08
July
7:30 pm — 10:00 pm
Alfa Art Gallery
108 Church Street

New Brunswick, NJ 08901 United States
Free
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Exhibition Preview: July 6th @ 7:30pm to 10pm
Exhibition Opening: July 8th @ 7:30pm to 10pm
Exhibition Duration: June 28th  to August 20th  2016

 

 

New Brunswick Art Salon Part II: Watercolor and Mixed Media, “Movements in Nature: Perspectives of Being” featuring representations of the nuances of nature, using watercolor and mixed media.

NBAS-Water-Color-and-Mixed-Media-Part-II-poster2We are pleased to invite you to the second installation of the New Brunswick Art Salon, highlighting artists who excel in their work manipulating watercolor and mixed media to reveal vast visions of nature. The 13 featured artists are prominent local figures whom have exhibited their work in gallery shows throughout the greater New York area or have worked with Alfa Art Gallery in previous exhibitions. Through the exhibition, you will witness local talents from the New Brunswick area, and beyond, whom reflect and inspire the rich artistic culture of the community. 

“Movements in Nature: Perspectives of Being” focuses on ebb and flow of life, matter, and nature. Thus, providing a glance into one’s experience of nature’s materialized essence, both tangible and intangible. From the unrestrained watercolors of Hanna Aviv, to the deconstructed figural representations by Verdiana Patacchini, bear witness to the broad interpretations of life in flux, through unbridled color, experimental texture, and limitless gesture. Reminiscent of the Art Salons of the 18th and 19th century, the New Brunswick Art Salon was launched to promote the ever-evolving advances in the arts. Please join Alfa Art Gallery for a night of celebrating an exclusive glimpse into multifaceted impressions of the ever-changing human experience.

 

About Artists

“Movements in Nature: Perspectives of Being” will feature many talent artists, both renowned and those currently establishing themselves. Hana Aviv has excelled as a local artist over the past decade, continuing to hone her artistic process and style. Working as a pathologist at Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson, she spent her nights taking art classes at a variety of institutions, where she found her artistic match working with watercolors. Watercolor gives Hana a freedom she was not able to find in other media. She focuses her work on life painting and expressions of nature where she draws upon color and fluidity to create dynamic works. In particular, her series of flower paintings seem to depict bright bushels of  nature that blur the line between contained objectivity and open expression, as evidenced in her loose, broad brushstrokes.

Similar in style and subjectivity, Thea Berkhout depicts the world in a recognizable yet innovative manner. She is an artist, as well as an Associate Dean at Rutgers University, in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy. Her artwork consists of images such from life, such as still life, landscape, and explorations of the nude figure.

Karen Terry is a lifelong artist, always returning to painting as a meditation. Her pieces are inspired bythe universality of nature and landscape, often depicting simple snapshots of the seasons or weather.She works in mixed media but thrives using sumi-ink, departing from classical Eastern painting and manipulating the medium to produce modern pieces. Her paintings in the NBAS Part II Exhibition are dark, vague landscapes produced with the sumi-ink wash, and emphasize a dreamlike experience of  nature. Terry emphasizes the merit of her art is dedicated to peace.

Gregg Bautista is a recent graduate from Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts, there he concentrated in painting, with a minor in Art History. He utilizes water color to create dark abstractions and loose figural forms. His work blends forms and color to create new landscapes and figures, which challenges the viewers’ perception of these historically and traditionally known aspects of nature and art. 

Karen Starrett, a trained educator and artist, has exhibited her work in over 60 shows throughout the United States over the past decade. Her educational roots stem from Rutgers University, our local neighbor, and she has expanded her work since then. Starrett works with mixed media, from painting to assemblage and collage. Her process is dynamic and spontaneous, where new forms build off of previous ones, creating personal and nostalgic scenes for the artist. Her mixed media collages that are exhibited in the New Brunswick Art  Salon Part II are engaging and multidimensional in space, portraying an abstraction of nature and form.

Donna Payton has an MFA from the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles and is a recipient of the New Jersey Print and Paper Grant from the Brodsky Center at Rutgers University. Payton uses very bright colors and highlights to bring her paintings to life. The subjects of her paintings consist of everyday household- objects, but the use of color brings importance to these images. 

Rida Fatima has an Associate degree in Interior Design. She won “Best In Show” in December, 2013 at the Old Orchard Gallery. Fatima uses watercolor to create paintings of wood, trees, and flowers. The main elements of her paintings emphasize depth, perspective, mystery, texture, and color. She emphasizes that art is her personal language through which she can talk without saying a word. 

Susan Gilli also utilizes the power of mystery, texture, and color in her work. She focuses on depicting subjects of nature in flux. She presents the brilliant electricity of life through her usage of bright colors and intricate yet explosive brushwork. Her artwork is partially abstract, and her mediums of choice are acrylics and mixed media.

Verdiana Patacchini has her roots in Italy and now works fluidly between Italy and the United States. She creates multimedia images and compositions where she finds painting to be the ideal medium  to bridge the gap between nature, the imagination, and reality. 

Jeffrey Pullen obtained his BFA and MFA from the Pratt Institute of New York. He uses oil on wood to create portraits of landscapes, which are mainly focused on New York City. Specifically, he has created impressive landscapes of Times Square. He has taken part in almost 40 solo exhibitions nation-wide, along with 70 group shows. In his work, he presents realistic images on  nontraditional surfaces. In this current exhibit, his paintings depict imagery of the city which communicate with the complex sculptural forms of the surfaces. 

Tania Sen also plays with the  viewers’ ability to interpret different realities in her work. She was born in Kolkata, India, but she currently lives and works in New York and New Jersey. Sen received her Masters in  Communications Arts from the New York Institute of Technology. Sen utilizes mixed media to create pieces that speak to the materialization/dematerialization of the world. She is influenced  by media signage, pop culture, and the thoughtful perceptions of pop culture reality. Sen has taken part in past exhibitions at Alfa Art Gallery.

Indrani Choudhury was born in Calcutta, India and worked as a biomedical research scientist for 25 years. Upon moving to New Jersey in the 1990’s, she began to feel that her life was  incomplete. This void led to her becoming a full-time self-taught painter in 2005. Entirely self-taught, Indrani works solely in watercolors, transforming the medium beyond its typical constraints to produce the texture and richness of acrylics and oils. Her portraits consist of nature scenes and miscellaneous objects. 

Dustin Garafalo also utilizes watercolor to create mainly landscape scenes consisting of gradients of dark colors, rather than deep contrasts of  lightness and darkness as seen in Indrani Choudhury’s work. His working pace tends to be fast, due to the fact that he combines charcoal, acrylics, graphite, and oils. Garafalo focuses on  subjects in nature. He is currently working on obtaining an MFA in Drawing and Painting from the State University of New York, at Albany.

 

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Details

Date:
July 8, 2016
Time:
7:30 pm - 10:00 pm EDT
Cost:
Free
Event Categories:
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Event Tags:
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Organizer:
Galina Kourteva
Phone:
(732) 296-6720
Email:
galina@alfaart.org
Organizer Website:
www.alfaart.org