leather design on your shoe
could inspire a tile.  So I don't have a problem
with inspiration.  I have plenty.  I.. it just... it's a
constant flow in my brain. 
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Josephine Winsor - Artist
I like to convey my feeling about an experience
of something and I would hope that the viewer
would have an experience...
the same way that I have an experience when
I'm actually painting it.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Rhoda Kahler - Artist
So some of the new work that I'm going to be showing
at 222 is these trash can fired and pit fired pieces.
So I make the tiles first.  I... and I bisque fire them...
so they're bisque fired so they're hard  They're
biscuit, but a soft firing so the clay's still porous.
They're put into the trash can or the pit with
combustibles... 
so things that are going to gas and fume and
make smoke.  It's called carbon trapping.  So when
we trap the smoke by putting the lid back down,
the smoke stays inside... 
fumes with all the combustibles and you get
some great color and all the work comes out
and when it cools and you clean it off.  
Clean off all the ash...
and you get these great little pieces with these
wonderful surprises and metallics that... they're
kinda... you know you get one shot, so you don't
know what you're gonna get.  

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Rhoda Kahler - Artist
I'm very excited to be at 222 again.  It's a
beautiful gallery.  Andrea's great to work with.
It's a wonderful space. 
I am excited as an artist just to show my new work.
It's kinda like look what I did, look at what I've been
working on.  It's great to share that.  
I love that my collectors, they know my series and they
know what I've done in the past and they look forward to,
I hope, at least they look forward to what I'm creating
in the future...
what my new inspirations are as my work transitions,  
it keeps going from series to series with the Alphabet
City Series, the Landscape Series and sometimes
they're getting combined and added onto...
and the new work with the line drawings is
very exciting for me and so I'm thrilled.Gallery 222 Malvern
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Liz Delany - Artist
I'm inspired by, I think, the fact that art is such
a huge communication device. 
It, you know, has recorded history, politics, 
culture and I just love that and it also
records just everyday things and nature.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Elise Phillips - Artist
Draw.  Lots of drawing because drawing's very
important, you know, it's the first thing you do
is draw to get things right...
and then work up to color and painting.  So I
would say try everything a little bit and see, you know,
what really gets you going.  What you really really enjoy.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Ken Karlic - Artist
I teach painting and what I say to my students is
there's three steps in order of priority with painting.
And it's DESIGN, DRAWING and PAINTING.
So in my painting what's really important is to get
a really well conceived design focusing on three
shapes... squares, triangles and circles. 
Draw it well and within that structure have an
expressive, liberated application of paint.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Liz Delany - Artist
I think it has a softness to it.  I think I am a romantic
at heart.  I want people to look at it and feel good
and feel soft and feel easy and maybe nurtured.
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Ken Karlic - Artist
The kinda work I'm interested in and that you'll see at
Gallery222 in Malvern is a combination of urban and
rural. 
So I really like the structure of architecture, but I like
the environments of a cityscape and then driving
through the countrysides. 
So you'll see barns.  You'll see silos and industrial
settings.  You'll see street scenes with a lot of
activity of cars and buildings.  So it's really that
kinda combination that is a thread throughout my work.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Elise Phillips - Artist
I'm so excited to a part of the show at Gallery222
coming up.  I've been painting and planning and
just trying to get a good variety of my work...
where I've been this year and hopefully people
will enjoy what I've put up. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Randall Graham - Artist The way I would describe the art that's going to be in this show is a much more energized view of things... the way I'm viewing the world. A lot more energy in the painting. A lot more texture. Quote unquote looseness to it, but still really trying to find the edge... you know, I kinda view it as on the blade of a sword, you know, right between realism and abstraction and... it's a fun, fun game that I'm playing with myself to be on that line and not tilt too far to abstraction or too far to realism and I'm... finding that's a very exciting place right in that zone. Gallery 222 Malvern 2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience www.gallery222malvern.com

Nathan Durnin - Artist It starts very loose, thin. I sketch it for about five minutes just to kinda place where I want my shapes to go. And in this stage, this is with only kinda one layer on, I'm not too worried about my colors right away. I really want to get the big idea of... sorta the values where the lights and darks are and sorta the interaction of shapes. On the next layer, I'm gonna be much more conscientious of my color choices... but this is really about getting big shapes and some of the basic light and dark values together. Then following that comes... the really careful color choices and really trying to sorta finish it and make it look more polished. Gallery 222 Malvern 2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience www.gallery222malvern.com

Lele Galer - Artist Oh I think it's great to dabble. I mean I'm always interested in how some artist is doing something and I wanna see... like I love color. I'd love to do a little bit of glasswork. I have tried stained glass. I can't stand it. It's too problematic for me. I like things that are little bit more spontaneous. But I want to learn how to do things. I don't know as long as it's fun. Honestly there's so many other things to do in the world. I've got a couple books in my head... All sorts of other, you know, great organizations to be a part of and so on. There's always a lot to do and... I'd only be doing the painting and sculpting if it was fun. So the dabbling just increases the fun element.

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Lele Galer - Artist Creativity is in all of us and it's really fun to recgonize it even if it's cooking which by the way I'm a terrible cook. It's fun to bring that out and it's... and it makes you feel great to do that stuff and it doesn't have to be visual arts, but for me it is. Gallery 222 Malvern 2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience www.gallery222malvern.com

Randall Graham - Artist
Well, the difference between studio work
and painting outside... in the studio your
light can be very consistent for the most part.
so you can spend a little more time on
things, get things a little more exact
drawing wise, form wise, color wise.
Outdoors, ah, landscape is very
inspirational, but the light changes a lot
so the sun could change.  A cloud could
come in front of it.
Sometimes that's annoying, but a lot of
times those choices being made for you by
outside things give you a more energetic
painting in the end.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Nathan Durnin - Artist
You know, I think patience is one of the most
important things in art.  I mean I have bad
days all the time... 
where nothing is going right.  Everything is just,
you know, it's like my hand doesn't know
how to paint anymore.
And you kinda gotta accept that that's what
that day is, but come back and
do it again tomorrow.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Lele Galer - Artist
I'm not thinking about what I'm trying to
bring about in the viewer.  I'm trying to
get a sense of what I feel which is...
strength.  I think that's a perfect word
for it and then there's some awe
and a little bit of wonder kinda all
mixed in there.
And that would be for any of the
subject matters that I cover whether it
be the angel series or the temples or... 
what have you and whether it's a strong
color or gesture or multiple layers,
it's all working towards that.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Randall Graham - Artist People will definitely see all the new work at this showing at this exhibition. I've been doing a lot of stuff in the studio using my closet door as the texture for behind whatever I'm painting. Painting a lot of florals. Changing up my style after so many years has been very exciting and invigorating, you know, I've really enjoyed coming up with new ways to... to see things and I've always loved realism and I'm just trying to expand it more and come up with better texture, more interesting depth in the painting. There is always a concern in the back of your head that your fans that are used to what they've been seeing are gonna be, you know, disappear. You'll never see them again and you'll go broke. But I mean I think being an artist, you gotta face those fears and with life too, you know, that's what I've being doing is just... purposely making mistakes at times on the canvas and then trying to solve them and you know, I don't want to get pigeonholed into a certain way of painting just... cuz that starts to feel stale and I just really believe you gotta keep expanding if you want to grow as an artist and... as long as you're putting your heart into it, people will appreciate that as just having that faith in that... that is important. Gallery 222 Malvern 2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience www.gallery222malvern.com

Nathan Durnin - Artist I think so, I mean the emotions change based on every painting and it's... my emotions change with every painting I make. For these kinds of paintings, you know, where I kinda looked up and I saw just this amazing light show in the sky, it's sorta this feeling of complete awe... and just kinda wanting to capture that moment. The way light moves across the clouds and the way that everything just becomes illuminated in the sky so... I try to capture that kinda emotion. I think it's a pretty powerful emotion that we have when we see something that incredible.

Randall Graham - Artist I'm so excited about Gallery222's first anniversary. It's just... it's my second home, you know, Andrea's great. Jess and Jill, all the other studio mates are my family and were just here all the time. I'm teaching here all the time. Being in Malvern, having this great gallery that just won Best New Gallery of the Main Line, it's very exciting. Receptions are great. I couldn't be happier. It's just been the best thing in my life in a while. It's been a great experience. Gallery 222 Malvern 2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience www.gallery222malvern.com

Jeremy McGirl - Artist
I don't usually come out and paint.  I kinda
lock away in the studio.
So, it's nice to get out and paint some of the
spots that we go for walks with as a family.
I mean, I'll probably paint five to seven
and we'll see if four to six are good.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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www.gallery222malvern.com

Fred Danziger - Artist
The things that I always like about art is that...
and I get this... I get feedback from people... 
a lot about this where...you know... you
paint something and then someone says
I never, I never looked at that before...  
until you painted it and yeah that's really
something to look at you know.  Whether it's a
leaf on the ground or floating in a stream... 
or whatever and this is incredibly beautiful, 
this thing you know.  I think of the history and
whoever's restoring this thing...
you know, how devoted... what it means to
them.  I mean it just... it conjures up a lot
of... a lot of thoughts and feelings, so maybe
I can make something out of it.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Barbara Berry - Artist
I love standing outside and painting and
listening to the birds and... 
feeling the temperature of the air and
seeing the vibrant color of everything in
nature. 
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Monique Sarkessian - Artist
I don't like to think of it as a competition, because
it starts messing with my head...
and then I don't make work that I'm excited
about because I start worrying about what the
judge wants to see and that is never good.
It's really... my work is better when I focus on
what do I want to paint about, what excites me,
what... you know... making my best work.
And then if the juror responds to it great, 
if they don't no problem, I have work that I'm
proud of and that other people will be excited...
they'll be excited to own but if I chase...
if I chase an award it usually means death.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Denise Sedor - Artist
I drove up and down King Street looking for a few
things that I thought were kinda cool to paint...
and also sometimes you need shade when it's
really really sunny and hot, so the trees here
were nice... 
and I just liked the awnings on Alba and I
thought it was a little different from
everything else.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Nathan Durnin - Artist
Ah, just the endless possibilities.  I mean
there are a million different ways... 
you can approach one single still life for
instance, but then you go outside and
there's just so much to see... 
and there's so much possibility of what
you can do on a blank canvas. 
Gallery 222 Malvern
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And what's fun for me is when, when I have the work up in shows, I love going around and talking to people and hearing what they see in the imagery.  Because invariably, it’s always a different place that I see.  So I will think of an image and think like Philadelphia but they'll think of it as Los Angeles or you know I think of the woods but don't think of a somebody's backyard or harbor or all these different things that just sort of like Oh looks like this.  That's what's fun for me because it’s there’s.  It's never wrong.  There nothing ever wrong about art.  But it's especially not wrong because they’re whatever you want.   They’re whatever places you see in them.

Elise Phillips - Artist
I think it makes your work a lot more looser
and freer which is sometimes... 
a lot times a good thing, cuz you don't have
time to fuss with it.  You don't have time
to mess it up.
I always go for activity in my paintings and
color and contrast and I really like the contrast of
the flowers against the shadow of the building there.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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For one thing, it's... it's almost a meditative
experience when you get out here and you start... 
painting.  You get into a zone and everything
else is insignificant.  You're focused on one thing
and that's the painting and the landscape
that's in front of you.  It's a nice way to
escape from the every day rigors
of life.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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For one thing, it's... it's almost a meditative
experience when you get out here and you start... 
painting.  You get into a zone and everything
else is insignificant.  You're focused on one thing
and that's the painting and the landscape
that's in front of you.  It's a nice way to
escape from the every day rigors
of life.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Randall Graham - Artist
Well, I love the challenges of changing
lights and atmosphere and... 
the surprises you get, you know, you might
be painting a scene and an animal comes
into the scene or people in the town and... 
something that excites you with color and
light that you weren't quite expecting
results in a very rich painting with a lot of energy.
Of course, we all as artists have tricks and
compositional things we're looking for, but
when it comes down to it...
you're just trying to capture the light of
the moment and kinda the spirit of the place
that you're painting.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Monique Sarkessian - Artist
I'm very excited.  I love Gallery222.
It's doing great in Malvern and... 
you know, a plein air in my local area is
wonderful.  It's... usually you have to travel
so, it's really nice to be nearby and... 
have places that I've been dying to paint anyway
so, it's really great.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Paula Sargent Mintzer - Artist
Well, I'm hoping people will have a really
good feeling... 

every time they walk by my paintings.  They
feel fulfilled some way and feel full some way,  
full of love and positive energy.

and makes them smile.  I really hope, 
they pick, my paintings make
people smile.

Because then I know I've touched them
somehow. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Sue Ciccone - Artist
Nature is my... is my muse and God's
creation is really what inspires me.

You know, all... nature and animals and  I
mean I love landscapes too, but animals
seems to be my big, biggest passion.

But creatures, you know, they're just...
they're amazing.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Joseph Sweeney - Artist
Every mark that you place on the canvas
should mean something...

or should represent something.  So it
shouldn't just be splattered across
the surface.

You want to have every mark do
something or help the painting
come together.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Sue Ciccone - Artist
You gotta do what you love and this is
my passion.  I gotta, this is what I gotta do.

I thought, you know, what do I have to lose
with anything.  I wasn't... all of a sudden I
was sort of fearless.

I was like there's just... life is too short so,
just go out.  I'm going to walk into a gallery
to see if they even like my stuff.  

I don't even have a clue.  I don't know.
So I walked into a place with a couple of
pieces and she said sure let's just try it...

and see what happens.  And then, they started
to sell and some of the rest is just happening
as we go and it's a great journey and I love it.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Paula Sargent Mintzer - Artist
Yes, I start all my canvases, I always put a heart
on each canvas.  

And the reason why I do that is because
I feel it represents the heart in all of us.
And then, from there... 

I do specific multi-layering of colors
which represents the many layers that
we're all made out of. 
Gallery 222 Malvern
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Paula Sargent Mintzer - Artist
I'm really really excited to be showing at
Gallery222 in Malvern.

It's a beautiful gallery and I think Andrea, the
owner, has done an amazing job renovating
the gallery. 

And I feel very honored.  I feel very honored
that I'm chosen to be showing there and
I'm really really excited about it.

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Kristi Gilfillan - Artist
And here's the neat thing about animals too,
unlike people they never look at the painting... 
and are like... you know my smile's not that
good or you know I don't really like my
nose... 
They're so forgiving.  It just has to look
like the animal.

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Luba M. Caruso - Artist
My kids tell me that every day and my
husband... Oh you're living your dream, Mom.
He goes... well first of all art imitates life,
so I'm not just painting a painting.  I could
just take a photograph.
You're painting your life.  Like every story... 
you happened to like that one, it's like
little stories within the painting.
Like a boat sitting on a beach by itself,
someone may think... Oh how sad, it's
so solitude, but really it's... 
it's peacefulness.  It's like, wow to
be alone sitting there quietly
at the beach...
On a you know... whether it's a cloudy day
or a beautiful day, it's just amazing
joy. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Denise Sedor - Artist
Abstract is very mind work and the good
thing... what I really like about it... 
is something that comes out of me and ends
up on the canvas when I show it people
have their own emotional response to it.
Sometimes they see things that I didn't even  
see in there and I love that
They see things.  They bring things out.  It
brings emotion out of people I think.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Denise Sedor - Artist
I think that they should just look at the
colors, maybe the shapes...
and line work and see... look... delve into
the painting not just look at the
surface...
And actually look at... maybe look at the
surface as well.  Look at the texture.  There's
so much to an abstract painting. 
I think people think that they just look at
a flat surface and that's what they take
away.
Go close.  Like look at what's under... 
underneath.  Look at the line.  How does
the line turn.
I think if they delve more into
the painting, I think they'd be
more open to it. 

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Luba M. Caruso - Artist
Oh my inspiration... gosh... the
water, the sea, the air. 
Or floral.  It's just my everyday around me.
I look and say Oh my God how can I
reinterpret that beauty... 
so I can have it always you know.  And
it always started from myself or my
family or my friends.
And now it's just such great joy to be
able to take that inspiration and what I
see every day. 
The beauty... we live on a peninsula that's
just so beautiful.  It's just a constant
inspiration.
And just to have it for, you know, people
in my community that are hanging it in
their homes... it's just an incredible feeling.

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Kristi Gilfillan - Artist
It.. it is odd.  There's not many people
and people ask...
you know, I tell them I'm a math major
they're like... really... like... 
 that just so strange.
But then, I, after college I realized I had to find
something that brought them together so, I
went back and did a masters in interior design.
And so I think that was another way, you
know, you're dealing with a lot of
dimensions and things like that...
so you get your little math piece in,
but you've also got the
creative side. 

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Denise Sedor - Artist
Life inspires me as an artist.  
Everything I see.
I drive around, I'm painting.  I'm painting
at night when I wake up in the middle of
night with anxiety... 
I start painting in my head.  I should get up
and come down and paint, but
I'm too tired. 
So I just paint in my head.  Everything
outside... light, dark.  Being a photographer,
I'm very aware of light changing. 
What's dark.  What's light.  Cracks in the
street can become expressive marks for
me in my paintings. 
So everything around me inspires me. 

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Kristi Gilfillan - Artist
As an artist... it's funny, cuz when I started you
know really getting into this painting thing... 
I... it changes the way you look at everything
around you.  I mean I'll be driving in the car and
I'll look at like at a boring road... 
and I'll think, how could I make that into
an interesting painting and what could
I change and...
you know always looking at things
differently and that's always exciting
for me because... 
 you know it's like opened up this new world
of... and way looking at everything
around us. 
But I think one of the things greatest for
me through my art has been doing
paintings specially you know for people.
It's a dog that they loved.  It's a house that they
grew up in or that they're moving out of.  It's
a landscape from a trip that they took...
A church they got married in... something... 
something with... you know with really
emotional ties to them.
And when you create this image from a
white canvas that had nothing on it
and you take it to them... 
and they... it brings them to tears.  Like that
is just the greatest greatest feeling of
accomplishment for me. 

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Luba M. Caruso - Artist
They're always around me and I'm constantly
working on 20 at a time.
And they're like my little babies and
when they go.. it's like... 
Oh wow. 
I try to keep a mental note you know.  Not
just a photograph, that's never really it.
It's when you see it in person... 
and like the textures, the palette knife.
I know every little detail of it cuz there's
little carvings in it, little stories within a story.
Cuz like a cloud is not just a cloud or the
water tower is not just the water tower
and it's just emotional.
Does it give you a little sense of not
relief, but enjoyment realizing
that your works...
that are so emotional to you...
someone has chosen to purchase and
put it in their house?
Yes, because when they come to me and
say... Ahh, every morning I wake up and I see
that painting...  
I just know my day is going to be great.
And to me, oh my God, I've brightened
someone's world you know.  
It's just wonderful you know.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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Luba M. Caruso - Artist
I'm painting my emotions because that's
how I express myself as a child. 
And so when I see a storm, I just like fall in
love with that storm and I'm
out on the beach... 
I'll make that mental note or I'll quickly
take a picture cuz it's great  when you have
your cellphone. 
And then I like dream about it, but when I
sit down to paint... it's my emotion.  It's what's
happening in my life at that moment you know. 
And I just start to paint and I just let that
painting take me to where I'm supposed to... 
where it's supposed to be... 
emotionally because I'm expressing something
and it's like a release and it's never really
what it was intended to be.
So if I'm starting and I'm painting all of a
sudden... Oh my God what just
happened here. 
This is unbelievable movement.  This cloud.  
This motion and it just goes and then
while I'm doing that... 
my emotions are coming and I'm sobbing.
So I've got tears in my oils and it's all
over my hands and my face and... 
it's just a wonderful feeling and it's not
always sadness.  It's always happiness.  
A great joy happening in my life. 

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

Kristi Gilfillan - Artist
I kind of look at my paintings as a
3-step process.
I start out with the drawing process and I just
you know, I use... I color the canvas and then
I draw the whole thing with my paint brush.
And it's really my favorite stage of the painting
cuz I... you feel very loose and free with it
and I can scrooch it out and get it just right.
And then after I get through that I get
more serious with the paint and
really tackling that.
With "I've Got My Eye On You",  I really
started with the eye of that horse.
Because I think... 
often with animals that is the most
challenging piece, but it's also the most
crucial piece. 
And I've had people look at that painting
and they say... no matter where I stand
he's looking at me... 
which is hence why it has the name that it
does, but so... so that is where I started and
then just kinda developed the whole... 
animal from there and then I... typically at
the end will go back in
and pull out...
some darks and highlights just to
give it a little extra pop before
it's finished. 

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

Denise Sedor - Artist
Yes, I know that a lot of people have a genre
and I am easily bored in my life. 
I like to do a lot of things and it reflects
through my artwork.
I don't want to ever bore my viewer,
so I'm always changing and I think I
would change no matter what...
just because that's who I am.  I get bored
and I want to keep things interesting and  
alive and spontaneous and fun.
The hardest thing for me was doing abstract.
Abstracts I've just recently started within the
past maybe four years... maybe five. 
I have always wanted to do abstract work, but
it was so elusive.  I had no idea how to start
or what to do.
And once I did, I have not turned back.  I mean
I still do other paintings and I love doing
still lifes and I love...
plein air painting especially now in this
beautiful weather, but abstract work is
such a challenge... 
I love it.  And it's all emotional.
You don't look at anything.  It all comes
from within you and I love that. 

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

Denise Sedor - Artist

People will see a lot of expressive line work,

shapes and forms.

Intuitive color and I think

evocative abstract paintings.

I'm super excited to show at Gallery222.  I was

so excited to hear that it was opening up.

I think it's getting harder and harder to find

these great little venues to see art

in person.

And all the things that the Gallery is doing

with, you know, opening up to events and just

getting so many wonderful artists in...

and bringing everyone to Malvern is great.

The fact that I live in Malvern makes it

even better...

because, you know, I just... it's... that's my town

so I'm really really... I feel honored to be

a part of it.

Nancy Bea Miller - Artist
I don't have an agenda for what I
want people to feel.
I'm having an experience.  I'm having
a thought process with the work.
My hope is that I've given... 
an honest response and that other
people can pick up on it, but they may
or may not quite understand.
It's always thrilling if somebody says...
Oh my gosh, those horse chestnuts... 
you're talking about war... 
and about the onlooker and how you're
trying to preserve... you know... culture.
And I'm like.. wow...
I wasn't thinking that, but I love it.
Go with it.  So, it's... it's so cool to see what
other people come up with.
I do feel like it almost... if I were to
say... so obviously what my work was
about... it... then it's like... 
a one note song.  That's all you can see
when you look at the piece and I want
people to bring their own... 
experiences and their own emotions
to the piece.  

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

Jeremy McGirl - Artist

So, they'll see hopefully stuff that

kinda grabs their attention a little bit.

Subtlety though... my process has a little

bit of a delicate or subtle nature.  To where it

kinda just hopefully...

tickles your eyes a little bit and draws

you in.  But asks you to spend time with it

to really kinda dive in and understand it.

It's not like that pop over the head...

like wow moment.  It's a little bit

more subtle.

Jan Wier - Artist
I would say as an interior designer and
just as a person that likes art...
that you shouldn't pick art based on
your decor.  Art should be something
that touches you personally. 
And colors that you like, subject matter
that you like and your room will work
around it.  
The art doesn't have to work around
your room.

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

Jan Wier - Artist

The work that people will see at

Gallery222 primarily are still life

that's the bulk of my work is in

still life.  I have some plein air

paintings.

So, we'll see flowers.  Lots of flowers

and I have a strange fascination with

cakes and cupcakes.

So they'll see a lot of frosting

related paintings.

Nancy Bea Miller - Artist

It's like eating dessert.  So you can't

eat dessert...

well you can, but you shouldn't probably

eat dessert first.  So you have to get...

the initial setting in is exciting

and then there is sort of the drudge

work in the middle and then finishing

up the details is... is fun.

It can also be kinda nerve-wracking

as you near completion because it's

just a psychological...

it's sometimes hard to finish.  The

psychological issue... or l almost think

you don't really want to finish...

So... you just keep going.

Jeremy McGirl - Artist

I'm pretty excited to actually have a gallery

like Gallery222 in Malvern.

I really enjoy the space when I first

visited Gallery222.  That it's clean.  It's

light.

And Andrea wants to showcase an artist in

a room and have a body of work there and

have a show of an artist's work.

Well, I can hardly remember a time that I did not love creative work.
I always think of what Mary Whyte...artist Mary Whyte says.  She's a
great American watercolorist. And she says... "A person never starts
out to be an artist, rather at some point they discover they were an artist all along."  And when I read that in her bio, I thought...
Ahhh... I really connect with that because I think...it was not expected in my family thatanyone would... would enter into the arts even
though my mother was a quite talented lady.
 

How do you know when a piece is complete?
Monique Sarkessian - Artist
Sometimes you just know, sometimes you just feel it. I'm more of a feeling it, intuitive kinda person so, sometimes it looks right... 
but it's not quite right.  Like this one looked fine before I started to
work on it again but... it just didn't feel like it was complete and... it depends... other people work a totally different way from me...
I'm... you know but... I've sat with this one for a while and still felt like it wasn't quite there.  And there would be other people who
would say... you're crazy, it's... this is way done... like go do something else.

What inspires me?  Everything. Everyone.  Everything does.  I mean... just like that's a friend of mine right there. I wanted to paint that picture for her. And then taking your time, stealing time, doing time... 
you know like... I mean taking a walk down like the city block or something going to a park, I mean finding color palettes that way...
or just like conversation with friends at a bar... just this experience
right here... I mean.. it's just like...kinda... you can take something
from everything if you want and turn it into whatever. 
 

Mark Fleming - Artist
It can last 5 minutes or it can last 5 years. You never know how long it's gonna to go depending on where you're doing it and... yeah... like the location... like some cities are real strict about like keeping the walls clean and... sometimes it's up to the building owner to remove the graffiti or street art or whatever it is and...if they don't it within like 30 days or something then they get fines and sometimes the township will just...buff it out with rollers or whatever and then... yeah it just
not meant to last. So, giving it away for that short amount of time... it's... it's kinda cool. It's like... kinda like a butterfly or a like... 
like a caterpillar to a butterfly.  It's just like... ok cool... here's that and that... and then it's done. 

Monique Sarkessian - Artist
The person who walks into Gallery222 or walks into the space where I have my work...is going to be experiencing as best they can what I have experienced translated via vibrant color. I have a bold brush stroke.  You'll see a lot of texture, but I'm... I'm after trying to translate the experience...and the emotional experience that I had. So, a lot of times that's what people tell me that they've gotten and then I'm just... wow, that's great cuz that's not something you can say... Oh here ya go,there's joy, here's... you know... all this stuff. It's just... it's kinda like what runs through me and then comes back out. 

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

Gallery222 is just a dream for any artist. The gallery is just beautiful. The courtyard garden is beautiful. So, I'm very excited. 
I've already put the word out. I think that it's a wonderful, wonderful place to... to show. 
I can't wait to see my
work up there. 

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

Depends..some things go faster than others.  I’ve had paintings that I’ve done in maybe 20 minutes. And some that take four years.  It all depends on the subject, the mood I’m in.  Usually, I come in and I see something,  I physically say you're done and that's it.  And then it sits for a number of days in my studio and if I don't touch it within that time it’s done.

Just the person working in the current time dealing with how the figure is still existent.  Especially since we have social media and fast way of communicating,  how painting the figure is still relevant and always will be relevant.  And how it's reacting to this speed in time that we are going through.  It is as just quite fast,  for lack of a better term.

If I had any advice to tell somebody that was thinking about making a drastic career change, it would just be to follow who you think you are regardless of maybe what other people are telling you to do.  And it can be hard to get rid of everybody else's opinions and only listen to your own but ultimately you're

living with you and everything… happiness is really important and everything else financial or otherwise

will follow.  You'll figure out a way to make it work if you're doing what you love.

I think the sense that you can do it.  That they will… I knew that they were just flesh and blood.  They had to work hard for what they did.  And I drew the figure exhaustively.  I would actually sacrifice money to go to figure drawing groups which was the lifeblood to me.  To go to these open, open figure groups and so by looking at Michelangelo, Raphael, Degas, Egon Schiele and just voraciously pouring over their drawings and copying them and then doing them from memory and then going to these drawing groups and having a model in front of me and drawing and drawing.  And then that one day happens where you do a leg one arm that has a Michelangelo feel, has a Schiele feel… has a Degas sensibility… that

was the thing that kept me. 

At Gallery222, you're going to see a mixture of different types of work.  So, still life that.. that come from actual situations.  Marker drawing or pencil or pen drawing that are slightly imaginative, but become also stem from a real situation and then larger painting.  Hopefully ones that have different color palettes and approach the surface in slightly different ways.

I hope that they can be very honest about how they feel about it.  If they hate it, I'd love to hear it. It they loved it, I’d love to hear it.  I want them to come across looking at the figure differently in that regard of the felt feeling of the form in in an environment in a space in a composition.

First and foremost, I think love of the outdoors something that I'm going for visually.  I think in terms of how I go about approaching that subject matter how I paint them I’m really interested in formal qualities.  So, color and mark making and texture and space.  And I think through utilizing landscape at the subject matter, I want the viewer to have to navigate the space through those formal qualities.  So not only having to navigate it as a whole picture but having a get close up and kind of look between what's happening on the surface.

I sometimes it sounds before the

paintings up like I have an idea in my

head of what i want the pain to be but a

lot of times what was happening is I'm

so experimental and how I work is that I

could have a title picked out and by the

time i get to the end result it's not

anywhere near what the title meant in

the first place what the image is going

to be so sometimes it sounds of the end

and it feels like you're having a child

so it's something ridiculously hard to

do for me sometimes the craziest title

never given a painting is where we go in

the world is waiting and I wanted in

that painting i wanted the viewers to

think about the safe and the objects

that were in the space and kind of

create their own areas behind what was

going on with who has been in that case

personally

I'm really excited to be showing at Gallery222 because it was very intimate space.  And I think a lot of my work can seem a little over the top in terms of color palette or sometimes sizeto like the average viewer.  So I'm interested in kind of having that juxtapose, like this very intimate space.  There's something kind of quant about showing a gallery that refurbished from this house.  I think that juxtaposition is going to be really interesting.  I’m excited about that!

Yeah there's a type of printmaking called the lithography where you have slabs of a particular kind of limestone.  You draw on it with a greasy material, treat it with a simple chemical process and based on the properties that oil and water don't mix, you can print with an oily ink using a wet stone and your drawing is transferred onto paper.  It's a little bit of like, a little magic the little science, but it's pretty cool that actually use a stone to make an image.

First of all, I'm really big on accurate drawing.  Pushing the color.  I push color really far, to digital color. People are used to digital color and it really, really seems to register with people.  They think it's accurate color and it's not.  If you watch the news you see the skins are pink and red that you think it's totally normal.  Your brain is used to it. So I try to push those colors, so that people see things more 21st century.  Little bit more and a little bit more alive you know.  Gives me the ability to punch.

Yeah I went to Jamie Wyeth opening. This is a hard one.  Yeah, something happened when I went to see paintings.  I don't know if it was his language but, I was like having flashbacks.  I was watching

these paintings at this show and I was as if I could see the media moving.   I could see the paint moving, 4 or 5 of them.  And I went through the show and I would have never experienced anything like that and I went back in 2 or 3 times and about the same 4 or 5 paintings there was something about it, as if, you know, maybe I stored information in my brain, something had awakened.  It was quite powerful.  That was a Friday night, by Monday morning I quit everything.  Quit contracting.  Quit everything.  My, my lifelong career was building and packed my car up, dug up that my old college paints.  Went to the art store over the weekend.  I was painting full-time and I knew if I was going to be any good I had to get out, out and do the real thing.  So, that’s what I did, never looked back. 

You will see a collection at Gallery222 of Brandywine Valley.  The forte of the Brandywine Valley the icons and historic properties.  I renovated historic properties and they just, they just draw me.   I mean some of these buildings, and who knows how long they're going to be there.  And there's nothing more peaceful to me then sit down at one of those properties by myself.  You know wrestling with this problem in these paintings to see what I can do it.  And still make sure the headers are in the right place, the windows and double-hung, they work,  they have the right number of grids.  You know the doors open from the left.  All that's gotta be right you know and still make it somehow speak. 

Well for this series of six prints I started with a simple lithographic drawing.  So the elements that are kind of blue or almost black it was just a simple drawing that I did on a stone and I printed it in a large

addition of 30.  So I had 30 of the exact same print.  That was really boring to me and I thought that there is a different way that I could take it.  So I made a woodcut and I printed that same wood cut on the 30 blue images and 10 of them in green, 10 of them in yellow, and 10 of them in red.  So now I had three different images but 10 of each, which was still kind of boring.  So I decided to cut them up into the same shapes and reposition them back into each other.  So take a shape from the red and put it in with the yellow and take a shape from the green and put that in with the red.  And mix everything up so that I had in the end a series of six images that all have the same starting point, but I look slightly different.

I think I hope that a viewer who looks at my work will just ask questions of their own and start looking around and being like, okay, like that connects to that, and that also connects to that. And being able to maybe make those connections in the work that I'm making will encourage people to make those connections when they leave the gallery.  Continue to look for similarities in the things around me because that's a lot of what I'm doing with this work right now.  But I love that you came in here you are

like I want to I want to touch it.  I want to feel it because those are the same feelings that I have when I'm in my studio and I'm looking at my collagraph plates or my prints and these little pieces of paper.  I just want to touch things, pick them up and move them around and if that's all that the viewer gets away from my work, that's fine with me!

Gallery222 has got like a beautiful gallery and I do think that the way it's set up is its done because it doesn't telegraph as a gift shop.  So many small galleries do.  Telegraphs as an intimate space, where you're comfortable and you can see the work.  So yeah!

Having a show a Gallery222 is, it's just really exciting especially because I have this opportunity to show these puzzles that I've been working on and I haven't had the opportunity to

show them in their entirety, all together yet.  So being able to show this work in this gallery, that is kind of such a like intimate space, I think it's perfect , a perfect fit for what I'm doing.

It would be my wish that a person that looks at a painting that I've done would recall a time that they were at a scene, something like that.  If it's a landscape and it's a very calming memory.  Something that gives someone a peaceful and uplifting feeling.  My portraits, I hope that someone sees the beauty in that

person or even the personality in that portrait, in that person.  I want the personality to show.

So one of the challenges working with clay that I think a lot of people don't understand is if you can see the color on this paintbrush it's a camel brown.  This is actually the color that I that it's going to be when it comes out of account and these are fired, I fired kiln 6 which is 2232,  2232 degrees roughly.  And glazes can be overlapped. I use oxides, layering oxide even putting clay back over top glaze using glass.  I love the experimental phase of working with clay and glaze and test tiles.  Everybody asked how do you know what color everything is going to be and even though I may be painting with a color that looks red it is actually going to glaze brown or it looks like it's yellow it's actually going to be orange.  Using those colors certain titles and they have 15 glazes on one tile.  So using the colors and the clay, quite different play bodies, so this green looks totally different on a red clay body because the iron content.  Learning to figure out layering different glazes on different clay bodies and test tiles, that's how I figure out what I'm going to do and knowing and thinking when I'm layering this cobalt blue which looks like tan on
top of a green, which maybe looks like red.  So when they go in the kiln they look like ugly chalky flat  cookies that are pasty and looks like they have too much icing and they come out and everything melts
and then it's always a fun surprise.  Did it work?  Did the glaze mature? Did the glass melt?  It's always exciting

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

I made my first pinch pot, I remember this is it.  They couldn’t get me out of the clay studio.  I kind of dropped off doing everything else even classes and I’d be in the clay room until two in the morning, three in the morning, all night just working with clay. I couldn’t get enough of it.   It’s starting from absolutely nothing, just a lump on the table and your canvas and your hands can transform it.  It’s using your hands and your mind to visualize what you want.  Adding the texture, building, removing.  I love those random discoveries when you're working with clay you tear it or it falls on the floor and slab wrinkles

and this beautiful folds.  It's amazing and I learn from my mistakes and my successes as many artists do and you know I'll never learn everything about clay.   I have so much more to learn, so much more to create, and it's so exciting to me.

Actually when I was in elementary school, I was given the assignment of making a diorama in second grade and it was a Little Red Riding Hood.  I drew her and when I brought it to class everybody said, “oh you're going to be an artist”.  From then on all of my assignments that had anything to do with drawing, it was again, I was validated in that way.   I was going to be an artist.  I thought I was going to be an artist and then when I was 13,  I picked up a guitar and starting teaching myself songs and began singing and entering talent contests and I was encouraged to be a singer and then when it was time to choose a major in college I decided to study singing.  

Tactile, organic, earthy.  I think those would be adjectives would use for my work.  I’m so close to it it's hard for me to step back look at it.  If somebody walks up to my work in gallery and they want to touch it,  I feel like I've succeeded.  They want to touch.  I'm ok with people touching clay.  It's meant to be touched.  The earth.  So, I'm not, I don’t feel like people touching my work in the gallery.  They can pick up the tiles to touch the impressions.  The everyday objects looking at something and I love to see the excitement on someone's face when they look closely into my work and they can say, “Oh is that a shoe print or is that that bolt or is that a is that pasta roller, is that you know? “  I love when they make that connection to the artwork and they find something that it hits them whether it's  a number a date of color.  The connection for me.

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

This is my debut solo show.   I have a few painting in exhibitions that were juried into those exhibitions in various parts of the country.  But I’ve never actually had a solo show of my work alone.  I’m very excited!

The first piece I ever bought was just a simple pair of shoes and it just made me
so happy.  Once I bought my first piece I was hooked and I feel it would be similar
for other people.
Gallery 222 Malvern
2 Enlighten - 2 Enjoy - 2 Experience

I'm very excited to show at a Gallery222 mostly because I get to show with two other landscape artists that are very practiced landscape artists that have a different part of the conversation.   So the three of us have these really unique takes on what the landscape is.  What are the parts of the landscapes that are important to us.  For me it's a very emotional or femoral thing.  And you know with the other people in the show it's very different and so we each get to show together and have this broad conversation about how people can make art about the landscape and have it be so rich and full.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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What makes me really excited about making these paintings.  I come from a Plein air tradition and I love setting up in nature and painting a picture based on the shimmering colors and the shapes of light coming together.  But what was so nice about this is being able to put the actual physical landscape into my paintings which gives them much more information than just what I would paint by what I saw because it embeds the actual landscape into the medium.

Gallery 222 Malvern
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This building, this history of Gallery222 it used to be the Picket Fence and the owner Beth paid me my first job to paint a mural on the side of the wall when I was 18.   So pretty young.   So that was really like the first mural in Malvern to my knowledge.  To come back here and get this studio and start teaching and just being here all the time, it’s just the dream country you know.  It's amazing.
Gallery 222 Malvern
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