David Francis Studio Visit Visual Language Magazine

When did you realize you loved art and wanted to be an artist? 

It sounds cliché, but it seems like I have always loved to draw. One of my earliest memories is waiting for my father to finish the Sunday newspaper, so that I could sit down and start copying the funnies. 

Who has been your mentor, or greatest influence to date? 

I was fortunate that when I started creating art (in my 30’s, kind of a late start) I met three people that were very influential in my early art career. The first was Joan Reid who taught an adult education art class, she introduced me to Ron Peer, a local portrait and landscape artist. He was always very patient with my early attempts, and managed to find something good in them while giving me constructive criticism. The third is Trudi Smith. She is a signature member with Pastel Society of America and she pushed me to apply for membership with the group, even to the point of selecting the pieces that I submitted for jurying. I was thrilled and surprised when I received signature status on that first application.

Who is another living artist you admire and why?

I have several artists that I admire today and follow their work on social media sites. Anthony Waichulis for his tromp l’oeil still lifes, Robert C. Jackson for his incredible still life set ups and the interplay of his subjects, Teresa Fischer for the incredible still life paintings of old toys, my favorite subject matter. I also follow the work of Patricia Tribastone, a fellow pastel artist with incredible skills.   All of these artists, along with being accomplished painters, have the ability to inject a sense of humor and fun into their work, along with telling a story.

What is your favorite surface to create work on or to work with? Describe it if you make it yourself. 

My favorite surface to work on is Pastelbord, made by Ampersand. It is a Masonite board with a surface of gesso and marble dust. This surface holds a lot of pastel and holds up well to blending, and multiple layering techniques.  I love the fact that it comes in standard sizes from 5x7 to 24x36 and that when a pastel is finished, you can frame it immediately, using spacers between the artwork and the glass.

What are your favorite materials to use?

I have been a pastel artist for the last 30 some years. As most pastellists, I am not brand loyal. I look for color, hardness/softness, and availability. So, currently on my work table are Rembrandts, Giraults, Unisons, Terry Ludwigs, and Derwent and Conte pastel pencils.

Do you have a favorite color palette?

I don’t really have a favorite palette. It really depends on the subject matter and it changes from painting to painting. I do tend to favor a lot of the earth tones for backgrounds and whatever my still lifes are sitting on.     

How often do you work on your artwork? How many hours a week?

I try to work a little bit every day. Some days it might only be an hour, other days (and these are my favorites) it might be 7 or 8 hours in the studio.

What is the one thing you would like to be remembered for?

I would like to be remembered as an artist that gave to younger beginning artists the same support and encouragement that I received when I was starting out.

There are many culprits that can crush creativity, such as distractions, self-doubt and fear of failure. What tends to stand in the way of your creativity?

I find that the biggest obstacle for me is myself. Having a studio in my home it is too easy to be distracted by things going on in the house. I have dealt with self-doubt and the fear of failure thing, too.

How do you overcome these obstacles? 

For the around the house stuff, I have tried to set a schedule that from when I get up, (usually around 6:00 AM) until noon is set aside for my studio time. My wife has gotten pretty good at accepting this.

For the self-doubt and fear of failure, I’ve made a conscious decision to just keep submitting my work to shows and when the rejections come in, I glance at them and toss them out.

What are your inspirations for your work?

The inspirations for my work are all around me. As I have been focusing on old toys and games, I go to a lot of garage sales looking for those little nuggets that get my interest going, but other people see as something to get rid of.

What is your favorite way to get your creative juices flowing?

I love to look at the new work by artists that I follow, I love to go to shows and openings, and in general just looking at art gets me going.

Which work of yours is your favorite?  

The trite answer would be “the next one”, but I actually have a couple. One is called “In the Bag”, which I’ve entered in several shows, but has never been accepted, and another is my newest one, called “To The Rescue”.

Getting to know you Q&A

 What is your favorite color in your closet?   n/a

What book are you reading this week?  Game of Thrones (second time)

Do you have a favorite television show? Several, CSI, Criminal Minds, Big Bang Theory, Walking Dead, Sixty Minutes

What is your favorite food? All of them, but true favorite Honey Glazed Ham

What color sheets are on your bed right now?  n/a

What are you most proud of in your life? My wife of 44 years, Linda, our three kids, Lori, Dave, and Dan, and our six grandkids, Paige, Jared, Mina, Alexander, Asher, and Emma.

Who would you love to interview? James Gurney, Anthony Waichulis

Do you have a passion or hobby other than painting? Music, I used to play and perform; now I just love listening.

Who would you love to paint? Michelle Obama, any of my artist friends.

If you were an animal what would you be and why?  n/a

If you were stranded on a desert island and could only take three things, what would they be? n/a.

Share something with us that few people know about you.  That I sometimes dance in my studio when I’m working.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? Sedona, AZ. Beautiful part of the country and incredible colors.

David Frances

http://www.defrancispastels.com/

Rebecca Zook Visual Language Studio Visit

Three aspects that Texas artist Rebecca Zook consciously incorporates into her acrylic paintings. Though she portrays a variety of subjects, natural landscapes are a personal favorite. Viewers often comment that they feel as if they could step into her paintings; as if the frame were a window to another world.

“I’m drawn to Texas’ plentiful wild grasses in particular. Watching the wind weave patterns through them and the gentle swaying provide me with a much needed calm. I stand among them and am reminded of the ocean. Great waves roll across the fields. Seed heads catch the sun and glow like breaking spray. This connection with nature is something that’s been a part of me since childhood and is a subject that helps me cope with life’s challenges.” 

For Rebecca, the beauty of nature and the peace it brings offset the emotional and physical challenges of dealing with multiple chronic illnesses. A rare immune deficiency requires regular antibody infusions derived from plasma donations while secondary autoimmune conditions flare at unpredictable intervals. Because she is forced to limit her physical activities, Rebecca paints mainly from photographs that she has taken of her subject matter. 

“I have a camera with me always. You never know when the light is going to be just perfect or when you are going to happen upon a unique scene worthy of painting. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to get to my intended destination when driving because I keep seeing “paintings” along the way.”

Rebecca’s acrylic technique often involves many overlapping layers of thin washes of color. She finds this better conducive to capturing the unique qualities of light. She prefers to paint mainly smaller works 18” x 24” and under and uses gessoed masonite boards she prepares herself. Follow Rebecca on Facebook to view the in progress photos of many of her paintings. She is represented by “Dutch Art Gallery” in Dallas, Texas and “Your Private Collection Gallery” in Granbury, Texas.

facebook.com/RebeccaZookFineArtPaintings

rebeccazook.blogspot.com

rebeccazook.com

Alejandro Castanon Studio Visit Visual Language Magazine

Alejandro is a Mexican born national raised overseas in Spain and Germany. He began his journey into art at the age of nine by sketching comic book covers of Spiderman and other favorite super heroes. In his teens his art became more focused on portraits and he mainly worked in graphite and charcoal. After an eight-year tour in the U.S Air Force as a Civil Engineer he came to call San Angelo, TX his home to help raise his daughter and opened the Vino Dipinte Art Gallery in 2011. Coming back to art was a reawakening for him back to a passion that had been set-aside for several years. Invigorated by the mounds of talent around him Alejandro picked up a paintbrush and began his self-taught lessons into painting. 

Like all artists that set out on a new medium there were mistakes, but from every painting grew a lesson in tone, perspective, light, and contrast. He found inspiration in artists such as Seren Moran, Sarah Stieber, Evelyn Boren, and Leroy Nieman. His style became fixated on the use of color to enhance and compliment his subject matter. Any beginning artist can agree that jumping into the world of colors on canvas or any material is intimidating; there was a challenge and a world of colors that was waiting for him. In 2013 he held his first solo show, aptly named the Colorem Art Show, which featured over 20 large paintings of pop culture icons.  

For Alejandro painting has changed how he views the world around him. A building is not merely a structure but a combination of lines, shapes, and colors. His mind is his canvas and colors are the voice he gives his artwork. Each work must not only be an accurate depiction of his subject but also an energetic and playful demonstration of his paintbrush. His style requires accuracy but also requires a fast pace that frees the painting; lines and marks are spontaneous.

 As the owner of the Vino Dipinte Art Gallery Alejandro has made art his career and handles all aspects of managing his gallery most notably marketing. He has created and managed the gallery’s website, and social media pages as well as coordinated and promoted three major art shows in the past two years. Along side him is Crystal Goodman, a nationally renowned Muralist and mentor. Crystal is the Creative Director of the Vino Dipinte Art Gallery and provides the much needed constructive criticism a young artist needs to hear from time to time.

According to Alejandro, “the art world has evolved in the last five years and more people are connected to art now than ever before but artists are barely learning how to use that connection”.  Alejandro also serves as a City Art Commissioner in San Angelo and has helped coordinate many community events centered on art. “The typical artist relies on his or her ambiguity, and their art is what speaks for them but he or she must join the conversation in order to gain the best knowledge about their fans and potential clients”, he has also conducted Art Marketing Seminars in order to give artists the tools they need to succeed in the evolving art world. San Angelo is a small community with artist in every medium busting at the seams. “The town of San Angelo has a tight community of artists and supporters that are ready and willing to help, it has been a blessing to begin my art career in such an amazing city”. Private collectors as well as the City of San Angelo have commissioned Alejandro for paintings.

His art can been seen at local bars and restaurants across the city as well as his website 

www.alejandrocastanon.com

Mary Jane Q Cross Studio Visit Visual Language

Born in 1951, Mary Jane Q. Cross’s life was a life full of questions and a yearning for order. This was the underpinning of Cross’s future career as a Classical Realism painter whose large body of work is marked by logic, cohesion, and an aura of storytelling that is poetic and consoling.

As a Worcester Art Museum School art student in the 1970’s, Cross was a ‘closet Realist’ as she endured the era’s dominant mantle of Expressionism. Reading of formal artists with her shared realism vision – DaVinci, Sargent, Bouguereau, Godward, Mary Cassatt -- was a point of encouragement at this time. Studying such painters, among other Masters of earlier centuries, inspired Cross in her personal quest to acquire the skills of Classical painting.

After 40-plus years of this visual journey, Cross continues to produce a body of work that presents a sense of needed and appreciated refreshment in the midst of modernity’s fast pace. Cross’s resonant theme is of respectfully uncovering the many complex layers of women.  Appealing to both women and men alike, her work presents women’s beauty as a deep comfort and a restful joy, when idealistically and, perhaps, Biblically examined.  In a contemporary culture that perceives the sexuality of women in an increasingly objectified manner, Cross’s work offers a breath of hope. Her work presents a delicate beauty that she believes young women, in particular, are actually striving for – a beauty that, in the artist’s opinion, reflects an image of women as God intended them to be: Creation’s crowning jewels.

“If you do not have life, you cannot give life,” states Cross. “If my work has anything, it has an authentic response to life. My paintings are stories. They depict the quiet rest that comes to a soul only after it has determined to deal with circumstances head-on, with grace and tact instead of grumbling and complaining. My paintings reflect and inspire a determination to focus on beauty, even in the midst of ashes. This is something I have had to live.”

For the past 21 years, a serious right-sided tremor has limited Cross’s ability to hold a brush. Thus, Cross paints with her fingers; whatever minimal brush strokes the artist employs are guided by a prosthetic device. A documentary titled Q.  Cross: The Painter behind the Portraits, on youtube, click to view Documentary  details her journey back to painting in the after-years of the tremor’s on-set. The artist has also compiled a book, Poems of a Painter, Paintings of a Prayer, in which she speaks of how she has come to deal with this physical challenge that she cannot change and, yet, has witnessed a greater dream come out of what were initially tragic circumstances.

The simultaneous heartache and joy that Cross experiences daily is seen in her paintings – and it is heard in the poems that she writes as an accompaniment to each of her works. The combined presentation of painted image and printed word has enriched the meaning of her work.

The public is a telling barometer of the penetrating resonance of the artist’s work. Cross’s paintings are regularly displayed by the Art Renewal Center Salon Exhibitions (where Cross is an ARC Associate Living Master), click for ARC Masters Gallery the International Guild of Realism (where she was awarded Best of Show in 2013), the American Society of Traditional Artists, the Salmagundi Club, and the Allied Artists of America.  

As many as 30,000 people a year also view Cross’s work at outdoor venues. Viewers who cannot afford the originals are still enthusiastically pleased to own limited edition prints. Collectors who can afford these multi-faceted jewels get to live with a palpable part of Cross’s personal vision, crafted with her personal touch. 

Mary Jane Q. Cross www.maryjaneqcross.com builds a body of memorable work in a studio, built by her husband and hugged by New England’s quiet countryside, as she threads the fabric that mirrors her own life into her work. Her quest is a worthy one.

  

JEANNE ILLENYE Studio Visit with Visual Language Magazine

JEANNE ILLENYE  

Why I Paint

At first, my thought for this studio visit and interview was to share my Biography with you, which is exactly that, an overview about how I began painting in oils by my mother’s side at the wee age of four, my utter delight at discovering Nature by intimately studying every flower petal, rock, dewdrop and bumblebee I could touch, to a developing maturity with regular museum visits in New York which inspired my large, classical still lifes reminiscent of the Dutch masters, and through my 25 year series of Little Gems later sold online.  However, since you can read all the details about my artistic growth on my website, I thought it might be a little more insightful and fun to chat with you about a trend that is currently underway on my easels...my new direction, far from the dark, classical old world style oil paintings on which my reputation is based.  These new paintings truly reveal reflections from my heart...the very reason why I paint as expressed in my Artist Statement: 

“Capturing Nature’s Transient Beauty:  It is the common things that are most often taken for granted  -- the fruit and flowers of our daily sustenance -- nourishment for body and soul, respectively.   These are delicate and fleeting gifts.   Through my work, I elicit a greater appreciation for their beauty by elevating them to the forefront of the observer’s attention.  While my paintings isolate a particular moment in time, it is through the details -- a browning, torn leaf, the curling of a dried petal, a broken stem, bruised fruit, dewdrops -- that I evoke a sense of transience in Nature’s beauty.   I take the observer through many phases of growth from bud to blossom, ripening fruit to withering vine -- life and death and ultimately, rebirth of spirit, for within this beauty we find comfort and peace.”

With that in mind, I’ve chosen to discuss several paintings featured herein, which aspire toward this exciting new direction revealing a lighter, fresher palette with subjects from my gardens and antique collections presented in varying compositional formats from classical still lifes to cropped, zoom in perspectives which are created purely by emotion and intuition rather than with conscious thinking or planning. 

Treading Softly

If I wasn’t a still life artist and had more exposure to vast and dramatically scenic areas, I’d no doubt be a landscape artist or perhaps I might have chosen wildlife art.  However, since growing up in the suburbs of New York City my focus was directed more toward the earth beneath my feet.  I believe that is where the seed was planted and my passion for still lifes began whereby mimicking my childhood curiosity about Nature…when small and close to the ground one can pluck a buttercup or clover, ladybug or feather and examine it with great fascination.  To me still life painting is really doing just that but on a more mature level, yet the wonder and enthusiasm is still there.  It’s my gift to be able to “see” and to paint is my way of sharing the glory…to feel a kinship with all living things.

Changing a Leopard’s Spots

Having always enjoyed painting fruit and floral still lifes in the classical style, it wasn’t until I began selling online in recent years that I became enlightened by the contemporary work of my peers.  I briefly dabbled in these retro subjects but found that I just couldn’t bear to paint a cup without decorative floral or transferware patterns or a spoon without embellishments such as monogram, flower and ribbon engravings.  So without realizing it, I was already laying the groundwork for a new direction by utilizing this selection process, fine tuning what I chose as my favorite subjects to paint.  Transitioning from classical to contemporary realism truly caused me to feel like a leopard trying to change his spots; it didn’t seem right. It felt like I was changing who I am. However, my draw toward the crisp, bright clarity of my contemporaries’ paintings offered such a sense of refreshment that I became determined to change my spots, as it were...and so I did.

Immersed in a New Light

My emergence did not occur overnight. Rather, it was a long, arduous process of editing my work to the very source of energy within each painting then reducing superfluous content, and most difficult, brightening my palette. While I continued to mix my own colors from the primaries plus white, I chose to eliminate rich backgrounds for a fixed period of time so I would no longer use the depths of shadow as a crutch. It was time to let go of the dark ages and bring myself and my work into a new light.  It wasn’t until I began setting up still life arrangements in my light filled studio, as opposed to painting primarily from studies and memory as done with my classical paintings, that I was able to take the next truly daring step which resulted in “Shades of White” the platform from which all subsequent work is now being created.  Join me as I continue my artistic journey…Capturing Nature’s Transient Beauty.

JEANNE ILLENYE

www.jeanneillenye.com