Tag: fine art

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Lisa Espenmiller: The Way, Where You Come From.

Contmporary Bay Area Artist, Lisa Espenmiller

California Bay Area Contemporary Artist, Lisa Espenmiller “The Way”, uses line, movement, and space to focus intent on material and repetition of pattern, in a meditative process. Hers is a controlled technique akin to writing on a scroll. Espenmiller draws horizontal ink lines, one after the other, until the entire surface of canvas or paper becomes a field of meditative resonance. The lines and washes of color in her paintings are visual descriptions of the chi or breath-energy that flows through all things.1

“I have this notion that art occurs in the process of life itself, and you don’t have to go outside of the context of your own life. It’s all there, and you just tap into it. You open up to it. You have to make yourself available to possibilities.”
— David Ireland, he Art of David IrelandThe Way Things Are 2

Lisa Espenmiller "Begin in the small," 2013 acrylic and ink on canvas over panel 20 x 20 inches
Lisa Espenmiller
“Begin in the small,” 2013
acrylic and ink on canvas over panel
20 x 20 inches
Lisa Espenmiller "Born in the void" 2013 acrylic and ink on canvas over panel 20 x 20 inches
Lisa Espenmiller
“Born in the void” 2013
acrylic and ink on canvas over panel
20 x 20 inches
Know when to stop, 2012 acrylic & ink on canvas over panel 24" x 24"
Lisa Espenmiller
“Know when to stop”, 2012
acrylic & ink on canvas over panel
24″ x 24″
Nothing slips through, 2014 acrylic & ink on canvas over panel 30" x 30"
Lisa Espenmiller
“Nothing slips through”, 2014
acrylic & ink on canvas over panel
30″ x 30″
Espenmiller.Ofitsownaccord.acrylinkoncanvas.24x24.1200
Lisa Espenmiller
“Of its own accord “
acrylic & ink on canvas over panel
24″ x 24″
Lisa Espenmiller, "Some breathe gently", 2013 | acrylic & ink on canvas over panel | 36" x 36"
Lisa Espenmiller
“Some breathe gently”, 2013
acrylic & ink on canvas over panel
36″ x 36″

Artist’s Statement

The lines and washes of color in my paintings and works on paper, visual descriptions of the chi or breath-energy that flows through all things, seek to sober and quiet the mind. When the mind quiets it becomes susceptible to inspiration, to movement from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic. Whether the body of work attempts to depict the inner scenery of breath-energy (The Way, Where you come from), the ever-shifting inner and outer landscape (the groundless ground), or talismanic power (chant), the goal is to engender a stilling of the hyperactive mind so the viewer can recognize the existence of a source that transcends human or divine authority – what Lao Tzu refers to as “dark-enigma” – the chi-tissue of empirical reality and the empty opening of consciousness itself.

The paintings and works on paper function both as mirror and window. Viewers are encouraged to stand before each one allowing the piece to offer a reflection of what’s inside or a view into another layer of reality. Think of them as modern mandalas or yantras.

As in meditation, my process requires that I remain rooted and immersed in the realization of the piece for a focused, uninterrupted period of time. There is little time or space for the logical mind to intervene in an attempt to control the outcome. The pace of each line, the movement of the brush or pen are guided by intuition and “no-mind,” accepting and trusting what presents itself in each fluid, changing moment.

These Featured works by Lisa Espenmiller are presented by Art Consultant, Laurie Ghielmetti Interiors + Art 3 and can be viewed at Garden Court Antiques at our 151 Vermont Street Showroom in San Francisco’s South of Market Design Neighborhood.

Artist’s Social Portals

^jh

Further readings and sources:

  1. Facebook Page: On the Line: Artist Talk with Sabine Reckewell, Lisa Espenmiller & Cathy Kimball ↩
  2. The Art of David IrelandThe Way Things Are. Karen Tsujimoto (Author), Jennifer Gross, Author, University of California Press ↩
  3. Fine Arts Consultant, Laurie Ghielmetti Interior + Art ↩
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Contemporary Art and Beautiful Antiques.

Modern Art and Beautiful Antiques at Garden Court in San Francisco:
photo: Laurie Ghielmetti.

2016, and we have had a busy first week!

One of our commitments since moving into our new Vermont Center Showroom has been simply, show how modern and antiques can be used to create gorgeous and eclectic interiors.

We’ve been fortunate to work in tandem with Fine Arts Consultant and Interior Designer, Laurie Ghielmetti Interiors in our efforts.

Combining modern with antique reflects the real world of interior design today and we are happy with the results.

.. more to come. Meanwhile, we hope you’ll stop in to view our temporary contemporary exhibit at 151 Vermont Street in San Francisco.

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Maya Kabat: California, Color & The Urban Palette

Artist, Maya Kabat
San Francisco Bay Area Abstract Impressionism: Artist, Maya Kabat

Architectural forms, geometric abstraction, and the tension between balance, color & form inspire California Abstract Artist, Maya Kabat. The urban landscape of California’s Bay Area and the unconventional tools she uses further informs her art.

I paint to create a language for things I can’t articulate, to address the questions that don’t have answers.

For Kabat, the work is an ongoing process of refinement and regeneration. She uses drywall tools, to layer, build and add texture to her canvases. With seeming impetuosity, she may introduce a dissonant color or destructively wipe a canvas entirely clean to start over. She works fast and prolific, obsessive almost. The process dictated by an imperative inherent within the medium: She can only work as the paint is malleable. “Time” is not necessarily her friend.

[..] it means I really have to be fully committed to paint one of my pieces. I can’t leave it if it’s not done.

Maya Kabat “started out as a kid who just needed to make things”. As a young girl she began knitting with her grandmother. She carried that skill on through high school and into college. “I always loved thread.”

She began “quilting” as an undergrad finding inspiration in improvisational quilters such as the unique and important African-American Gee’s Bend quilt makers and the renowned African-American quiltmaker, Rosie Lee Tompkins. The asymmetry and the improvisational approach to pattern, shape and color continue to influence her work.

Prior to graduate studies at the University of California, Davis Ms. Kabat began painting because she felt a need to learn about color in ways that quilt-making could not afford. Initially, she began primarily painting landscapes, understanding space — using the basic tools to construct realistic space.

Her present work can be considered “urban landscapes” embodying that sense of push & pull with space, of dark & light, of small worlds of pattern, color & texture, “just like the city itself”.

Artist’s Statement

In this series of paintings I explore the changing form and reality of my daily life through an examination of constantly shifting external and internal environments. Referencing the urban landscape where I live, I examine how with the changing seasons, my surroundings shift with the light, the weather, the passing of time. Plates of earth move and my house shakes and then settles. The horizontal and vertical structures around me turn slightly off-kilter with time and wear, as the cracks in the hard cement remind me that nothing is fixed. The built environments in which I dwell, like my body and my mind, are not static.

My paintings play within this space between chaos and order, structure and formlessness; between a world that feels solid, unchanging, and safe, while simultaneously knowing that nothing is. The result is the visual record of the struggle to hold these two realities at once; to create a language for the uncertainty and precariousness of life without crumbling beneath the weight of the understanding.

Using a range of scraping tools I create my surfaces with stripes, gouges and flat slabs of paint, as I apply, scrape away, and reapply paint. Earlier layers are exposed and then covered, as the painting is built, cut away and edited. I see the process of painting itself as an excavation. I work to expose the truth of the painting and to locate some truth about myself within it. I paint to create a language for things I can’t articulate, to address the questions that don’t have answers.

Featured works by Maya Kabat can be viewed at Garden Court Antiques presented by Art Consultant, Laurie Ghielmetti Interiors + Art.

Maya Kabat received a Master of Fine Arts in 2000 from the University of California, Davis. Notable exhibitions include a solo show at the Caffe Museo at SFMOMA in 2012, a solo show at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery, San Francisco, California in 2009, and a two-person exhibition at 5 Claude Lane Gallery, in San Francisco, California which was reviewed in Art LTD. Magazine in September, 2011. She was a founding member of the artist-run space, Mercury Twenty Gallery, in Oakland, California and served as President on the Oakland Art Murmur Board of Directors in 2011-2012. For more on Ms. Kabat’s substantial background [..] ^jh

Further readings and sources:
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Warmth and Luminosity: Jerry Carniglia.

At the Garden Court Vermont Street Showroom, we continue to feature select contemporary works that allow you to visualize how design works in the ‘real world’ intermingling styles and periods, fine Continental antiques and decorative pieces alongside more modern works. We’ve been fortunate to work with the informed Bay area interior designer and fine arts professional, Laurie Ghielmetti in hosting this exhibit.

California’s San Francisco Bay area was a major center for the emergent Abstract Expressionist school of art in the years following World War II. The work was characterized by ‘non-objective imagery that appeared emotionally charged with personal meaning’; an exuberant ‘free-spirited wave of creative energy’.

The Abstract Expressionist Movement in San Francisco derived inspiration from a broad collective of artists: San Francisco’s Beat poets, Dixieland jazz musicians, and the area’s stunning vistas were essential parts of Abstract Expressionism, as were artistic and spiritual contacts with Asia.

Today, we showcase a personal favorite, a large-scale work by the California Bay area artist, Jerry Carniglia.

UT-2151 2014 oil on canvas 81 x 63 inches Jerry Carniglia
UT-2151 2014 oil on canvas 81 x 63 inches

Jerry Carniglia
ARTIST STATEMENT

As much as every instant of the painter’s process requires his in-the-moment decision-making, the resulting works are multi-layered compilations of action over time— gestures and counter-gestures that amplify or obscure one another.

In his large-scale paintings on canvas, monumental non-representational forms hover in pictorial space and imply a potent energy force such as a tidal wave, avalanche, or cosmic flash. The dynamic forms and rich palettes of burnt umber, gold and maroon create an epic quality, like that in works by Titian, one of Carniglia’s influences, but without reference to specific mythic or religious subjects. Although rooted in Abstract Expressionism, Carniglia’s work could be described as contemporary Baroque, with its exaggerated sense of motion, grandeur and implied drama. In what he describes as our post-existential era, Carniglia’s act of painting is a search for meaning, not through religion, myth or history, and not as a personal rationalization in a meaningless world, but meaning that may be found in the unseen and otherwise unarticulated structures that underlie all of existence.

Jerry Carniglia, artist

Jerry Carniglia was born in San Francisco in 1946. He received an MFA from UC Berkeley in 1993. He is the recipient of the Eisner and Phelan Prizes, a Gerbode Foundation Award and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. His works are in the collections of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Berkeley Art Museum.

** excerpted from Chandra Cerrito Contemporary Gallery, Oakland, CA

Read More:
Abstract Expressionism
kahn academy – Abstract Expressionism
The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism UCPress
Artist’s personal website: JerryCarniglia.com

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Dianne Romaine – The Chroma Series

Dianne Romaine Chroma #13 24x24 acryl_cnvs 2010 $1800The blending of traditional, antique and contemporary makes a space interesting, exciting and a bit unexpected. To be sure, interiors design with a focus on all traditional or entirely contemporary stylings are splendid. But, often, when a designer takes the risk to blend styles; mix contemporary with antique, the results can be range from the stunning to dramatic.

A blend of styles reflects the way we live today; a mashup, if you will, that makes a larger statement than strict adherence to an normative or aesthetic.

Today, we celebrate an artist whose work we are showcasing in our Vermont Street Showroom, Dianne Romaine. Her Chroma paintings speak to her fascination with light and its magical properties. Select pieces are now on view.

“Dianne Romaine’s use of saturated pigment in her Chroma series composes a dramatic, almost photographically rendered void flooded with light. This captured moment references the photographic, giving the viewer a frozen glimpse of a transient glow.” – Oakland Art Museum
http://oaklandartmurmur.org/

These “Chroma” painting reflect a fascination with light that has been with me always- how it spills into a room, the edges, the slow, subtle changes as time advances, its magical presence. The light in these paintings come from layers of color, progressing to darks, allowing an internal illumination.

You can read more at the artist’s website http://www.dianneromaine.com