Contemplating Self Blue
Karen Safer is a photographic and digital artist, published writer, and poet with a musical bent. As a native fifth-generation Angelino, she was given a camera and crayons at 3 and exposed to dominant California motifs: light, palm trees, the ocean, music, and vernacular architecture that helped define and influence her left-handed aesthetic. She was influenced by her dad who developed black & white photos in their back washroom/turned darkroom and by her mother’s thirst for knowledge and travel.
She was fortunate to begin a life of travel as a pre-teen which 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 her eye. From the onset, she documented her surroundings and family and friends’ events.
Moving from Instamatics to Nikons, she scouted for or accidentally discovered the subject to frame, dancing around it; the process has always been the main event and excitement. During COVID she was photographed from her balcony and was dubbed the “Monet of Playa del Rey.”
She has traveled and photographed in over 230 countries (and territories). After a hiatus of 12 years, she began exhibiting again nationally and internationally in juried and group shows, winning many awards and competitions with inclusions in public and private collections, and is a member of many art and other organizations.
Initially, she began painting and printmaking alongside the study of art and architectural history before wholly embracing photography with influences from Mesopotamia to Vermeer/Matisse and Atget to Cindy Sherman. She is a self-described “romantic soul” with intellectual cravings, currently residing in Playa del Rey, CA.
She received a master’s degree with honors in art studying at CSULB and UCLA. Her career includes work in design and architecture firms and is the principal of ArtFocus International.
I am a child of the universe and a citizen of the world, born in Los Angeles where I spent summers up and down the coast of beautiful California, Canada, and Mexico before flying off to other parts of the planet. My passion for photography really blossomed while working on my architectural thesis thus, indulging both my passion for architecture and visual image.
Not sure if behind or ahead of the times, I have been in over 10 solo shows and 130+ juried and group exhibitions, most lately in London, Rome, Glasgow, Zurich, Budapest, Athens, Hawaii, Canada and from California to New York winning Talent, Merit, and Honorable Mention Awards.
Karen Safer Condensed Statement:
I got a camera and some crayons as a kid,
journeyed along a path in life – far from what I’d expected,
moved from youth to middle age,
did some work, had some fun, got high, got low,
and just continue doing it – never tiring of the next visual surprise.
– Life is still a mystery, after all.
Contemplation (State Hospital)
I am a self-taught photographer and digital collage artist. What I seek to share are images with which I have a strong and instinctive personal connection. I have exhibited widely and have earned recognition in local, regional, and national exhibitions. My works are also included in several corporate and private collections.
My goal is to create images that evoke a story of some kind that often moves far beyond the relatively literal boundaries of traditional photography. Images may be simply documentary, invoke a sense of time and place, or resonate as an abstract blend of color, shape, or form. Others provoke an indefinable question that does not readily yield answers without further study and reflection.
I draw from a wide range of photographic subjects such as landscapes, botanicals, and wildlife as well as urban environments and people. I follow an intuitive yet somewhat ordered process of layering or merging portions of photos until an image that speaks to me emerges. Most often this is more likely a random bit of serendipity than deliberate intent. Images often suggest a sense of time and place or reflect a rich and ethereal interplay of color, shape, or form. Images may provoke an indefinable question that does not readily yield answers without further study and reflection. Ultimately, my images provide a vehicle to stimulate both my imagination and that of the viewer, leaving one free to interpret and create an individual sense of meaning and value.
Contemplay
Marion Kahn is an award-winning, contemporary oil painter. Through vivid interpretation, her paintings share the unceasing mystery of the world around her.
As an artist, Marion confidently captures surprising details that draw in the viewer. Her palettes can be soft or bold. She uses color to carry the message of the painting, whether expressing a quiet meditation or exuberant joy. Marion’s work is found in the homes of sophisticated collectors around the country as well as healthcare institutions.
“My desire to paint exploded in Sicily when I saw two young artists atop a scaffolding restoring a 400-year-old fresco,” says Marion. “I watched, mesmerized and full of questions.”
Marion studied with established artists including renowned photorealist painter, Robert Cottingham; abstract painter, Lauren Mantecon, American Impressionists, Kim English, and Barry Thomas; abstract colorist, Casey Klahn, and plein air painters, Jean Perry and Joan Hoffmann.
I speak in color. I offer a joyous journey into a chroma-saturated world on a path of discovery, of the art, myself, and hopefully for the viewer. As an artist, I try to express the truth I see and feel, primarily in oils.
As light filters through elements, I see their reality. But when I imagine the potential of sight or vision on a canvas, I see color. I see what could and may be. At a cellular level, there is color. I’m not repainting the world. I’m just offering a different idea of how things could be.
Painting, for me, is a Zen-like activity. It provides a great deal of peace, even when I’m debating a painting. In the honorable struggle of creation, I remain committed to the discovery and to creating compelling works.
It is my wish that, through my paintings, viewers never find the last idea but rather the ongoing inspiration of possibility that I, too, enjoy.
Continuous Transforming In Time
Jason Shih was born in 1972 in Lukang Town, Taiwan, which is renowned for its traditional crafts. He relocated to Taipei City during his school years and attended art classes at Minzu Elementary School, Minglun Junior High School, and Zhongzheng High School. In 1991, Jason enrolled in the Fine Arts Department of the National Taipei University of the Arts, studying sculpture under Professor Lee Kuang-yu and graduating in 1996. Following his military service, he pursued further education at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, USA, studying metal sculpture under Leonard A. Urso at the School for American Crafts, where he earned his MFA degree in 2001. Subsequently, he served as an assistant to renowned New York metal sculptor Albert Paley, gaining valuable experience in metal crafts and large-scale public art.
Returning to Taiwan in 2002, Jason embarked on a prolific career in public art. Over the next two decades, he completed over 80 large-scale public art projects in Taiwan. His international engagements included residencies at the Wangsan Kaitian Festival in South Korea (2003), JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design in Adelaide, Australia (2004), and as the inaugural artist-in-residence at the New Taipei City Gold Museum (2008).
Alongside his creative endeavors, Jason pursued advanced studies in art theory, earning his Ph.D. from the China Academy of Art in 2015 and an MBA from National Taiwan Normal University in 2022. With a diverse cultural background spanning Taiwan, the United States, and mainland China, as well as extensive professional training in fine arts, crafts, public art, and management, Jason decided in 2022 to refocus on his sculpture creations. He currently resides in Taoyuan City, Taiwan, continuing to explore the diverse realms of sculpture and public art.
Sculpture is to interpret the beauty of light and shadow, rhythm, and volume through the visual techniques of color, shape, and texture. The qualities that the creators of sculpture pursue to touch people’s hearts are actually as abstract as temperature and smell, but rich in profound, penetrating power. This aura that directly points to people’s hearts and the aesthetic sense that makes people enter the drama in resonance may also be like nostalgia, embodied in the nostalgia of seeing things and thinking about them, and the timid expectation of being close to the hometown.
Sea breezes, mountain mist, morning sun, sunset, and, in addition to shape and color, there is also the memory of temperature. Cooking smoke, hot soup, wooden tables, pottery cups, and the echo of the smell are the gradual tone of nostalgia. In people’s daily aesthetic experience, the memory of temperature and smell accompanied by touch often becomes a kind of fuse to revisit the journey of old dreams. The work involved in sculpture creation is to “condense” and record all kinds of beautiful presence in this beautiful time and space in an appropriate way and with true emotions.
As a professional sculptor, Jason likes to experience the taste of life with perceptual observation in the subtle moments, and also likes the ever-changing situation of game shapes in the poetic imaginary space. For Jason, art creation is to share various moods and stories in daily life.
Contours Of Contemplation
Sawan Chhetri grew up in Nepal but now lives in Columbus, Ohio. He is currently pursuing a BFA in photography at The Ohio State University. With a distinctive style, Sawan’s works contain still images of people, cultures, landscapes, and wildlife. He photographs with a digital model camera, 35mm film camera, and medium format camera as tools for a particular use. His journey in photography began with photography’s wildlife and landscape. He found himself blessed to get the ideal opportunity to witness nature from the closest, which developed a deep feeling of friendship and kindness towards the natural wonders of the wild. In his recent work, he shifted his perspective toward photographing social issues. His work carries an untold story of social problems. In his current series of photographs, he intends to visually represent the photographs to accelerate a conversation about mental health and illustrate the perception of those who allocate to mental health daily.
The landscape and the man’s actions blend, making it feel like his thoughts are connected to the world around him. As I watched him mow, it felt like he was lost in his thoughts. I wanted people to look beyond the surface and feel the emotions and reflections in the scene. I wanted to create a moment where people could reflect and think about their own experiences. “Contours of Contemplation” invites each person to explore their feelings and stories when they look at the picture. I wanted to spark a conversation with the viewer, drawing them into a moment of deep thinking and introspection. Ultimately, the title invites everyone to connect with their emotions and weave their stories into the picture, creating a unique and personal experience.
Contra Spem Spero
Lana Matskiv (née Svetlana Galkina) was born in Ukraine and underwent rigorous training in structural drawing and constructivist style of rendering under the instruction of Oleh Nedoshytko, Odesa Ukraine. After the completion of the Fine Art Foundations program at George Brown College, Lana continues to hone the mastery of her craft through the French Atelier method at the Toronto Academy of Realist Art.
Lana is a member of the Ukrainian Association of Visual Artists of Canada and the Women’s Art Association of Canada. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation and on display at the Ukrainian Consulate in Toronto, as well as in private and corporate collections in Canada, the USA, and Ukraine. In 2022, Lana’s work received an honorable mention and was chosen as a selected exhibitor at The Art Preservation Institute. As a Ukrainian-Canadian artist, she auctioned her works at Waddington’s Auctions and donated money to support Ukraine. A figurative symbolist painter, Lana depicts moments of transition in people’s lives, as she believes that these are moments when people defy the gravity of their comfort zone, rebel against conformity, and choose a path that requires courage, integrity, and a sense of adventure.
My art is not merely the desire for self-expression, or for a creative outlet, it is about all the experiences amassed along the way from my culture of Ukraine enriched with voices heard in Canada for over 30 years of my life in this country. These are stories about struggle, survival, defiance, and beauty. Red Birds is a portrait of Alya Urthenko, a spokeswoman for the Roma National Youth Organization in Ukraine, who refused to allow the air strikes by Russian aggressors to intimate her. She stays in her native city Lviv and helps the Roma flee from the dangers of the war. She provides them with food and the necessities of life. There are 60 children in that makeshift camp in the woods, and she is the one that gives them hope. The painting Contra Spem Spero (Hope Against Hope) is a take on the titular poem by a Ukrainian poet and feminist Lesya Ukrainka (1871-1930); “for said fellow land unused to tilling / I saw blossoms brilliant in hue / I’ll sow blossoms where the frost lies chilling / I’ll pour bitter tears on them as dew”. For the Sake of her Children, is an autobiographical piece dedicated to women who rebel against the status quo to take their children to a new land in hope of a better future.
Conversations
Melissa Stephens is an encaustic painter, photographer, and printmaker who has spent 15 years educating children and adults in the arts. She received a BA in Art from Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, IA, and continues her art education through specialized instruction. Her encaustic paintings explore personal stories with themes of healing, hope, gratitude, and communication. Language, word relationships, text, and academic writing are elements frequently found in her artwork.
She is an encaustic painting instructor, working artist, and advocate for the arts in Walnut Creek, California. Her artworks show in galleries throughout California, and in collections across the United States. In 2020, Stephens co-developed a virtual art gallery called Heartful Artists; in 2022 she co-founded the NorCAL Wax Chapter. She films encaustic tutorials on her YouTube channel The Encaustic Edge is a business coach and web designer for older artists and volunteers at several galleries in the Bay Area.
I love to educate my viewers about the encaustic medium while discovering how my visual interpretations resonate with them. My mission is to create accessibility to the arts, so I feel that my art is never truly complete until it has been shared.
My paintings are heartfelt abstractions set to real-life experiences. They are my visual responses to stories that I hear or my life experiences. Intimate stories are layered in my paintings leaving room for reflection and introspection.
Hope, gratitude, mindfulness, and soul-searching are guiding forces as I paint. I aim to be ever-present in these practices and attitudes in life as well as when creating my artwork.
Many of my layers are lined with hand-written text, letters to myself, diary entries, or Asemic writing. Asemic writing is a freeform way of creating images of text without the use of language. These scrawled-out passages aren’t always straightforward messages to my viewers. They are an expression of my deepest feelings.
Cool Blue Depths
Richard Murrin has been a contemporary realist artist & photographer specialising in figurative and astronomical artwork for more than fifty years, principally interested visually in all that is perceived as magic.
Originally an abstract painter, he considered he lacked the self-discipline and skill required for photo-realist paintings, but he proved otherwise remarkably quickly, producing work which is unique, imaginative, witty, and highly finished.
Born in Bromley, Kent, England, in 1948, he originally lived in Bickley, then London and Wales. He now currently resides in Eynsford, Kent, where he has lived since 1987.
He attended Hammersmith & Camberwell Colleges of Art, London, in the 1960s, has a Fine Art degree, and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Widely travelled, he has a very extensive view of the world, as well as providing him with some remarkable sources of inspiration for his paintings & photographs. He has produced illustrations for newspapers, books & magazines, storyboards & made digital illustrations for various media, been a guest lecturer in Art and Astronomy, and exhibited paintings and prints internationally. He regularly exhibited at the Blackheath Gallery, Queens Gallery, Gt Queen St, London, & the Window Gallery at Brighton 1985-1990, commenced online sales in 1998 & participated in group shows from 2014 -2019 at the Strand & Menier Galleries in London. Since 2022, he has shown artwork & photographs regularly at the Decagon Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, Art Square Gallery, New York, the Aurea Photo Gallery, London & in international shows worldwide.
My aim is to speak volumes without saying a word. If one picture is worth a million words, I think it should be the task of the contemporary artist to expose the magic that nature & humanity can perpetuate, using representations of form & colour to produce images reflecting the agonies & ecstasies of the process of making & the appreciation of the visual experience.
My work is the product of a combination of direct observation, memory, and imagination. Most interesting to me is the effect of light. As my work tends toward a high degree of realism, it’s only the product of trying to ‘shine light on something’, producing the illusion of high-fidelity realism, which, one hopes, has the ability to positively sway the viewer’s perception, imagination & consciousness.
Copa Cabana Pool
I have been expressing my joy of art with paint, shapes, and colors since I was very young. I started as a painter, evolved into a photographer, and eventually began hand-painting on individual Cibachrome photographic prints over 40 years ago.
Before Photoshop, I found a way to express an unrealistic reality with vivid, saturated, and otherworldly colors.
For the past 40 years, I have been scanning my one-of-a-kind hand-painted prints and my library of 35mm Kodachrome color transparencies taken over the last 50 years while traveling the world.
I paint, combine, and enhance my photographs with the magical Photoshop, creating my own idyllic, colorful world!
My art has been shown worldwide in many solo exhibitions, including:
Butler Institute of American Art, Ohio; Colarinda Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal; MAD Gallery, Milan, Italy;
Demenga Gallery, Paris, France & Basel, Switzerland; UCSB AD&A Museum, Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA; Laguna Art Museum, CA; Petersen Automotive Museum, LA, CA; LA County Natural History Museum, CA; Monterey Museum of Art, CA; Nancy Hoffman Gallery, NYC, NY; L’Image Gallery, Rome, Italy;
Louis Stern Gallery, West Hollywood, CA; Wall Space Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA.
I have been included in countless group exhibits and Art Fairs worldwide over the last 30 years.
My art has been in many magazines, magazine covers, newspapers, book covers, two museum exhibition catalogues,
and two Art books, Garden Tales and Car Tales.
My love of color and composition, combined with my unique vision, make viewing my artwork a true joy. My award-winning artwork is featured in both private and corporate collections, as well as in museums, public spaces, art galleries, and at international art expos. My art is in countless permanent collections, magazines, books, and internet articles. I have been a full-time artist for over 50 years, creating art with photographs I have taken all over the world, my imagination, and the magic of Photoshop.
A love of color and composition, combined with my vision, makes the artwork truly joyful. My art has been shown in museums, public spaces, art galleries, every international art expo around the world, in countless museum collections, magazines, books, internet articles, and art sites.
Circle Quarterly Art Review:
“Color becomes poetry in the vivid world of Jane Gottlieb. A pioneer of photo painting, she merges decades of world travel photography with digital alchemy, crafting kaleidoscopic visions of an idealized world. Gottlieb’s work radiates with joy and imagination: sun-drenched cityscapes, lush gardens, classic cars, and glowing architecture transformed through her signature palette. With Photoshop as her brush, she reimagines reality, offering the viewers a jubilant, colorful, utopian escape, shaped by memory and wonder.”