Meditation Two
Paul Pinzarrone studied classical piano, biology, and chemistry. He explored playing the keyboard in various rock & roll bands, playing piano for musicals, singers, and dancers, and also worked as an orderly in a trauma center emergency room and surgery. He studied art history and painting at the University of Illinois, earning a BFA in Painting with Highest Honors. Graduate work was done in painting and drawing at Northern Illinois University and the University of Wisconsin.
Paul taught drawing and design at Rockford and Rock Valley Colleges and exhibited at juried contests and galleries in Chicago, Miami, Louisville, Muskegon MI, Ohio, and New Orleans. Exhibitions include the Art Institute Biennial, Butler Institute of American Art, Gilman Gallery, Horwich Gallery, Union League Juried, and Zhou B Art Center [Chicago].
Earlier work included photography, acrylic, and airbrushed lacquer constructions on Plexiglas. Matching the process to the imagery, Pinzarrone pushed the science-fiction look of spraying bronzing powders with acrylic lacquers for an inaccessible, reflective presentation. Film photography transitioned to digital and airbrush turned into an electronic version with Photoshop and other painting methods. To be “art”, Pinzarrone contends that it must be a new…. new version of a Vermeer or Michelangelo or Titian using digital photos, photoshop, and fractal software, printed on Plexiglas or aluminum. It must have a new look, using new materials, presenting a new approach to how great masters saw life.
This work is a study of how nature and power rhyme. It is a study of candy-colored sensual puzzles displayed on plexiglass and metallic paper. The viewer is drawn in to feel comforted yet disturbed, pulled towards sensuality but paused at the detachment. All are invited in to play and explore…. and wonder if these are mirrors, this science fiction, some other-worldly situation, or nightly dreams.
This work is digital…. I use Flame and Amber software, fractal software for patterns, painting software for digital airbrushes, air erasure, and digital photography to show you my world. I build patterns using transparent layers. I wrap them around figures and build up additional transparent layers. The altar walls and figure skin is my canvas to explore. I want the viewer to ask if these are photographs of tattoos, altar intricacies, painted figures, or something else. The work is printed on metallic film and bonded to the reverse side of clear plexiglass to enhance the inaccessibility and mystery of each piece.
Mediterranean Series IV
Freedom is a universal need that resonates deeply with all of us. It encompasses the freedom of speech, the liberty to embrace our true selves, and the empowerment to create from our innermost being.
Ori Gjyli’s, abstract art is born from this longing for liberty. In 2020, amidst a period of isolation, Ori found solace and liberation in the creation of her abstract pieces. With an MFA in Graphics Arts, she made the transition from traditional, precision-based art to a more soul-stirring form of expression.
Driven by a longing to experience the freedom and the euphoria that nature evokes, surrounded by a myriad of colors, her expressive canvases, composed of layers of acrylic paint, portray a personal journey of imagination, embodying creativity and passion. Each stroke and hue encapsulates her boundless creativity and unwavering passion, offering a glimpse into her inner world.
Currently living in Austin, Texas, and having lived, studied, and traveled in four different countries, Ori Gjyli believes that these cultural experiences have enriched her perspective, fostering a deep appreciation for authenticity and the innate beauty that pervades the world around us.
I have always drawn inspiration from the dynamic visual forces of nature and my surroundings. My artwork reflects the beauty and romance of the world around me, capturing my inner emotions, memories, and history. Whether it is a poem, a song, a heartwarming story, or a breathtaking view, I infuse each with vibrant colors and brushstrokes drawn from my memories and imagination. I strive to convey the physical and emotional beauty of the world through my art. My goal is to create evocative abstract paintings that explore the potential of color and form to evoke sensations of energy, emotion, and authenticity.
Meeting Up
Lynn Burnes is a Denver abstract and nonobjective artist who has been painting in oils, acrylics, and mixed media for over 20 years. Her work has been described by others as vibrant, exploratory, colorful, expressionist, geometric, and sometimes Cubist. Her fields of study have included mathematics, philosophy, and science, which have inspired her love of space, geometry, and time, revealed in many of her works. She has exhibited in over 40 art shows and galleries in the United States and has received several awards for artistic achievement. She has studied under various artists including Victoria Kwasinski, Joan Fullerton, Joanne Burney (Art Students League of Denver), Pat Dews, and Gretchen Norwalk. Recently she was added to the board of the Colorado Women’s Art Center and Museum.
Exhibitions and Shows
HMVC Gallery NY, New York, 2023 and 2024
Red Bluff Art Gallery, Abstract Expressions 2022, 2023, 2024, Corning, California
28th Annual Gateway to the Rockies Show, Aurora Artists Guild, November 2023, Aurora, Colorado
Las Laguna Art Gallery, June 2021 and July 2022, Laguna, California
Colorado Visions, North Metro Arts Alliance, Westminster, Colorado, 2011, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2021
Foothills Art Center, Members’ Show, Golden Colorado 2018
32nd Annual National Fine Art Show, Louisville Art Association, Louisville, Colorado 2017
31st Annual National Fine Art Show, Louisville Art Association, Louisville, Colorado 2016
Annual Members’ Exhibit, Paletteers Art Club, College Hill Library, Westminster, Colorado 2016
New Trends, Colorado Watercolor Society, Avista Adventist Hospital, Lafayette Colorado 2016
Square Deal Gallery, Denver, Colorado 2015
Many of my paintings are abstract and inspired by a strong sense of place such as one experiences in nature, in an urban landscape, or even beyond, into the universe. My work explores geometric designs and composition by using odd shapes, often bright colors, and illusions of space and depth.
Painting abstractly is a passionate challenge of mine, and I like experimenting with acrylics and oils, applying them to the canvas in interpretations of such topics as time, water, nature, physics, or the cosmos. As an intuitive and exploratory painter, I work mostly in acrylics, oils, and mixed media.
My favorite inspirational art periods are the ones leading up to and including Abstract Expressionism (both American and European), from 1905 to 1950, when artists globally were diverging from traditional representation and forging new visual imagery in spite of nonacceptance and even ridicule from art critics and the general public.
My work has been shown in many metro-Denver art shows and was recently juried into several national shows.
Megan Fairchild
Even at an early age, Marissa has shown an enthusiasm for illustration. She can recall spending hours creating and illustrating stories inspired by the many books her parents shared with her. That inspiration has led her to some of her greatest artistic passions, including children’s book illustration and portraiture.
Marissa earned her BFA in Illustration at the Hartford Art School in Connecticut, where she found new inspiration in her professors. While there, she received many distinctions for her work, including the best portfolio in each of her departmental portfolio reviews. She has also had the honor of having her work featured in numerous exhibitions, including the Society of Illustrators Annual Student Scholarship Competition in New York City.
Since graduating from Hartford Art School, Marissa has continued to follow her passion as a freelance illustrator and portrait artist. After completing her first children’s book illustration project, she went on to be featured in numerous publications and television appearances. Her projects have included collaborations with ESPN, as well as creating illustrations for Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s yearly concert production “Tales of Halloween”.
My artwork is very much inspired by visual storytelling. The thing I love most is capturing my subject’s likeness through vitalizing details – both on the surface of the artwork, as well as the narrative behind it.
I often use a mixed media approach, combining acrylic and colored pencil. Working this way combines the freedom of laying bold washes with the tight control of drawing. As the piece is built up in many thin layers, I can carefully explore all the details. Quilting these details together as a visual story is where I find my greatest artistic passion.
Melancholy
Melissa Stephens is an encaustic painter, photographer, and printmaker who has spent the last 15 years educating children and adults in the arts. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, with a BA in Art from Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Iowa, she continues her own arts education through workshops and specialized instruction. Her encaustic paintings explore personal stories with themes of healing, human connection, and hand-written correspondence.
She is an encaustic painting instructor, working artist, curator and advocate for the arts in Walnut Creek, California. Her encaustic paintings are collected, exhibited, and sold in galleries throughout the United States. She has served as the Social Media Chair of Valley Art Gallery in Walnut Creek, CA since 2016. In 2024 she began serving as the Exhibition Director for the International Encaustic Artists Organization (IEA). In 2022 she co-founded the NorCAL Wax Chapter, an IEA extension.
That same year, Stephens created Hope Lives: Art for ALS, an annual fundraising art exhibition in San Francisco, to honor her sister who was diagnosed with ALS in July 2020. Partnering with the ALS Network and the ALS Therapy Development Institute, the exhibition raises awareness and provides funding for ALS research.
In addition to her own teaching studio, Stephens records encaustic tutorials on her YouTube channel The Encaustic Edge. She is an art business coach and web designer for older artists and volunteers at several galleries and art institutions in the Bay Area. Her artwork recently exhibited at the North Gallery, Edmonds, WA; Mulranny Art Center, Ireland; San Antonio Arts Alliance and Museum, San Antonio, TX (Juror’s Award); Encaustic Art Museum, Cerrillo, NM; Sarah Spurgeon Gallery, Ellensburg, WA; Morro Bay Art Center, Morro Bay; Propeller Gallery, Toronto; Art Benicia, Benicia; Bedford Gallery & Valley Art Gallery, Walnut Creek; San Francisco Women Artists Gallery, San Francisco.
I love to educate my viewers about the encaustic medium while discovering how my artwork resonates with them. I feel that my art is never truly complete until it has been shared. This connection plays a large role in my artistic journey because it reminds me that I am part of a larger community.
Themes in my work include healing and human connection. I grew up in a time when writing letters was an important way of sharing your life with the people you love. As a result, I sometimes include hand-written correspondence or visual patterns that tie together in a particular way to represent emotions, relationships, and/or familiarity.
When real words fail me, asemic writing presents a free way of creating images of text without the use of language. These scrawled-out passages are an expression created with the force of my entire body, representing my deepest feelings.
When dried flowers, plants, or pressed flora are part of my paintings, they are a visual clue for the passage of time. Although the attributes that society associates with their beauty have (seemingly) passed, they mirror attitudes on aging while at the same time reflecting on the power of memory.
My paintings are heartfelt abstractions met with real-life experiences. They are my visual responses and reactions to my experiences. Intimate stories are layered in my paintings leaving room for reflection and introspection.
Melody Of Daffodils
Karen Safer is an international, award-winning photographic artist and poet with a musical bent. A Los Angeles native, born to creative, scholarly-minded parents who encouraged her world travel (230+ countries/territories visited).
Early on, she was greatly influenced by movies, music, books, and plays, and as a student of art and history, inspired by ancients to moderns – Assyria to Cindy Sherman. She has a bachelor’s/master’s degree in Art from UCLA and California State University. She is a member of the Los Angeles Art Association, IAA-USA, Women United, Praxis Gallery, LACMA, MOCA, IAA-USA, in Who’s Who of Professional Women, ArtTour Magazine (NY), AATOLAU interview, Artist Talk Magazine (UK), etc. She was given a camera and crayons at 3 and exposed to/inspired by California motifs: light, trees, the ocean, music, and vernacular architecture that defined/influenced her left-handed aesthetic. She began taking pictures of family and friends, progressing from painting to developing black-and-white photos in college. She was fortunate to begin a life of travel as a teen that shaped her love of the exotic paired with an eye for the formal, accidental, and unusual while subliminally seeking the “beautiful” that jiggles the lens/frame of my eye.
She is featured in magazines, catalogs, and books and exhibited internationally in over 75+ galleries/museums with over 340+ exhibitions from London, Rome, Berlin, Glasgow, Budapest, Athens, Prague, Paris, Barcelona, Florence, Venice, Sao Paulo, from California to New York, winning 300+ First and other awards – most recently: Black & White SPIDER Awards nominee, First prizes in 21st Julia Margaret Cameron Awards in Abstract and in Architecture categories, Botticelli International Prize in Florence, LA Art Show 2024 and soon in Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, Art Expos in Basel and Armenian Modern Art Museum in Yerevan.
“A photographer has the whole world big or small to capture.” – kjs
Influences: I am a student of art, architecture, history, literature, film, and music. I have been heavily influenced by so many sources but here I’ve chosen to highlight art and photography influences from Hopper to Cartier-Bresson and from Atget to Cindy Sherman. So many influences on life from cities to nature to music and art. I love color and all its vibrance while I venerate black and white. I embrace all the many influences that have touched my art and my life deeply.
Mels Diner
Photography has become a true passion of mine, allowing me to capture the world through my unique perspective. It has reawakened my creativity and given me a new sense of purpose in life. I now strive to tell stories and evoke emotions through my photographs, believing that the true essence of a photo lies in the emotions it evokes rather than the technicalities of the equipment used.
I began a journey of shift in 2019 and I am continuing to travel along it now and for the foreseeable future. I identify as a trans woman. Years of struggle with that gender dysphoria lead me to the realization that I always felt the happiest and most whole when I was dressed as a woman. In addition to those emotional and psychological challenges, I was attempting to picture the turbulence and disarray. In 2020, when most of us were trapped inside our homes, I began a series of pictures that expressed that. They were difficult for me to look at, but they allowed for a more thorough examination and further development over the following few years. becoming a spirit journey and realizing that there are two spirits. Therefore, the artwork I’m presenting for review is the result of two spirits’ ongoing development—light and dark, positivity and negativity. Non-binary and binary terms.
Meltdown 3 Mile Island To Ukraine 2022
Rod’s interest in art dates back to his 1960’s grade school days when he created pencil-on-paper drawings of “The Beatles” performing. Later — in 7th-grade art class — in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania city schools — his art teacher admired his simple tempera paint work titled “City of Bridges” … Pittsburgh, with its three rivers, being that city of bridges.
“Delayed” by a 30-year career with the federal government Rod finally resumed his career as an “artist.” He has been working in the medium of oil on canvas for a number of years with subject matter focusing mostly on landscapes, an interest in landscapes being undoubtedly linked to his college degree in geography … as well as an interest in hiking and the outdoors in general.
As a member of the Maryland Federation of Art (MFA), Rod has had four of his works of art selected for exhibit in five different MFA-sponsored juried shows over a period of two years. In one of those shows — “Off the Wall: Sculptural Forms,” a group show at Waverly Street Gallery in Bethesda, Maryland — one of his works won a “Juror’s Choice” award. Decidedly unconventional compared to most of his earlier works, this particular artwork was actually cited in a Washington Post newspaper art gallery review of the show, with the reviewer commenting that “found objects and raw-looking metal are common…. Yet there are some gentler or more whimsical pieces, such as Rodney Kyle Mayer’s “Elbow Room,” a miniature tower of dry pasta.” The work features elbow macaroni and spaghetti, along with other pasta.
Much of my early works of art focused on traditional oil on canvas, with the subject matter of the paintings generally classified as “landscapes.” My more recent landscapes have evolved beyond traditional oil on canvas landscape paintings to be less traditional, if not outright quirky. These quirky landscapes incorporate elements such as fluorescent paints or small three-dimensional elements. More recently I discovered the medium of wine on canvas … a medium in which at least one Italian artist has been working for a few years. And I have thus extended my quirky landscapes to the artistic medium of wine on canvas.
Melted Rose
Douglas Wolters has become known for his unusual abstract photographs as well as his close-up portraits of flowers. This year alone, he participated in numerous group shows, both at local galleries and online shows. Two of Mr. Wolters’s images were selected for the Cape Cod Art Center’s “Black and White” 2023 online photography exhibit, in which 142 photographers entered and only 35 images were selected. One of Mr. Wolters’s images was selected for Exhibizone’s “Curves 2023,” an international online exhibit in which 15 countries are represented. He is also represented in HMVC Gallery’s “Flower Power” and the Artistonish International January 2023 exhibit. He has won numerous awards, including first place in B & H Photo Video’s 2021 Optic contest (which came with over $1000 worth of gear), and Best in the Macro Division in the 2020 Mid-Atlantic Photo Visions exhibit. For four years, he won a Special Award in the annual Joe Miller Abstract exhibits. In addition, he won 3rd place in the 86th Annual Wilmington International Exhibition of Photography, for which there were 2900 entries.
GROUP SHOWS
Exhibizone – Fall 2024 – Sept. 21 – Nov. 21 (one image)
Gallarium – Unreal 2024 – September 18 – November 18 (one image)
Gallarium — Colorium 2024 – August – October (one image)
HMVC Gallery New York: “Freestyle 2.0” — August 1 – 31, 2024 (one image)
Delaware Photographic Society Circuit 2024 (4 images accepted)
Gallarium – “Life & Death” June – August 2024 (one image)
Artistonish Magazine – the May issue (Issue #46) 2024 (one image)
Mid Atlantic Photo Visions online – November 2023 (two images)
Cape Cod Art Center “For the Love of Color” 2023 online exhibit (one image)
Gallarium Art Exhibitions “Lights, Shadows, Reflections 2023” international online group exhibition (one image)
H Cape Cod Art Center “Black and White” 2023 online photography exhibit. 142 photographers entered; 35 images were selected. Two images were chosen (only three other photographers had two images selected)
Annual Joe Miller Abstract Competition, Gainsville, VA, May 2023, 2022, 2021, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012
AWARDS & HONORS & PUBLICATIONS
Photographic Society of America PID Color Competition 2023-2024 Round Two, Group C Honorable Mention
Lenswork Publication – Light, Glorious Light 2023, published October 2023 (one image)n
Honorable Mention — Maryland Photographic Alliance, 2023, 2022 and 2021
Special Award – Joe Miller Abstract Exhibit 2022, 2017, 2015, and 2013
Lenswork Publication: — Our Magnificent Planet, published December 2021 (one botanical)
First Place in B & H Photo Video’s Optic contest, 2021 (over $1000 worth of photography gear awarded)
Digital Photographer of the Year — NIH Camera Club, 2021, 2020, and 2018
Best in Macro Division – Mid-Atlantic Photo Visions, November, 2020
Third Place – 86th Annual Wilmington International Exhibition of Photography, 2019 (there were 2900 entries)
Juror Award – Anne Marie Sculpture Gardens and Arts Center, 2015
HMVC Gallery New York online group show “Freestyle” August 1 – 31, 2023 (one image)
As a professional cellist and educator, I came to photography only after retirement. And as a musician, I bring a somewhat unusual set of perceptions to photography. Line, rhythm, harmony, and structure in music find their counterparts naturally in images. One of my specialties is abstract photography, using a technique I have developed. Its starting point is always an actual photograph. I then manipulate the form and color with software, transforming it into a wholly new image. I also am devoted to photographing a series of botanical close-ups (or macro photography). These images resemble a theme with endless variations in detail, color, form, and beauty.