Fine Art
Each month, the editors select their favorite entries in fine art
(paintings, drawings, sculpture, illustration, etc.). Thanks to all who shared their work. CLICK ON IMAGES to go to the artists' individual pages.
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© Sonia Stark
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Sonia Stark is the November 2023 Featured Artist. She has always worked in a variety of mediums and styles in acknowledgement of their equal validity and in appreciation of the multi-dimensionality of art. However ostensibly different, her drawings, paintings, photographs, and sculptures are intricately related, both thematically and aesthetically. Sonia is a signature member of the National Association of Women Artists, an organization where she formerly served as president and member of the Board of Directors. She has exhibited her artwork across the United States and has received numerous awards for her paintings, designs and illustrations.
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© Donna Gabusi
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Donna Gabusi is a Long Island, New York- based fine artist who has been creating art for 30 years. Her work includes portraits, still life, landscapes, and waterscapes, and she is particularly drawn to the expressive nature of the human face, animals, and the reflective nature of water and other objects. Donna sometimes paints on fabric covered matboard, instead of canvas, to enhance texture. Donna has exhibited at galleries, cafes and libraries throughout Long Island, New York. She often sells her work through word of mouth and is available for commissions.
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© Jill Cliffer Baratta
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Jill Cliffer Baratta, MFA, NAWA, is a printmaker/work on paper artist, and currently the Executive Director of the National Association of Women Artists, Inc. Her work has evolved from academic studies at a young age, to employment as a graphic designer/artist, to a fine artist focused on watercolor, printmaking, and collage works on paper. Focusing on facilitating art for others, her work has varied in style and format. She has created series on baseball, music, and other ranging themes, including her Omen series, and Adulation series, using printmaking techniques of linocut, woodcut, intaglio, photo transfer, and layered combinations. Mentors include Dorothy Cochran, Denise Collins, Basil King, Penny Dell, Christine Ferreira, and Tom Pollock.
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© Karen Loew
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Special Father's Day Tribute to a Holocaust Survivor: Artwork by Karen Loew. Karen is a long-standing artist member of the Salmagundi Club and serves on the Board of Directors. The club, located in Manhattan, is one of the oldest art clubs in the United States. As the first woman committee chair of the Coast Guard Art Program (COGAP), she has led the committee since 2001 and was recently honored with Emeritus status. She is the liaison between Salmagundi, the program sponsor, and the United States Coast Guard. The tribute painting is of Moshe Meisler (1924 - 2020).
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© Elaine Franz Witten
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Elaine Franz Witten is the May 2023 Featured Artist. She is a multi-award-winning, classically trained sculptor. Hallmarks of her bronzes are beautiful form, illusion of movement, creative use of negative space, and use of indigenous stone bases. Elaine’s art has been exhibited in over 150 national and international exhibitions as well as museums and reginal solo shows. Her bronzes are in public and private collections in the United States, Canada, and in the private collection of the former King of Saudi Arabia. In 2013, she became a purveyor of sculpture to the U.S. State Department for use as Presidential gifts by President Obama. Elaine is a signature member of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA).
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© Syd Hap
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Syd Hap is a mixed-media artist and doll maker. She holds a master’s degree in art therapy from New York University and is certified in positive psychology from Whole Being Institute. She has post-graduate training in the fields of trauma and addiction. In the 1970s and 1980s, she focused on her skills as a doll and puppet maker. As the official sculptor of Betty Boop products for King Features, she became a master sculptor for the Danbury Mint in Norwalk, Connecticut. Syd believes that art making is healing and supports personal growth, so throughout her decades-long professional career, she made time to facilitate workshops and classes that help her clients make positive and lasting changes in their lives.
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Photo Courtesy: April Dawn Griffin
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April Dawn Griffin is the April 2023 Featured Artist. She started painting at age eight, and her passion for this medium blossomed for decades. April is an autistic artist with deteriorating eyesight. However, she shares, “It weirdly doesn’t stop me from painting." Her metal work speaks to synergy in the forest. She used her paintings on metal – particularly her work on large saw blades – to draw attention to potential clear-cut logging. April appeared in the film CONNECTED: A Film About Autistic People, which provides a heartwarming look into the lives of individuals on the autism spectrum as they gather for the International Naturally Autistic People Awards in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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© Natalia Koren Kropf
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Natalia Koren Kropf is a classically trained interdisciplinary, award-winning contemporary artist who combines art and science in various studio media. Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia into a family of artists, Natalia studied at the Academy of Fine Arts from a very young age. Upon family relocation to New York in 1992, she embraced its contemporary art scene. Natalia has won several national awards and her work is exhibited nationally and internationally. She is a member of the Allied Artists of America, the Art Students League of New York, and the Monotype Guild of New England. She is former President of the National Association of Women Artists (2019-21) and is currently serving on the Board of Directors.
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FINE ART 2022
© Kathleen Zimmerman
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Kathleen Zimmerman was born in Fort Collins, Colorado, which is nestled along the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Family time was spent exploring the mountains in a '47 Willy's Jeep or with their Welsh pony. These developmental experiences instilled a love for the natural world and a strong bond with animals. Her passion for creativity and expression was noticed in school and eventually earned her artistic merit scholarships from the University of Hartford's Art School, Connecticut, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She has won numerous awards and honorary memberships, including NAWA membership. Currently, she spends her studio time creating graphite drawings, serigraphic prints, and models for life-sized sculpture.
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© Andrea Geller
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Andrea Geller is a painter and mixed media artist based in Bergen County, New Jersey. She developed an interest in painting at a very young age and decided to pursue a career in art, studying painting at Cornell University and Parsons School of Design.
Early in her career she worked as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer, with such prestigious clients as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Psychology Today and Random House. In her paintings, she explores gestural figures in motion, on land and in water, and proxemics, the space between people as they move. Andrea is represented by Emerge Gallery in Saugerties, New York and, most recently, was included in the “Personal Geographies” exhibition at New York Artists Equity on Broome Street, New York City. |
© Pam Krimsky
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Pam Krimsky grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After completing her master’s degree in painting, she left New York City and moved to the Hudson Valley region of New York to paint from landscape. Pam established a career as a painter and taught school, mostly K-12 art classes, first in New York City and then in the Hudson Valley. She also worked as an adjunct faculty member at Columbia-Green Community College, teaching studio courses and art history. After living in Iran with her former husband, she returned to the U.S. alone and decided to live in the Hudson Valley, where she continues to paint and exhibit her work in group and solo shows throughout the region.
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© Jac Carley
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Jac Carley is a Berlin-based artist and educator. After graduating from George Washington University with a degree in modern dance education in the mid-1970s, she moved to Berlin and cofounded of ‘tanzfabrik berlin’ (dance factory berlin). For the last ten years, Jac has focused on visual arts practice and teaching. Her primary interest is the female figure and women’s stories, capturing the sensual. Her drawings, prints, and photography have been shown in numerous exhibitions and venues in Berlin and Venice. Jac was the on-site director for Sarah Lawrence’s ‘Summer Arts in Berlin’ study abroad program from 2010–2020. In spring 2022, she taught ‘Dance and Community Building: Looking at Utopias’ for Bard College Berlin (with Professor Ingo Reulecke).
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© Patricia Watwood
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Patricia Watwood is the May 2022 Featured Artist. She is a leading figure in the contemporary figurative movement. She has exhibited at the Beijing World Art Museum, The European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM), and The Butler Museum. Her work is included in the collections of the St. Louis University Museum of Art and the New Britain Museum of American Art. Her commissioned portraits hang in institutions, such as St. Louis City Hall, Washington University, Kennedy School of Government, and at the Harvard Art Museums. Patricia is the current First Vice President of the Salmagundi Club (2021). She is also a Signature member of the Portrait Society of America and was named a Living Master by the Art Renewal Center. Her first book, The Path of Drawing (Monacelli Studio Press) will be released in late 2022.
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© Ivonne Fernández y González
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Ivonne Fernández y González, M.Sc. is the April 2022 Featured Artist. Ivonne is a German-Spanish multidisciplinary artist and social psychologist. Since her autism diagnosis, she has been active in the autism rights and neurodiversity movement and founded the German nonprofit association NeuroDivers e.V. Ivonne understands art as catharsis, a constructive way to banish dark feelings and thoughts - fear of transience, death, meaninglessness and emptiness, anger in the face of everyday lies, exclusions and injustices in the world. Ivonne believes that art and education are essential for human well-being. She conceives art projects for children on the autism spectrum. It is through her work with children that she expresses her sunny, light and colorful side.
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Hilda Demsky
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Hilda Demsky's "The Gratitude Project" was inspired by the poetry of U.S. Poets Laureate during the height of the COVID pandemic. Hilda created the artwork and project designer is Louise Londin Design, NYC. Hilda was inspired by poems sent to The New York Times regarding the prompt, “what the people in their states would be thankful for” while reflecting on the difficulties faced at the height of the COVID pandemic. She created a series of paintings capturing the spirit of the poetry in a visual representation. The paintings contain geographic elements, symbolic use of color, and a subliminal outline of the referenced state's border.
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© Carole Kunstadt
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Carole Kunstadt is the March 2022 Featured Artist. Carole's works often invoke a metaphysical quality. Her pieces reference antique books, bookplates and artifacts - deconstructing paper and text and using it in metaphorical ways. Through the exploration of the materials, history, memory and time merge in a hybrid form. She has won numerous awards and her works are included in many private and public collections, including the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College Library in Brunswick, ME and The Book Arts Collection, National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. The PBS/OFF BOOK Book Arts mini documentary featured Carole in the segment, "Transforming the Sacred."
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© Viky Garden
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Viky Garden is the January 2022 Featured Artist. She was born in Wellington, Aotearoa and currently lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland with her husband Steve Garden, co-founder of Rattle Records, a contemporary music label in New Zealand. Since the age of 15, she has predominantly used herself as the model for her work. Through this singular practice, Viky primarily explores the nature of impermanence and similar themes that reflect personal and universal aspects of the female experience. Unable to attend art school, she began painting in earnest at the age of 27. Since then, she has had 26 solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group shows, both in her homeland and internationally. Viky’s work is held in private collections in New Zealand, Australia, UK, Canada, U.S. and Europe.
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© Tracy Hayes
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Tracy Hayes is a mixed media artist who has been exhibiting her work since 2012. She is a native of Montreal and has lived in the U.S. since the 1990s when she attended the University of New Hampshire and received a B.A. in French. Tracy also earned a B.F.A. from New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2012 and recently completed an M.F.A. at Lesley University in 2021. As to her work, restless mark-making explorations build across media, from intimate drawings and collages to larger paintings. Themes of amplitude and de-escalation, compression and expansion are pervasive, as is the overall subterranean feel of her work which is echoed by a tonal palette preference and hinged to an interest in the metaphoric space of below and behind the surface.
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