Jason Craighead
In the Wings of the Butterfly
88 x 60: mixed media on canvas
"Go give yourself completely to something and then, share it with the world to lift them all . . . I only came to give it away . . . and I find myself increasingly full and dancing at the cliff." —Jason Craighead.
Craighead is a recognized leader in the North Carolina art scene. A resident of downtown Raleigh, he grew up in Florida where he studied art at Gulf Coast Community College and Florida State University. He has received numerous awards, has served as a juror for various art shows, and has been selected as Signature Artist for charitable art auctions. His work has been featured in a number of publications, including Artists & Art Galleries of the Southeast.
An active participant in the Raleigh arts community for many years, Craighead has donated numerous paintings to charitable art auctions, including the Triangle AIDS Alliance’s annual Works of Heart auction and a Habitat for Humanity fundraiser. He has served as a juror and signature artist for Works of Heart, and as a juror for the Visual Art Exchange in Raleigh and the Greensboro Center for Visual Arts Members’ Show. North Carolina’s annual spring festival, Artplosure, commissioned him as Signature Artist to create a painting that became the image of its marketing campaign. More recently, he has been appointed to the City of Raleigh Arts Commission. Craighead's work has been highlighted in galleries and solo exhibitions across the Southeastern United States. Many of his canvases are in private collections, including that of Senator John Edwards' Office, US Senate, Washington, DC.
Visit more of Craighead's poetic art at his website. Gallery selections can be found at Thomas Deans Fine Art, Atlanta, GA, Flanders Gallery in Raleigh, NC, and Broadhurst Gallery in Pinehurst, NC, all currently representing his work.
Luke Haynes
On My Bed
91 X 83: fabric
"As a contemporary quilt maker, I am exploring ways of using fabric as a medium for both functional quilts, as well as wall hangings. For the viewer, enchantment lies within the perceived craftsmanship and creativity of the quilter and their work. Quilts that are constructed for warmth from overused cloth can be transformed into intriguing art objects. The resulting dialogue between quilting as a pastime of assembling found or purchased fabrics, and quilting as a skill of constructing usable objects from unusable cloth reflects a current societal tension."—Luke Haynes
Haynes holds degrees from North Carolina School of the Arts and Cooper Union, School of Architecture in New York, NY. Since 2009, he has been an Alliance for American Quilts board member while completing three artist-in-residencies. His extraordinary pieces have won many awards, including the 2010 Quilt Festival and Seattle Art Museum honors. He has shown in recent solo exhibitions, galleries, universities and museums in New York, North Carolina, Texas, Atlanta, Washington, California, and North Carolina. Hayne's art can be found in many publications, as well as the cover of Fiber Arts, Quilters' Home, and Seattle Magazine.
Haynes asks the viewer to reexamine the quilt tradition and the nature of cloth in his work. This enables the viewer to take away a new understanding of craft and function, as well as art and materiality. His aspiration is to take quilting to the masses of literate artisans who may yet not know the ripe qualities of the medium. To find out more about this fascinating artist, visit his website, which includes an awesome vimeo. Be sure to *like* his facebook page, and *tweet* him on Twitter. View more photos of his work here.
Edin Chavez
The Ledge
black and white photo
"Dreaming, exploration, adventures—I will try anything once and then probably do it again. These are the emotions I try to capture with my photography."—Edin Chavez.
Chavez loves to laugh and spread smiles. He believes in being happy and living in a happy world, loves animals and learns from them every day. He believes in sharing, love, prosperity, and happiness for all, and that we each have a purpose in the world. Edin skateboards, rides motorcycles, drives fast cars, and is an up-and-coming photographer. His life philosophy is simple: 'Smile, love and live to your full potential. Never look back and wish what you could have done; go out and do it!' Chavez lives in Miami Beach where he enjoys life with his dogs, the sun, a skateboard, and the beach. More of his beautiful landscapes, cityscapes, and personal photography can be enjoyed at his website.
Liz Hamman
Busy Shop
Ladybird (complete book), mixed media
"Books are often both treasured and neglected objects. The materials they are made from are humble, transient and overlooked whilst the printed content and experience books provide often remain in our memories and enrich our lives. I explore the qualities of value/non-value and transience/longevity with the desire to produce art that is portable, wearable, and unique. What once adorned the mind and memory can be transformed to adorn the body. The end of a book isn’t the end of the story."—Liz Hamman
Liz Hamman is an extraordinary artist from Macclesfield, Cheshire, where she has been making and exhibiting work since completing her Fine Art training. She specialized in sculpture and textiles, which caused a keen interest in sculptural artists' books. Hamman's jewelery is the result of her desire to combine these interests to produce unique, one-of-a-kind pieces. Geometry, repetitive structures, the variety of processes, plus the qualities and challenges of paper as a material continue to inspire her museum-quality art. She constantly experiments with various techniques to manipulate paper. Her methods are often a direct response to either the subject matter of the book, or the quality of the paper.
Hamman's jewelry has been featured in the New York Museum of Art and Design with other international jewelry artists, the Victoria and Albert Museum, galleries, shops, and juried exhibitions. Her cutting edge designs can be viewed on her website, and here.
Simon Gudgeon
Search for Enlightenment
Bronze: Male 220 x 210 x 45 cm
Female 213 x 200 x 45cm
"Having lived deep in the countryside on the family farm, I learned the essential arts of observation, evaluation and interpretation of how animals and birds behave, both with each other and man. Most sculptures don’t start out as a conscious thought, with all the aspects of form and meaning carefully considered. An idea enters my mind – be it a shape, a movement or an emotion – and I simply want to convey it. I must convey it! Ideas come from a combination of observations, thoughts, beliefs and the profound experiences of one’s life."—Simon Gudgeon
One of Britain’s leading contemporary sculptors, Gudgeon has a signature style that is a marvellously smooth concentration of spirit and nature. His minimalist, semi-abstract forms depict both movement and emotion of a moment captured with a visual harmony that is unmistakably his own. In his thirties, Simon began painting, exhibiting at London’s Battersea Exhibition Centre shortly thereafter. An impulse purchase of artist’s clay at the age of forty led to his new career as a sculptor, which correlated with what lay closest to his heart: the natural world.
Gudgeon has attained worldwide recognition, with exhibitions in London, New York, San Diego, Paris and the Netherlands. His works are featured in important private collections abroad and in the United Kingdom, including those of His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, The Duke of Bedford, and The Duke of Northumberland. His sculpture, Isis, was installed in Hyde Park, London, the first such installation there in over fifty years. Gudgeon has been selected as Featured Artist for the Western Visions exhibition at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Other recent shows include, Birds in Art at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin, and Art and the Animal, the fiftieth anniversary exhibition of the Society of Animal Artists, at the San Diego Natural History Museum, California, and a solo exhibition at Halcyon Gallery.
He sculpts primarily in bronze, marble, and granite, and occasionally in glass or stainless steel. For the modelling of the form, he uses a number of different materials (depending on the nature and scale of the subject) such as terracotta clay, oil-based Chavant clay, epoxy resin, or foam. Working directly from nature and live subjects, he crafts sculptures that share an elemental kinship of identity with all living things. He is particularly known for his sculptures of birds in flight; often with ingeniously engineered bases that seem to launch them into the air rather than anchor them to the ground. Simon Gudgeon's sculpted masterpiece can be seen here at his website, and on facebook.
Randal Wilcox
Self-Portrait as a Pair of Civilian-Casualties
18 x 24: watercolor, graphite, ink, and saliva on paper
"Saliva is used in portraits of myself as other people, to incorporate my DNA into the images. This ensures that the resulting watercolor and acrylic paintings will bear my imprint and be “truthful," even if the portraits are not entirely “accurate” representations of who and what I am. Utilizing my appearance and genetic material as a starting point, I examine historical and current events for conceptual and emotional links to personages that are the exact opposite of what I perceive myself to be. I then place myself into the skins of these strangers and launch myself into situations that I would never want to be in, yet which others unfortunately are forced into through genetics or the impassive and unforgiving nature of chance.
The deadpan, excessively hyphened titles I give the paintings are used to break down identity into its barest form; to emphasize the limitations that we place on ourselves and each other through description, and to show the ultimately un-objective and flawed nature of language in describing the idiosyncrasies of human nature and behavior. Through repetition and variation, I become an Everyman (and occasionally an Everywoman); the specific experiences in the paintings become a universal, existential articulation of the burden of identity and the horrors present in everyday life that we all consciously or unconsciously avoid in order to function. This series of Saliva Paintings will reach its conclusion when I have rendered myself as everyone, everything and anything that has, or possibly could, exist."—Randal Wilcox
Randal Wilcox is an artist, independent curator, and writer born and currently based in New York. His art has been reviewed in The New Yorker. Exhibitions include The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Artists Space and Anthology Film Archives. Exhibitions co-curated by Wilcox have been reviewed in Artforum and The New York Times. Wilcox studied painting and filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts; his work is in The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Museum of New Art (MoNA), and various private collections. He is working on a graphic novel with composer and saxophonist Darius Jones, and has created album covers for the Darius Jones Trio and Quartet for the New York-based recording label AUM Fidelity. Visit Wilcox' site for more intriguing one-of-a-kind art.
Milton Bernal Castro
Hazme sentir tu aliento (Take My Breath Away)
55 x 75 cm, oil on handmade paper, encrusted with tobacco leaves
Art is the sex of imagination -- Pablo Picasso.
Milton Bernal Castro, who some prefer to call "the painter of tobacco" or "painter of snuff," focuses on portraiture style in which women are a common theme, along with cultural and historically important figures. His works are done in oil on specialized paper, using textures that simulate cloth, and inlaid snuff leaves treated with chemical preservation processes, so as not to lose pigmentation and plasticity. Bernal Castro is a self-taught artist, designer and journalist, who holds a masters in Business Management and Marketing Communications. He is a member of the Development of Visual Arts, Artists and Artisans Association of Cuba; International Federation of Artists in Barcelona, Spain; and International Artlive, France. His pieces have been exhibited in top galleries and private collections around the world, including Cuba, China, Austria, France, Spain, Mexico, Russia and Hungary. Bernal Castro's works have received recognition and awards at both national and international events, and have been selected to participate in numerous venues relating to Cuban snuff, as well as being featured in magazines, journals, and other publications. Four of his works participated in auctions during closing night at the Festival del Habano 2005-2009. Please visit his gallery for more amazing tobacco-oil paintings.
Banana Blossoms
40 X 30 stained glass
Gordon Stained Glass Studio"I have to admit, I am a product of the urban environment. As a child raised in New York, I was constantly confronted by the physical geometry of the city with all its order and disorder. When I looked out my window I saw other buildings just like mine, buildings encased in even rows of bricks, punctuated by windows, doors and fire escapes, and fringed on top with the haphazard intersecting patterns of antennae and water towers. As the sun moved overhead, I watched the shadows and the bright areas shift, revealing new shapes of light and dark, new depths to the dimensions of buildings and train trestles. The city, for me, was full of wonder and mystery, planned yet chaotic.
This is the source of my aesthetic, and in all my work I seek to discover and maintain an underlying structural foundation. In my cityscapes I attempt to find some method to the urban "madness." In landscapes, I try to capture the unifying pattern that is inherent in nature’s randomness."—Daniel Hauben
Born, raised, and still living in the Bronx, Hauben’s stock and trade has been the urban landscape. For more than thirty years he has worked on location in streets, in parks, from windows, and rooftops. Hauben received a degree in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is an eight-time recipient of the BRIO Award from the Bronx Council on the Arts, and has been awarded artistic residencies in Spain, Germany, Costa Rica, Virginia, Connecticut and California.
Hauben has had over thirty national and international solo exhibitions, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the American Embassy in Berlin. He has taught at the Pastel Society of America, the CUNY Graduate Center, and currently teaches at the Art Students League, the CCNY Spitzer School of Architecture, and the Riverdale WM-YWHA. His public projects include “The EL” for the New York MTA’s "Arts For Transit" program, and currently, a twenty-two painting commission for a new (RAM Stern) library on the campus of Bronx Community College. His work is in corporate and public collections including: The White House, Library of Congress, Museum of the City of New York New York Historical Society, Harvard University, and more. Hauben's astounding glass, oil, and bronze pieces can be viewed at his site.
Shard Series IV: Pentimento
22 X 30: acrylic on watercolor paper
"As an intuitive painter, I am primarily self-taught. Most of my professional life before retirement was spent as a freelance writer/editor/graphic designer, and as a poet. Coming from this arts background gives me much fruitful inspiration for my paintings, which are fundamentally abstract in nature. To me, painting is poetry, too. I feel I am carrying on my poetic expression using this medium of paint and collage, rather than limiting it to only pen and words. It was, for me, the next step to use paint to express the often inexpressible. My painting subjects are eclectic and often expressed in a series of paintings on the same subject. My focus while working is always discovery. This discovery process is internal as well as external, and carries me beyond myself. I paint, write, sing because I enjoy the journeys I am taken on during their expression. I hope you are transported as well when you see my work.
I help people integrate their spiritual lives and their daily lives. One way I do this is by Akashic Records readings, which can help with specific questions, or, over time, help people distinguish between their own thoughts and higher guidance coming from spiritual sources. The focus of my consultations is ultimately to show people how they can connect to their own inner guidance, to know the difference between their own thoughts and guidance from God (angels, etc), so they can draw on it in their daily lives. Another way I help people integrate spiritual lives and daily lives is through my artwork. My paintings are abstract representations of spiritual truths. If you have a specific spiritual truth you want to be reminded of every day, in a beautiful way, you can choose from my available paintings or have me do one for you." --Roberta Compton Rainwater
Ro Rainwater is an artist and poet who currently lives in Laurel, Mississippi, with her husband, John, and dog, Sadie. Retired from public life now, she was a freelance columnist and features writer for the Times-Picayune newspaper in the 1980s. Rainwater has also been the co-editor/publisher of an arts journal, and is the co-founder of an arts and humanities council in her former hometown in south Louisiana. Currently, she is active in the arts community in Laurel and shares her painting studio with her husband, who also paints. Sadie mostly sleeps. Enjoy more of her work here.
Iris, Iris
32 X 36 oil on canvas
wood frame
“Having picked up a digital camera after years of painting and drawing, I find that I am still drawing and painting…pixel by pixel, and at times with a tenacious fascinating medium that has endless possibilities. This medium also allows me to visualize a painted surface. It in no way replaces the feel of a brush stroke; the scent of paint and the motions that bring the emergence of a painting, but it has its rewards and quickly becomes obsessive. From my early years as an artist, I am drawn in by textures, light and contrast, and nature. I have done a considerable amount of painting, architectural rendering work and years of intensive large pen and ink pieces delving into the complexity of natural things; all causing me to marvel at how millions of cells combine, twist, turn, and create. And that creation can be at once simple, straight-forward and lovely, or it can be rugged, fierce, confusing and unsettling. I have spent hours in details which have given me a path to see beyond the first impression, then hone in on the heart of a scene or object. Using a camera has enabled me to see possibilities clearly isolated within a framework, to peel back layers. From this framework I pull into focus what I consider to be the source of what draws my eye, discarding a myriad of details. The end result of these thousands of images will be a vast supply of inspiration for paint while telling stories and making their own noise. A selfishly driven artist, most things I do are done because I choose to do and to explore them. I do them for me. But on the other hand, sharing my work gives me great pleasure; selling it enables me to dance further and further with the ever restless muse that dwells somewhere near me. I delight in the rampant creativity of others.
I am passionate about nature and its preservation; heartsick at the sight of how we carelessly scar and destroy our home and the other creatures we share it with. I use humor for survival. I am drawn by the beauty of things created, mystified by how the simplest of things can be so full of complexity, and moved by the things in our lives that quietly influence and become part of who we are while giving us a sense of place. If I convey any of that in my life’s work, I am content.” –Lizi Beard-Ward
Beard-Ward has exhibited in museums and galleries in Washington D.C., Woodstock, N.Y., Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and more. Her gallery and commissioned art are done in many mediums, including photography, painting, wall murals, faux finished furniture, stage set, design and construction. She has won several international and national competitions, has been extensively interviewed on radio and t.v., and donates much of her time and artistic talent to promote charity organizations and auctions. Her work can be viewed and purchased on her site.
Gestation
11 X 16: mixed media
"There are few things as magical as taking a piece of paper and creating something interesting and colorful on its blank, white surface. Thinking of the nuances of color, shape, and line can hold my interest for hours, as with each mark I consider something—life, love, loss or hope. It all transfers to the tool I am using and is forever captured in the piece, which then seems to be like a friend waving to the future me from the past and making all the days of my life present at once."—J. Phelps Williams
Williams is a book designer, artist, illustrator, and writer living in the Appalachian foothills with her husband, also a writer. She has designed nearly two-hundred titles, illustrated several picture books, and launched the work of others through a small press she founded. Williams is also the author of "Open Your Heart with Pets: Mastering Life Through Love of Animals." She has a B.F.A. from Kent State University, and her interests include photography and outsider art. Follow her on her blog.
Falling into Winter Herd
30 X 60: oil on canvas
"As splintering light fractions into thousands of colors, my journey in life has encompassed many careers from runway model to graphic artist, from musician to singer, from teacher to artist. I believe the greatest influence in my life is the beauty God provides daily." -- L. Justus Pace
A degree in art, eight years in advertising, and twenty-five years of teaching art have come full circle. Pace takes yearly top honors at international art shows in oil, watercolor, and photography. Viewing a Laurie Justus Pace painting is a rich experience that drips with color and emotion. Her passionate works are alive with movement, boldly created with a wide brush and a palette knife. She loves working with oils, dramatically carving out the paint and transferring her energy to the canvas, and ultimately on to the viewer. Pareidolia is the term for what happens when Pace gazes at her thickly applied strokes of oil paint and begins to visualize equine forms. It's the same word used to describe the phenomena of seeing animals in clouds or faces in the moon.
Pace has exhibited her work around the globe. Senators, ambassadors, and corporate executives are among her collectors. Her art has been featured on the covers of numerous magazines, and in books and magazines. Top galleries worldwide feature her amazing works. Pace's art can be enjoyed at her website, her blog, the CFAI site, Artists of Texas, and at 5-Graces where she is a member of international artists promoting the gifting of art in support of global needs.
Dragon Robe #2
40"x 48": copper, aluminum, glass, fabric,
wood, found objects
"There is a special time between the spark of inspiration and the completed piece that marks both reality and total immersion. The end product becomes a physical manifestation of this creative process that has the ability to stir something deep within us with its mysterious beauty. I am absorbed and fascinated with how our lives, the earth, history, relationships are woven together creating a collective fabric of life. As a visionary, I desire to serve in the world helping people understand how they are woven into this incredible fabric."—Catherine Foster
Foster resides in Poulsbo, Washington. Her award-winning work has been purchased and displayed by UC Irvine Hospital, NY City Hospital, and other corporate locations. Foster has been the feature artist in solo shows for galleries across the United States, including; Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Ohio, and California. She has won many national and international juried contests. View her museum-quality, masterful works of art at her main site, gallery art, and more.
David Hinske
Hinske’s paintings are nationally collected privately and by public corporations and educational institutions. The Brooks Museum of Art, the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Dyersburg State, and the University of West Georgia have included his work in exhibitions and benefit events. Hinske's extensive exhibitions, gallery shows, and invitationals have been seen in Tennessee, Hawaii, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas, and Mississippi. His work has also appeared in countless magazines over the years. He has also served as juried art show judge, gallery owner-curator, and art interpreter.
Some of Hinske's latest paintings can be seen in the remarkable video; Painting a Quiet Life which leaves the viewer wishing for a lengthier show. More work can be seen at this site.