Portal of Opportunities

I have always possessed a great affinity to nature, thirst for knowledge, and a deep appreciation of beauty in all of its forms. These innate qualities have found expresssion in many areas. In my paintings, I have seen patterns emerge that express harmony, joy, order, and beauty. My belief in the fundamental unity of all cultures and peoples has led me to create art pieces that relflect the depth of our collective souls, the beauty of our beings, and the ability to expand to fully embrace our lives.

I was born and raised in a small city in the northern region of Iran called Rezahyieh. In 1978 I moved to the United States to attend college and received a business degree from California State University Sacramento. I then traveled extensively for several years encountering various cultures in different countries. I developed a feeling of expansion that included all of humanity. While living in Brazil, I was inspired by the European and Brazilian artists I met, so began creating one of a kind garments and bags that were sold through high end boutiques in Los Angeles. While working with fabric dyes on hemp canvas, I shifted my artistic direction towards painting. Over the years, I have experimented with a wide variety of mediums and cherish the discovery of something new. My work has evolved over time, allowing me to switch forms of expression as I feel inclined. My most recent pieces I call Nouveau Surrealism - ordinary printed photos that have been transformed to reflect unseen realms. Over the past four years, I have shown in the Topanga Artist Studio Tour and have participated in numerous shows in various venues around LA. The most recent show was called Down the Rabbit Hole, representing portals into the mysteries within each of us.

In 2004, I was finally able to realize my goal of creating a Composite Art. Due to advances in computer technology, I could create composite images from my mind’s eye by altering pictures found on the Internet, on TV, and in movies. My most recent series of work is based on my interpretation of "Structuralism." I am interested in exploring the underpinnings of reality. World views are based on Linguistic Structuralism. Architecture is also a "structure" that influences culture and society. In my new work I deconstruct architectural forms and reassemble the basic elements into structures. I'm creating imaginary cities using digital imagery and creating wall reliefs.

Born: Detroit, MI

Schools: Wayne State University; University of California

at Long Beach; Arizona State University.

B.A. in Art and Sociology.

Graduate Certificate in Counseling.

I have been working and exhibiting as a fine artist for twenty years. I am also a poet and performance artist.

For fifteen years, I worked as the Director for a mental health program. I emphasized the benefits of art and writing to help clients control symptoms. I developed and facilitated several art and writing workshops for mental health consumers.

Since 2003, I have devoted my full attention to art. I work in collage, assemblage, painting and digital imagery. My work has been featured in several Palm Springs galleries including Evocative Arts, M-Modern, The Vault, and Gallery Mystere. I was represented by the Karen Long Gallery in Long Beach, CA. My newest art combines both assemblage and digital prints. Recently I've also experimented with more traditional abstract painting.

Images that are subliminal appeal to multiple levels of our awareness. The figures in my work speak to your unconscious; rather than representing something literally. Detailed or expressionistic these figures merge with water based mediums, mostly Sumi ink on paper. The work is a way for me to engage directly with my imagination from point zero, inspired by over three decades in the study and teaching of Zen.

Study and practice in meditation and the Japanese sword, and my work with people in hypnosis and NLP (Nero Linguistic Programing) inspires me. Simple moments that wake us up from a different kind of sleep, moments that connect us back into our lives in an empowered way.

I am a multiracial woman whose art is greatly influenced by my Japanese ancestry and Moroccan and European Roots.

Co-founder of Five Changes and Manzanita Village Retreat Center in Southern California. I mentor and certify coaches, healers, artists, people in leadership roles, conscious business owners and entrepreneurs, in Hypnosis and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programing) Constellation work, and mindfulness, facilitating workshops and retreats throughout the US.

Born in 1955 in Southern California. I am of mixed Japanese, North African and European-American heritage.

A self-taught artist, with artist parents so I was encouraged to paint and draw for as long as I remember, selling my art as early as age 9.

I was hired by Zox Studios, a thriving commercial airbrush studio in the San Fernando Valley while I was still in high school. After graduating in 1972 I continued there until 1976 as head designer, supervising up to twenty other artists. From 1976 to 1984 I became a freelance commercial artist.

I began teaching mindfulness and Zen meditation, and Iaido sword and Aikido around 1984 which greatly influenced my move from illustrative work to the fine arts.

From 1984 I focused solely on Fine Art, working in various mediums: watercolor, oils, pastel, pencil and sumi ink. I have my artists studio and Retreat Center in Warner Springs, CA.

My new series is much evolved from my previous works. In the past, although I had a feeling of the intangible and of freedom when I worked, my quest was to cull the vivid chaos of color and forms by repeatedly sanding and repainting many layers of paper and paint into a more peaceful, organized surface. It was an expression of the infinite complexities that I found surrounding me, and my desire to tame them.

Rather than being spurred (on) by a categorical statement, I was following an unformed artistic thought through to the end, feeling freedom and energy from spontaneity, the love of form, composition and color and the nostalgia that these energies stimulated. Color, form and composition, and the harmony their combination can elicit, vibrate as a grouping of musical notes might do and touch the nostalgic thinking that first brought such experience into my sights – my musical and artistic family. They were the major creative influence in my life and provided the personal trials of the complex and puzzling world I grew up in.

In my latest series I have taken this need to embrace and contain my memories

a step further. I have develop/nurtured/ my reactions to color and form to

another level. I try to capture what I feel is the essence of my creative experience.

I render my love of form, color and composition down to it’s minimum and

present them in a purer, simpler context – the grid. No less emotionally complex

but perhaps calmer, subtler if a little more intricate and peppered with

a touch of subterfuge…

Helen Berger was born in London, England to Russian émigré parents. It was a family of musicians/painters/singers and she grew up surrounded by these artists, making her sensibilities pretty much pre determined. She has been an artist all her life. After years of family influence and guidance, independent study in Paris, London and Los Angeles, assisting established artists and attending numerous workshops, she considers herself self-taught.

After using many different mediums over the years - wood, paper, clay, found objects, fabric and the camera. – Helen then settled into working with wood, paper and acrylic.

Her previous process was to layer paint, painted and cut paper onto a wood panel, continuing in multiple sanded layers and finishing with a distinct application of paint to emphasize the negative spaces. This work started out as a chaos of color, she challenged herself to recreate a mood of coherence, clarity and harmony on the panel.

Her latest series, although still on wood panel and using vellum, gesso and acrylic, blends the simplicity of repetitive shape with simple color and textural contrasts to create a play between tension and harmony.

Albert Einstein suggested that the tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives. To prevent these kinds of soul sacrifices, I started to paint.

The whole idea of painting abstract images gives my imagination freedom to roam.

I apply a generous amount of paint with brushes that I purchase at the paint store and work in layers adding depth and texture. Textures actually interest me very much and are a big part of my paintings. Some of my canvases have been around for years, getting more and more paint applied, until the perfect picture emerges. I incorporate geometric shapes and lines which create both balance and tension within a painting. Often I use charcoal and pastels as drawing elements.

Artist Biography

Education:

3 year art program at Mission Renaissance , Irvine, CA.

Coastline Community College, Costa Mesa, CA

Goldenwest College, Huntington Beach, CA

Studied under Roger Armstrong in Laguna Hills, CA

Exhibitions/Shows/Competitions:

Solo Show – From Dreams to Realty – Tully’s Coffee, Irvine, CA / 2007

Solo Show - Five Painting Palettes - Laguna Hills / 2007

Juried Art Show “Points of View”, Laguna Beach, CA / 2008

John Todd Community Center, Lakewood, Fall Show / 2008

Huntington Beach Art Center – Center on the Center / 2008

Orange County Fair / 2008

”Paint San Clemente”, San Clemente, CA / 2008

Art Expressions – Long Beach / 2008

Coastline Community College Student Show / 2009

“Pastel Plus” Laguna Beach / 2009

“All Media Show”, Irvine / 2009

“Provisional Art” – OCCCA Santa Ana / 2009

Solo Show – My Inspiring Muses - La Muse Café, Long Beach / 2009

Sparganzo Gallery, Long Beach / 2010

Pomona Gallery, Pomona / 2010

Huntington Beach Art Center – Center on the Center 2011

“Art for Haiti” – OCCCA, Santa Ana / 2011

Coastline Community College Student Show / 2011

Fallbrook Fall Show / 2011

Brandon Gallery Small Works show / 2011

Fallbrook Art Association Spring Show / 2012

Brandon Gallery Portrait Show / 2012

Art 4 all People,Phoenix Rising Malibu, 2012

Judging:

Murrieta Valley Council Reflections Program Art pieces from Primary schools to Senior grades – Nov 3, 2011 Murrieta Mesa Libary

Gallery Representation:

Copperwood

Highly influenced by artists like Hopper, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Diebenkorn, I paints multicultural urban Los Angeles with all its contradictions and poetry.

I am trying to blend my classical European artistic background with contemporary conceptual approach. In the LA urban environment I am looking for and finding manifestations of eternal human values, such as love, faith, longing, and the strife for a better life. I try to see real people and their life through the facades of the buildings depicted with much love and connection.

Born in Moscow , Russia /f. USSR/

Moscow's Art School at Kropotkin St.

MA graphic design from Stroganovskaya School of Art and Design, Moscow.

Graphic Design Workshop Artist Union USSR

Group Show at Bienalle/ Chekhoslovakia, Praga

1989- Came to USA, Los Angeles

1990-2009 Decorative painted furniture and murals

2008-1st Solo show TALK TO ME LA1 Modern Art Gallery

2010-2nd Solo show TALK TO ME LA 2 at Modern Art gallery

2012 Group show at Santa Monica Art Studios

2013 Group show "Seen and Unseen"Downtown LA

Phantom Gallery

curator and artist

2013 Group show "Oneness"Phantom Gallery

2015 Group show at Civitella d'Agliano

2015 Group show at Nuremberg ,Germany

2016 Solo show at Lark Gallery Hawthorne

and curator for CALIFORNIA show

the language of life.

The type of Art that I do is beyond the spoken words.

When it emerges spontaneously because of the process, I accept it with gratitude.

Jenik

No question but the painting of Jenik Cook - and hardly less the work she realizes in other media (most notably ceramics) -is abstract-expressionist. But it is not necessarily Abstract Expressionist. That is, however much it may evince the DNA of mid-century American "action painting," or even European counterparts such as tachism, l'art informel, or CoBrA, Cook's art only incidentally revives the method, much less the look, of these bumptious, scrappy art movements. Rather, to power her vision, she goes back to the roots of gestural modernism, finding dancing line, elastic contour, and fervid color in surrealism, in fauvism, in expressionism itself. The painting of Pollock and Kline, and of Fautrier and Jorn, gives Cook permission to work unfettered like this, and gives us the context to comprehend fully - even to empathize kinesthetically with - what she does. But she is not emulating, much less imitating, Afro or James Brooks in her graceful, muscular paintings on paper or rehashing Sam Francis or André Lanskoy with the rhythmic clots and scatterings of pigment that collect on her canvases (well, on a wide variety of more-or-less canvas-like support material). Look instead to Miro, Masson, Marc, or Münter, Pechstein or Picasso, Marcks or Matisse, for Cook's sources.

Indeed, look into Cook's own cultural heritage. The line that whips and loops throughout Cook's oeuvre, whether hurling forms across canvas expanses or tracing them on the sides of pots, whether describing slashing trails of pure pigment or the sinuous contours of human bodies, is no more a painted line than it is a written one. It is made less with the whole body - although one can sense a change of stance, a hip motion, in so many of these dancing whiplashes - than with the whole arm. These gestures issue from the wrist and the shoulder. They are in fact as much inscribed as painted. Their energy is not just telegraphic; it is calligraphic. If the vivacity of the image bespeaks Cook's Armenian blood, the rhapsodic curvaceousness of her line betrays her Iranian childhood. As comfortable speaking and writing Farsi as she is Armenian, Cook marries her disparate cultural sources -which of course now include the western European and American influences of her adult life - into an aesthetically cohesive mix with a surprisingly broad formal reach.

Perhaps the breadth of that reach, given the variety of sources, isn't actually so surprising. But it is always a bit startling to witness - that is, to be allowed to witness - an artist master such a conceptual and expressive range. Most artists have this range in them, but so many suppress it. For her part, however, Cook refuses to suppress her stylistic multivalency. Not only does she not limit her vision, but she uses that vision very consciously to drive her artmaking in as many ways as it needs to go. She may edit, but she does not self-censure. Her style, ultimately as coherent and personal as a signature, emerges from and among her plethora of approaches, approaches which themselves spring from her persistence, her prolific output, her knowledge of art, and her irrepressible verve. Jenik Cook's art springs forth -in several directions at once.

Peter Frank Los Angeles January 2010

Los Angeles-based artist Sandra Cooper is renowned for her distinctive abstract expressionist style. Her paintings and drawings are unique in their ability to stimulate viewers visually and emotionally with both passion and contradiction. Her striking images encourage viewers to use their own mind’s eye to interpret the movement of paint across canvas. Cooper wants to evoke an emotional response to her art, rather than merely object recognition. “If I wanted to recreate exactly what I saw, I would use my camera. My style celebrates the randomness of abstract expressionism.” “Why paint the entire scene when it’s the negative space that fills my imagination with the creative possibilities of ‘What if’” Cooper says.

Cooper’s “Heart Felt Series,” painted under her “nom de art”

R. Vega, is reflective of the powerful abstract nudes for which she is known.

Cooper’s style and technique are reflected in the media she uses. Whether it is watercolors, mono prints, mono types, charcoal line drawings, acrylics or collage, her work is recognized as a consistent signature of talent.

Cooper?

Exhibitions/Tours/Representations

1) Februrary 20th from 3:00-4:00PM (PST) BlogTalkRadio. The ORACLE Speaks, hosted by Denise L. Cook, with special guest Artist Sandra Cooper. UK Songwriter Artie Q\'s single \"Not a Lot of Love\", which was inspired by Cooper\'s \"Out of Control\", will be played.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/denise-lyles-cook

Call In: (805) 285-9772

2) In 2011 Daily Art Calendar, All For Love, www.ArtWanted.com/SandraCooper

3) The Whole 9 Gallery - Culver City, California - The Peace Project

http://www.thewhole9.com/thepeaceproject-merchandise.php

4) In 2010 Artist Sandra Cooper was featured on BlueHighways TV in conjunction with Lark Gallery Online. The show was viewed in over 220 countries.

http://country-cooperative.com/index.php/artists/category/mixed_media .

5) In 2010 Sandra Cooper artwork Out of Control was chosen by internationally renowned UK songwriter and singer Artie Q for LarkGallery Online E-exhibition Colors of Life - Music

6) In 2010 The Whole 9, juried competition, The Peace Project, Culver City, CA

In 2010 The Pop/Lock Gallery, Global Art Exhibition , Los Angeles, CA

Animoto

http://animoto.co/play/kcodPxjQSc56io2yu6LQOA

2009 Woman\'s Club of Hollywood, guest artist, 12th Annual Rose Variety Arts Show, Hollywood, CA

2009 Woman?s Club of Hollywood, featured cover artist for Denise Cook, The ORACLE, Speaks just because, Hollywood, CA

2009 The Hive Gallery, Art & Action, Los Angeles, CA

2009 LarkGalleryOnline.com, featured artist, Sandra Cooper, Santa Monica, CA

2009 Fantasy 2000, Sherman Oaks, CA

2009 Clouds, ?Heart Felt Series? painted under R. Vega, Santa Monica, CA

2008 Malibu Art Assn, Memories and Appreciation, Juried Exhibition, Malibu, CA

2008 Malibu Art Assn, Colors, Colors, Colors, Emeritus College, Juried Exhibition, Santa Monica CA

2008 Beverly Hills Country Club, Rose Breast Cancer Foundation, Visions of Hope, Beverly Hills, CA

2008 No Ho Gallery, Visions, North Hollywood, CA

2008 Haziaz Gallery, Art48, Sun Valley, CA

2008 Finegood Art Council of the Valley Alliance Jewish Federation, Studio Tour, Los Angeles,CA

2008 Malibu Art Association Juried Exhibition, The Challenge of Colors, Pacific

Palisades, CA

2008 APA Art Association Members Only Exhibition, The Washington Convention Center, Washington DC

2008 Art Treasures of Los Angeles, the Hidden Gems Art Collection, curator: Pasqual Bettio,Westmoreland Art Lofts, Los Angeles, CA

2008 Clouds, ?Heart Felt Series? painted under R. Vega, Santa Monica, CA

I am interested in illustrating ways of communication with people,animals and the universe. The UNIVERSE speaks back!

A: TRAINING:Graduate Kootenay School of Art,Nelson B.C. Canada with a Commercial Art Certificate, Fine Art Certificate,and Fine Art Diploma. Graduated from Notre Dame University with a B.F. A. from the Nelson Campus.

B.TEACHING:Taught art for ten years formally at St. Michael's University School In Victoria B.C. and for the Solicitor General's Office with the Federal Government in Abbotsford B.C.

1. Pottery;My Porcelain was selected for the Dept. Of External Affairs in Ottawa for their Permanent Collection in 1985.Was nominated for the Bronfman Award in 1999 by the Delta Arts Council in B.C. Canada.

Sold over 70000 items of Porcelain(wheel and hand work)Internationally.

2. Painting: Had a three person painting exhibit in Manhattan at the Agora Gallery in 1996 and was given an excellent review in the Manhattan Art's review.

Sotheby's International held an Exhibit at the French Consulate in Vancouver B.C.in 2004 of Peter's effort with a group show.

Signed with Home Depot as a on-line merchant in 2010 in Atlanta Georgia.

Published by Hambelton Agencies in 2012 in Vancouver B.C.

3.Film; Worked in hundreds of Feature Films and T.V. Series in Vancouver B.C.

“EliZe” da Jose – Artist Statement

I understand art as a way of emotionally experiencing reality and a universal language of

communication.

Without conscious e?ort and thought, I try to fill my paintings with expressions strong

enough to let the spectator feel the energy put in the depth of the canvas, transforming the

perception of picture into his own art act.

Most recently, I find myself inspired to focus on developing and exploring the connection

between iconography and abstraction in light of Cosmism philosophy. The inspiration of

this uniquely blended style came about as briefly explained in the following.

I believe that abstract painting was and still is an artist’s attempt at capturing and

expressing Plato's world of ideas which is invisible to the earthly eyes. Then, at the

beginning of the 20th century came the avant-gardism of Filonov and Malevich which was a

rebellion against physicality, materialism and petty-bourgeois consumption.

Iconography takes its roots from the symbiosis of antique vivid imagery and spiritual

practices of Ancient Egypt. From ancient times to the present day, man has never stopped

asking himself questions about who he is and what his true role in this world is.

My newfound unique style of blending iconography and abstract painting is somehow an

endeavour to continue humanity’s perennial e?ort and desire to capture and express the

depth of the invisible world via visible materials, to have a glimpse of the heavenly realm via

earthly instruments, akin to Plato and Malevich’s line of thinking.

In my work, I try to find an image of the elusive other shore - where every soul aspires to go -

and trying to find artful means to communicate what is di?icult to express in words.

ELIZAVETA DAJOSE (Artist Name: Elize)

Elize daJose is a professional artist, sculptor, iconographer and illustrator.

Her artworks primarily consist of a unique blend of abstract art and icon painting, experimenting with various materials, although her favorite media remain acrylic painting and ceramics.

Born in Moscow, Russia, her life as an artist started at a very young age. One day on a snowy street in her hometown, she bought Kazimir Malevich’s book from a peddler which turned her consciousness upside down and defined her entire life path.

From 1996 to 2000, she religiously undertook painting, sculpture, and graphics in various workshops of Moscow artists.

Since 2001, she has been working in the creative workshops of the Babushkinsky Sculpture Combine and in 2002, she became a member of the Moscow Union of Artists, sculpture section.

From 2002 to 2010, she actively participated in group exhibitions at the Central House of Artists, Gallery on Kuznetsky Most, Darwin Museum, and Timiryazev Museum.

In 2010, she participated in the Annual Art Juried Competition in Los Angeles, CA, and became a laureate.

In 2011, she took part in the collective exhibition "Woman Day Art Exhibits" at the Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA, and in 2012 she had a solo exhibition "Three Artists" at Liz Loft Gallery, LA, CA.

In 2016, Elize moved to California and actively participated in collective exhibitions, including the "Summer Exhibit" at Bergamot Station Art Center in Santa Monica (2016), "Brain Art Event" at Lark Gallery/The Chiari Project in West Hollywood (2017), and "The Art of Transformation" at Brick & Mortar Loiter Galleries in Long Beach (2023), among many others.

In 2025, Elize was awarded the Silver Medal at the New York International Art Juried Competition, "The Light from the Other Shore."

In 2026, an essay featuring Elize's creativity and spiritual development was published in the book "Revelations of the Artist - Deep Calls to Deep", curated by ArtServe International.

Elize is an active member of the Los Angeles Art Association and Riverside Community Arts Association. She is currently represented by Lark Gallery in West Hollywood and Literary Engineers, LLC in Benicia, CA.

Employing two separate metaphors, my recent work concerns the relationship of our fragile Earth to our own cycles of life and mortality:

The 'Fragments' Series was created following the devastating death of my husband. The images reflect my return to life using my yoga experiences as an inspiration.

The 'Wetlands' Series is an exploration of water in its various forms. I often use multiple perspectives to create an image within a reinvented space permeated by the erasure of a human presence. These landscapes are residues of experiences rather than actual locations.

In my series 'Liquid Assets', the divisions within the canvases flow together with a sequence of cause and effect. They include observations of urban sprawl consuming the last vestiges of what once were rushing mountain streams. Graffiti echoes the primal desire to leave evidence of our brief existence on earth. I challenge myself to express my concerns by depicting the beauty of the Earth with gestures of its degradation.

In my most recent series 'Google It', I use several media to depict a fanciful journey through the miracle of instant access to understanding that Google provides us. Google has changed my life.

I was born into a creative family, which included artists, architects and engineers. Following their lead, oils became my first medium. I was exposed to the works of the Masters at a young age taking my first formal art classes when I was eight years old. I studied art at Kansas University and have continued my education throughout my life.

In addition to oils, I have also worked with pastels, acrylics, watercolors and several area of printmaking. For my sculptures, I have used wood, stone, metal and ceramics. The emotional layers of glazes by Turner and Monet have influenced many of my landscapes. The multi-media commentaries of Robert Rauschenberg on modern culture, along with the meditative graffiti-like markings of his friend Cy Twombly inform my recent pieces.

My studio is located in Los Angeles.

latest artist statement:

I have been expressing my joy of art with paint, shapes and colors

since I was very young. I began as a painter, evolved into a photographer, and eventually began painting on individual photographic

prints over thirty years ago. I hand painted vivid colors on my Cibachrome prints, creating a wonderful new reality. Now I scan my one-of-a-kind hand-painted prints, enhance them with Photoshop and produce limited edition archival ink-jet prints.

“Color is luscious to me. It’s a luxury to be able to fill my life with color. Color is energy; it evokes emotion and feelings. It’s the other side of intellectual, and it makes you feel good—it really does pick

you up, and it makes you smile.”

My art has been exhibited worldwide in many solo exhibitions:

Butler Institute of American Art; Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, CA; Laguna Art Museum. CA; Petersen Automotive Museum, LA, CA;

LA County Museum of Natural History, CA; Monterey Museum of Art,

CA; Louis Stern Gallery, West Hollywood, CA; Wall Space Gallery,

Santa Barbara, CA; Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York City;

L’Image Gallery, Rome, Italy.

I have been included in countless group exhibits over the last 30 years, and collected by museums, foundations, corporations and individuals worldwide. Many magazine articles, magazine and book covers, two museum exhibition catalogues and two books have been published of my art, Garden Tales and Car Tales.

I am proud to announce that I have just installed 65 large art

works in two important venues at UCLA, on exhibit for the next ten years. I am about to install my first mural size images at UCLA too.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2000 - PRESENT

Jane Gottlieb: Beyond Belief - Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA

Jane Gottlieb Joy Rides. Patty Look Lewis Gallery, SB, CA,

Jane Gottlieb: Celebrating Monet? - Nancy Hoffman Gallery, NYC, NY,

Central Park - 717 5th Avenue Public Space, NYC, NY,

Art for Two Billboards: Perfect Score & Pink Cadillac Fin,

Universal City Walk, Los Angeles, CA

1995 - 2000

Jane Gottlieb Photographs - Nancy Hoffman Gallery, NYC,

Jane Gottlieb: Garden Works -

Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio ,

Jane Gottliebs Joy Rides - Three Year Exhibition

Los Angeles County Natural History Museum - Los Angeles, CA

Jane Gottlieb s Joy Rides - The Auto Art Gallery - World Wide Web Digital Dreamscapes - Palos Verdes Art Center - Palos Verdes, CA

Jane Gottlieb's Dream Machines - Saporiti Italia - Milan, Italy

1985 - 1995

Dream Machines - L'Image Gallery - Rome, Italy

Daydreams - Louis Stern Gallery - Beverly Hills, CA,

Dreamscapes - Art / LA 93 - Int'l Art Fair - Los Angeles, CA,

Jane Gottlieb Color - Ginny Williams Gallery - Denver, CO,

Imaginary Daydreams - Leband Art Gallery,

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA ,

Jane Gottlieb Daydreams - Sternberg Gallery - Chicago, IL

Dream Machines - Francine Ellman Gallery - Los Angeles, CA

In 1999, while standing in a grove of trees at Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, California, I envisioned four towers among the trees, completing a circle. It was intriguing to bring this mental image into the physical world. After constructing the first four of the 20 towers which were ultimately made, their first installation was with those trees to complete that circle.

The pod series happened simply as a result of looking closely at a lotus seed pod, I was amazed by the beauty of this very small fragment of the universe. I have used the lotus and other seed pods as reference for sculptural forms.

After retiring as The chief administrative officer of the Torrance, CA Superior Court, Jan Govaerts graduated cum laude from Cal State Dominguez Hills in 1991, with a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art and has never looked back. Her ceramic sculpture and paintings have been shown in NYC, Detroit, Albequerque, San Francisco, Palm Desert, CA, Scopia, Macedonia, and in many galleries in the Los Angeles Area.

Govaerts' work has been featured in several articles, including in Artweek Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Long Beach Press Telegram, Easy Reader,Palos Verdes Peninsula News, Random Lengths, and Artspeak, New York.

Govaerts' work reflects her deep connection with the earth. Her 6' tall towers of coiled clay have been likened to trees, termite mounds, stalagmites, and the towering hoodoo rock formations of Utah. Other ceramic sculpture includes her seed pod series and current stone series. Four of her towers are at the Junior Art Center in Barnsdahl Art Park in Los Angeles.

Govaerts is past president of the Board of Directors of Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro,Ca and is now teaching ceramics at the Center. Govaerts founded the Loft Studios and Gallery in San Pedro and she and her seven studio mates have been instrumental in starting a lively arts scene in historic downtown San Pedro.

"My art allows me to see the beauty – the color and design – in ordinary everyday objects, in buildings, in clothing, in nature.

We are all surrounded by beauty. All we need to do is stop, look and take it all in."

Georganne Aldrich Heller, daughter of the famous fashion designer and art collector Larry Aldrich and a successful designer is an artist in her own right. She makes collages building on the vision that drove her long career as a theatrical producer in New York. Each collage and boxed construction represents a setting of evolving mysteries, opening the way to surreal dramas inviting viewers to enter the world of her dreams, yet unruled by any sort of literary content. Instead, Heller favors a lucid, iconic approach where the “thingness” of shapes and substances is allowed its own expression, her visual reasoning riding on the dynamic that powered western art through a half century of experiment, from cubism to De Stijl.

Working Artist Statement: Ceylan Hulya M.A.

My paintings recently have been wanderings into time, place, and gathering with people of the unknown world. The more I trust the unknown, the more I experience an alignment with my being. I see my daily art-making practices as an answer to my soul?s call. I see my paintings meditation in motion. I work on large canvas mainly with acrylic paint, and mixed media. I feel the freedom, joy, and playfulness while I am in the moment-to-moment action with my whole body applying the paint over and over in a daydream state.

I believe in the power of objects. I intuitively collect objects until the object tells me what to do next. I listen to the story embedded in each object as I put an installation together. I work with memory, remembrance, my relationship with my mother, focusing mainly on my matrilineage for the sourcing of my core being, my message. I like to create solitary spaces through my on-going altars in memory of loved ones. I mean to create a balance between my inner knowing self and my outer self. My artwork is all about the process, the links, the connections, and our collective knowledge. I tap the larger reality through my personal discoveries while art making informs me about myself.

I make art because I have to. Art making keeps me aligned and balanced. Art making is my breathing space. Art is my way to balance the inner needs with the outer needs. My art is personal, my inward eye in constant search of the unknown. I work from within with belongings, hair, leaves, stones, dirt, sand, shells and beads in my

Ceylan Huyla is an award wining Artist and Educator. She co-founded a new paradigm Arts & Consciousness Center in Malibu, Art 4 All People LLC in 2012. She is a Turkish entrepreneur and an international transformative artist whose works include installation, painting, performance, and video-art.

Narine Isajanyan was born in Armenian and began drawing and painting at the age of five. During her childhood she visited many museums and galleries in Armenian and St. Petersburg, as well as receiving training in music and dance. In college she continued her training in art and received a Bachelors degree in 1987 from the College of Architecture in Yerevan. She moved to Moscow to study at the Moscow Architectural Institute but found Soviet regulations with architecture too restrictive and sought more freedom to express her ideas through her art. She returned to Armenian and studied art with Manvel Bagdasaryan and Samvel Bagdasaryan and later received a Masters degree in Fine Arts from the Yerevan University of Art and Theater. She first started exhibiting her art in 1990 in Armenia and has participated in numerous shows in Moscow, Beruit, Abu Dhabi, Croatia and Belgium. She came to the United States in 1998 when she was invited to participate in an art exhibition and since then has exhibited her paintings at many galleries in the Los Angeles area.

Inspired by the impressionist painter Monet, Narine's work is expressionist, minimalist and conceptual by turns. Whether on canvas, paper, board, wood or actually made of metal, her pieces become abstract landscapes that are as fluid within as they are consistent and organic as a whole.

About her art, Narine says, "When I paint, I feel like I am flying and dancing; I hear music in my mind. Through my art I want to express the freedom I feel in my soul."

In my art works I try to depict the world through the prism of my perception and to look at the reality from different points of view. It may seem difficult to understand my unusual style, but in fact you are already able to understand it through the superb and wonderful power of your mind. Having unlimited expression opportunities, I try to manifest the essence of what is impossible to say, but possible to feel. It is a concentration of my internal energy. I deliver my ideas through the gliding images, unexpected changes of colors, complication of the lines, light and shadow, and graininess of the plot…

My art is the window that looks inside my inner world.

Education

• 1989 – 1994 Art School Diploma with Honors, City of Samara Art School.

• 1999 – 2005 M.S. in Architecture, Samara Architecture and Construction University.

Achievements and Exhibitions

• 1993 - Diploma of “Samara Palette” Competition, Samara. – My first official art prize.

• 2009

- Solo Exhibition at the House of Journalists (Samara).

- Solo Exhibition at the international Music Video Festival. 25 paintings (Samara).

- Nominee of Kandinsky Prize, Moscow.

• 2010

- Solo Exhibition «ART-AKVAREL», «New space» Gallery, Samara.

- Winner of the contest Charterhouse Charity Art Auction, United Kingdom.

- "Self-portrait+" “Petersburg Landing" project, “Art – Center” Gallery, Samara.

• 2011

- Solo Installation “The Wall of The Notes”, ERARTA Museum of Modern Art, St. Petersburg.

- Art of Stone” Exhibition, Artists Union Gallery, Ventura, CA.

- “The Sign of Pleasure” Exhibition and public performance - graffiti on Cadillac SRX. «Alpha» Gallery, Samara

• 2012

- Solo Exhibition at the Art Project «Subject», “Art – Center” Gallery. Samara.

- Solo Exhibition, Installations and graphics, «The Factory» Gallery, Samara.

- Solo Exhibition at the Art Project «Night at the Museum 2», “Shikhobalov’s House”, Samara.

- "Let My People Go" Exhibition, “Art Hall of Tatiana Sarkisian” Gallery, Samara.

- "CHARM" Exhibition, Public Performance at ExpoVolga Convention Center, Samara.

- Solo Installation “Optima Study”, Samara Media Festival, Strukovskiy Garden, Samara.

- Exhib

I was born 1952 in Yerevan Armenia. Since early 1970 started to collect paintings of Armenian well known artists such as M.Saryan, Minas, V. Vardanyan and more. In late 1990s was interested in russian art until present time. For now in personal collection counted more than 7000 artworks of different artists.

My art is imagination of created things which do not exist in everyday life. The purpose of my life - is creation of the fantasies. I was always attracted to science fiction books and movies. I put my images of my fantasy’s creatures in paintings and sculptures.

Faina Kumpan was moved from Odessa, Ukraine as a political refugee. She graduated from the Theatrical Art College in Odessa. In her not very exciting childhood, she was dreaming of other worlds. She was obsessed with science fiction.

Her emigration to New York opens the new opportunities. She worked as a designer and changed a lot of different professions. After moving to LA she returned to her love for art and Science Fiction. She attended numerous classes at UCLA Extension and many private workshops. She exhibited in many important galleries in LA and NY. She creates a fantasy world that is a once surreal and abstract, whimsical and vibrant. Whether creating painting or sculptures, her subjects are mystical creatures from another world, like fantastic figures stepping out of the pages of the futuristic fairy tale. She was participating in many group exhibitions.

She was awarded as a creative artist by City of LA for working together to celebrate Los Angeles as Creative Capital of the world. Her works are in many private collections.

My art, whether abstract, figurative, or combinations of both, explores dimensional vibrations through the use of line, color, symbolism, and form. Geometry, particle physics, holonomic brain theory, mythology, and Jung's theories of synchronicity and the collective unconscious all inform my work.

Perceiving the concepts contained in the above theories, I strive to reveal the deeper dimensions and innate spirituality that exist in the here and now of every moment.

I am a mixed-media artist whose works include traditional media (watercolor, pastel, pen and ink, oil, acrylic), digital or new media, and combinations of both. Upcoming plans are to work with LED panels (backlit) and animation.

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“Employing an arsenal of digital tools, Melissa Lambert mines a hallucinatory territory embedded with personal codes and signals that lend her dizzying, pixelated surfaces unusual depth.”

-Michael Ned Holte

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Melissa Ann Lambert is definitely in the inner worlds mode of Matta, Onslow-Ford, and Pallen. The blurring of inner and outer, micro and macro, she has that. Count me amongst her fans.

- William Sheehy, Latin American Masters

Bergamot Station

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Influences include the latest fantastical discoveries of particle physics, synchronicity, superstring, holonomic brain and biotic theory, and Taoism. Authors as diverse as Gary Zukov, Brian Greene, Daniel Goleman, Carlos Castenada, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, William Blake, and Carl Jung have influenced my perception and vision.

My art name is Lark - the bird that lingers between the earth and the sky. We artists do it at the moment of inspiration and meditation. That's how I create my art. I meditate and start with the spontaneous movements of my instruments; usually it is not a brush. A brush makes me think. My instruments are usually just pieces of cardboard. I also paint on any surface – canvas, board, plexiglass, glass, wood, etc – and I love to experiment and see what happens. My best creations take place in a state of no mind.

Although I begin the way abstract expressionists do and use some sumi-e techniques, eventually most of my creation starts shaping as abstract or impressionistic landscapes as ocean, sky, trees, flowers and mountain views start appearing from the formless. Nature is my source of inspiration, but instead of landscape details I channel nature's moods, the feeling of being one with nature, and swimming in its atmospheric light.

Light is what drives me to continue working. My mission is always to bring more light to people around me with my art, poetry and meditations. I know that viewers feel joy, peace and harmony when they look at my work, enter and settle inside it because it heals their emotional wounds and it makes me happy. Being an artist is an opportunity to express the fountain of my creative energy and at the same time serve people's needs in beauty that will heal the world.

When people perceive the light, the high and playful energy that my paintings emanate, they start feeling they are back in the fairy-tale world of their childhood, when their soul was open to transformations and miracles, and they feel like Alice in her enchanting wonderland.

From the beginning of her art career, Lark’s art caught the attention of art lovers and gained recognition from art jurors including LA Weekly critic Peter Frank, Santa Monica Museum Art Director Lisa Melandri and MOCA curator Alma Ruiz.

Fusing classical and contemporary art traditions, Lark's award-winning artworks carry her signature gestural brushstrokes and vibrant color palettes. They have been featured in the many prestigious exhibitions, art catalogs and sold globally in France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, Armenia, Canada, Sweden and many other countries. In 2021 - 2025 Lark's art was exhibited in the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and the Shiba City Museum of Art In Japan where Lark got two Gold Awards in the group shows.

I do not start out to produce art about one subject or another. My abstract paintings mostly involve what color I am feeling at the moment, and normally, I have a whole set off metallics and fleuroscents at my fingertips.

Whatever music I am listening to at the moment I paint has a direct influence on what images I create. Since I have such a variety of tunes, and a painting is never created in a day, the abstractness can change daily, as my mood does, as the songs do, so I am not in total control of the finished painting until I feel like I do not have to keep adding or subtracting to it.

While the paint is drying, and I keep surveying,I know when what I want it to say, it says. And whatever that is, is also up to the viewer to see what they want to see.

Art has always been my passion, and I lifted my first paint brush at age 2.

When I paint, my imagination is free, which provides many opportunities for happy accidents, and whatever direction I thought I was heading in one moment can change, and influence what my paintings final color moments and shapes become.

I have a degree in fashion design, and have taken art classes since I was 2.

My last acrylic classes were at Otis with Franklin Liegel

About the Art

Each art piece you see was created with the intent to bring positive energy to the viewer and to the space it is placed in. Each piece has an additional, specific intention such as providing protection, healing, prosperity,creativity, relaxation, and passion to the space in which it is placed. The artist took special care to be in a positive, meditative state while creating these pieces.

About the Artist

Anastasia Lebedeva comes from a family of experimental artists, she has been trained in classical schools of art since a very early age and exposed to a wonderful and eclectic collection of art and artists since birth. Anastasia also goes by the name Simrit Kaur and has been KRI certified to teach Kundalini yoga since 2007 and Prenatal Kundalini Yoga since 2008. The quality of the mental state that meditation brings influences her ethos greatly as she aims to translate that bliss into art that radiates the same. The aesthetic of her paintings is always to uplift both the space it is in as well as the viewer.

I have always been attracted by landscape. As a subject it weaves in

and out of my work.

Wolves and Kimonos are emblematic of my work over a long period,representing a search for spirit, with the wolf as guide and the kimono a metaphoric actor on the stage of life. Landscape provides the background.

Born Chicago, Illinois, studied University of Michigan, resident American Academy in Rome, resided 12 years in Italy. Presently residing Ojai, Ca.Work internationally exhibited and in many important public and private collections.

Eileen Ransford was born August 20 1967.Growing up in Minneapolis As a child fell in love with painting, colors and textures. Improvised on wood and canvas. Felling each material gives different response and is a way to express hersef.

In 1986 after graduating Highschool Eileen felt a need to tap into Art field knowledge and studied at Minneapolis School of Art and Design, MCAD Minneapolis. A very well know Art school. After moving to Hawaii She felt inspired to paint and create this series of works with floral design.

Now Eileen resides in California and continues her search for her expression of her artistic soul.

(thin places) an exploration of the in between or betwixt

Lisa Rasmussen is a painter, art advocate, environmental artist, and educator. She was born in Wisconsin and has her roots in Scandinavia and Ireland. Lisa comes from a working class family, who has always supported her to follow her dreams to become an Artist. Her late Mother, Mickey was Lisa’s Muse, she fostered in her the practice of Art as being a form of expression and personal healing. Early on Lisa developed a thirst for travel and distant cultures. A key conceptual element of her artistic process is the study and travel to ancient cultures and sacred sites around the world. Some of her travel adventures include Nepal, Peru, Ireland, and Brazil. She has also lived and taught English in the mountains of South, China, as well as she had studied antiquities, the Art of the Renaissance, and Ceramics in Florence, Italy.

For her painting is a very visceral, physical, and metaphysical process. Rasmussen’s paintings have been called abstract expressionism, with a spiritual twist. Her paintings reflect her holistic worldview and her deep connection with the natural world. For Rasmussen, art making is a transcendental experience. When she paints, Rasmussen taps into a force greater than herself; a force that creates through her. Each painting is a product of her dance with divinity. Through her process she hopes to invoke in herself and the viewer a deeper connection to the world within and around.

Lisa Rasmussen is an award winning artist and educator. She is the Co-founding Executive Director of the new paradigm, award winning Art 4 All People LLC in Malibu. . She has over 6 years experience working at high-end fine art galleries in Chicago and San Francisco. She has sold original works created by Picasso, Chagall, Rembrandt, Dali, Miro, among others.Lisa is also a professional Transformative Artist and Teacher. Currently her work is being represented at a San Francisco Bay Area Fine Art Gallery. Additionally, Lisa pioneered an award-winning expressive art program for emotionally traumatized and abused youth in Oakland, and developed a professional art gallery for the residents of Lincoln Child Center. She has also taught expressive art to elders, at-risk teens, and has been an art coach to adults. Lisa is also the Co-Director and Co-Founder of the Non-profit Art is Moving and Art Break Day, which is community art reach event offering people the means and the space to bond with their community via the art-making process.

My artistic goal is to illuminate the feelings that can be evoked by the colors;

The main thing for me is the expression of fluid motion, reflection of the movement of internal energy.

Born in Argentina, he has resided in California for more than thirty years. He graduated from the Universidad del Aconcagua with a Psychology and Art degree applied to Advertising and Communication Media. He has been painting since a very early age but is in the last few years that he starting dedicating himself full time to paint.

Hugo’s paintings represent a unique fusion of powerful energy of expressionism, intense personal symbolism. Pictorial, fluid and emotional components are of equal significance in his works.

The main thing for him is the expression of fluid motion, reflection of the movement of internal energy. When asked to describe his work he replied, ''I paint my Insides my guts, my feelings''

Review by Paola Trevisan from Trevisan International Art Ferrara Italy:

Hugo’s vibrant, intense, powerful art research together with his creative imaginary; add personal and unique inputs to any art exhibition. His singular abstract language where the interaction of spaces, forms and colors connection, create such rich and emotional results able to go beyond the physical limits of the canvas.

The high level of his paintings are full of vitality and experimentation; multicolored yet harmonious patterns, freedom of thought, purity of expression and above all, free creative energy of art.

Currently showing at International Contemporary Masters

Future shows: Las Vegas - Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Arts - USA

My love is Zen painting an expression of no thought. A burst of energy.

As a child I was good at drawing and painting landscape scenes using vivid colors. I returned to painting in the 90's while I was traveling in India. I studied with Meera, a well known abstract Japanese artist, who used a no-mind, zen approach to painting.

Creative expression is a willingness to be open to what evolves on the canvas.

With no goal or result in mind, the time spent on the painting, the journey, is the result.

Whether or not it is pleasing to the eye, or to someone elses eye is another story.

My joy in painting is the appearance of shapes and colors rapidly forming before me. It takes me into quiet space inside.

I work with wax because it contributes a wonderful luminosity that I find aesthetically pleasing. The medium also shows action and no pour can be recreated, it makes my hand and time and humanity obvious in the final product which is something I find valuable in our world of the mass produced image.

Thematically, in both art and life, I am looking for the place where archetype meets identity.

K Lenore Siner is a self taught painter with formal training in 3D Fine Art from the Massachusetts College of Art. Her current body of work is a combination of wax, oil paint and china markers on glass substrates, most often old wooden framed windows.

Siner has showed nationally, including the Sylvia White Gallery in Ventura, CA, Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River, MA and AS220 in Providence, RI. She is director of Peregrine Gallery in Providence, RI and currently lives and works in the AS220 artist Mercantile Building.

“Pas•sion”; noun:

Intense enthusiasm-Outburst of Intense emotion;

This is how the journey begins… with the passion to create.

Every image is its own inspiration - a moment or object in life, a blending of the real and the digital, an infusion of the enhanced and the natural photograph creating a visual melding of luminous colors and printed on dynamic media - aluminum and transparencies, expressing a depth and range of color in any environment.

Each aluminum print and transparency speaks to the viewer through today’s digital language and should be explored from all vantage points to observe how light, metal and being able see through emphasizes and highlight the whole…

Biography:

Throughout his adult life Jerry has pursued his passion for art in various forms. Recording famous artists as a sound engineer in Manhattan, painting in oils and acrylics, working as a chef in his own little spot in NYC, writing a lifestyle/foodie book, assembling unique water sculptures and most recently expanding into digitally enhanced limited edition photographs, bring his point of view.

Moved from NYC to Southern California in 2004, and published ? A Man?s Guide To Food As Foreplay, in 2009.

Showings

Gallery 104

San Clemente, CA

Palos Verdes Art Center

100 Muse

Palos Verdes, CA

Zask Callery

Palos Verdes, CA

Artist Wanted

Taking Times Square

June 18th 2012

Power of Art

2009/10 Redondo Beach Art Group Art Show

Art Life Gallery

El Segundo, CA

Featured Artist

Gordon Ramey?s ?Hell?s Kitchen 11

Fox Television

Haworth Furniture

Santa Monica, CA

DRichards Interiors

El Segundo, CA

Member of

Laguna Beach Art Group

www.lagunaArt.com

Redondo Beach Art Group

Culture Arts Showcase

FOLA

Foundation of Local Arts

The Whole 9 Artist Group

www.thewhole9.com

I use a variety of found and scavenged objects in multiple hydraulic pressings to create embossed pentimenti in copper. Working intuitively, with curiosity and intention, but no plan, I watch for imagery to emerge in the metal surfaces as shapes merge and overlap. These pieces are then combined with some kind of support - usually wooden - natural or man-made, and other enriching materials.In the dialogue between the pressed metal images and their supports or containers, I discover what these things mean to be. My hope is that they are appealing as objects, and that they evoke a sense of the surprise of their creation and the mystery of their presence.

Born in N.J. Lived and worked many years in N.Y. Moved to Santa Monica in 2001. Studied at Douglass College, N.J.(B.A.) and New York University (M.A.). Adjunct Faculty NYU; Master Teacher in Lincoln Center Institute; Staff Development Training and Program Developer at The Studio In A School, NYC. Solo Shows at Atlantic Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; New England Center for Contemporary Art, Conn. Group Shows: Brooklyn Museum; Bronx Museum; Dayton Art Institute. has shown in many National Juried Competitions, and galleries in N.Y. and Connecticut. Her art has been chosen for St Johns Health Center Art Wall, and meditation rooms in Hospices and hospitals, and is represented in many private collections.

DUAL PROCESS ARTWORKS:

The Synthesis of Collage and Photo Processing

Understanding the photage process gives insight into the unique abstract images I achieve in digital painting. Photage is not the odd juxtaposition of visual language you generally associate with collage. For me it is an expressionistic, painterly, problem-solving process that begins with finding a rich and cohesive palette of fragments from recycled magazine pages. I then help each piece find its niche based on light and shadow, color, and texture dynamics. This focus on cooperation and symbiosis of parts is what paradoxically imparts a sense of calmness, strength of structure, and serenity in an otherwise very busy environment, a metaphor of my vision for a healthy earth.

"In a future series I expect to explore many more interesting color combinations and visual effects and perhaps create more loose, dynamic photages with more simplified patterns. However, since unpredictable is part of the definition of photage, I will be as surprised as my patrons to see what comes out next," I wrote in a previous artist's bio. Rereading this today, imagine my pleasant shock of realization that I have done just that, but not in the way I imagined. Digital painting has allowed me to push the photage images in the direction my artistic sense wants to take unfettered by the physical limitations of cut paper. I find that the interests piqued by photage, such as experimenting with light and shadow, depth of field, the balance of space, visual porosity of elements, mood and interaction of color, simultaneous micro/macro perspectives, and the commingling of straight lines and curves, can all be indulged using a stylus and powerful photoprocessing tools.

Traditional art training has been an immeasurable benefit in creating abstract depictions of qualities and sensations found in the collages and digital paintings. But while I can draw and paint, I consider myself more a constructionist and have always been inclined towards building, layering, combining found material, and the frugal and resourceful person's excitement in making something new and different out of something else. This seems to be the Nature's way of creating, and these new media dual-process artworks are my homage to and idealization of its many mysteries.

For a view of both photage and its spawn, digital painting, please visit: www.marlenestruss.com

Life-long artist Marlene Struss is a native of California. She received her bachelor's degrees in fine art and social sciences from the University of California Santa Barbara and found the climate, both physical and spiritual, so conducive to creativity that she never left the area. Since that time she has produced a large body of work in a variety of disciplines, including drawing, etching, painting, surrealistic and political collage and, most recently, digital painting. She is best known for the striking collages she calls "photage" to distinguish the unique technical process and the visual effect achieved.

Ms. Struss's collage and photage has been widely exhibited and acclaimed in group and solo shows throughout the United States. She is the recipient of the coveted Independent Artist Award in Collage/Assemblage from Santa Barbara Arts Fund. She is an award winner in the National Collage Society's 23rd annual Juried Exhibition and a juried member of the National Association of Women Artists. Her work has appeared in several publications, including Kennedy Publishing's juried books Best of California Artists & Artisans and Best of America Mixed Media Artists & Artisans. Recently she has been selected by invitation to participate in Kennedy's Best of Worldwide Genre volume.

She started learning and experimenting with digital photo processing in early 2010 using high-resolution images of her photage as starting points. She soon realized that she had a natural affinity for this state-of-the-art technology and the stylus "paintbrush." It didn't take long for the new media artworks to be selected for several competitive group exhibitions.

She refers to these large abstract organic-looking scapes printed on canvas with archival pigment as digital paintings. They are distinguished by their lively fluidity, sophisticated color, impression of dynamic space, and dramatic use of light and shadow. In addition to her experience with layering paper, the meticulous interlacing of layers involved in her new method harks directly back to the layering technique she was noted for in her early etchings. And like all her previous abstract work, she prefers to allow the image to evolve without preconception by means of a series of aesthetic decisions. The beauty and mystery of the final creation then becomes its own message.

To view examples of both photage as well as digital paintings, please visit www.startran.com/artweb.

Sallie-Anne Swift (a Graphic Designer) moved from Melbourne, Australia to Long

Beach, California in 2008 and started exhibiting in the USA in 2011. With a keen

awareness of her environment, her great love of nature, wildlife and music, she

expresses herself on canvas with an interesting approach using acrylic and

clever use of other mixed mediums giving a fresh approach to her contemporary

abstract art that highlights and reflects our ever changing environment, nature

and wildlife.

For many years she focused on realism and began exhibiting her work in Australia in 1984 and had numerous successes in some of Melbourne’s most renowned Art Exhibitions.

She has exhibited in Art Galleries throughout Melbourne, Victoria and acquired commissions for her paintings both Australia wide and Internationally. In 2001 The Equestrian Federation of Australia

commissioned the artist to do an oil painting of world cup winner, “Kyra Kirkland” for Emirates Airlines who sponsor the prestigious, “Dressage With The Stars” competition held in Melbourne each

year.

Since focusing on her abstracts Sallie-Anne the artist has won several international awards. She was an exhibitor at Miami Red Dot 2011 and this year she received invitations to exhibit in galleries in Florence, Italy, New York and Las Vegas. Her work has been published in Southwest Art Magazine and American Art Collector 2011 and can be seen in “INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY MASTERS V”, 2012.

MISTERIOUSLY ADDICTIVE UNBELIVEABLY INEVITABLE TO QUITE AFTER STARTING.

THE ZEN OF THE LAND

unites a visual trilogy of country people, their landscapes and lifestyles in humanist, spiritual, pictorial harmony. Willat brings a centered, thoughtful and organic approach to photography and to the living of a purposeful artists' life. The serenity in her images is both pensive and evocative; mirroring her contemplative intellect and ebullient personality. The artist’s best works percolate with a Mandala-full of life forces that emanate from her subjects, which she shoots in situ. Her most interesting pictures linger in the mind's eye. They move the viewer into spaces where we breathe deeper and slower- harmonizing with those who inhabit the visual world that Willat creates.

“I can get lost in the moment. The shutter seems to click on its own when I'm fortunate enough to capture someone at one with their environment. My favorite shots are not portraits and they’re not landscapes. I like to shoot people going about the living of their lives within their lands. They become defined by how and where they live. That’s what I’m known for.”

Jemmaa El Fna, a cityscape of Marrakesh’s town square, is a pageant of humanity where horse drawn carriages, push carts and shoe shine stands are readying the famous marketplace for day’s end. It perfectly expresses the interchangeability of Willat’s desire to characterize those she shoots by the places they inhabit and to portray these places by the persons who populate them.

Felice Willat is an award-winning travel photographer and publisher, whose images from Burma, Morocco, China, Vietnam and Argentina, capture the beauty of the human landscape across cultures. Willat's photographs have been juried into the Los Angeles Center for Photography, Photo LA, Photo Independent, TAG Gallery, Bergamot Station, the Brand Library, Glendale, CA, and numerous other venues across the United States and in London, UK and Italy.In 2010, Felice won First Prize, for her Travel images in the Southern California Council of Camera Clubs’ annual juried exhibition. In 2009 Felice published The Quiet Between, Song of Burma, a book of photography and poems.

Felice sees her camera as providing a sense of time expansion and stillness. She says, “I could capture a moment, something sacred or commonplace, an unconscious gesture, a tattered clothesline, a red plastic pitcher, or a worn prayer book. I like to leave the familiar, travel to far-away places, and find the gift of really being present.”

Selected Exhibitions

2015

LAPhoto – Fabrik Magazine Gallery

Topanga Canyon Gallery – Juried Group Show – Featured Artist

Juror – Michael Zakian, Director, Weisman Museum

2014

Captured 2 – Second Annual Photo Competition – Santa Barbara Tennis Club

“Climbing Cardinals” – Best of Show

Los Angeles Center of Photography – First Annual Member’s Show

Photo Independent – Raleigh Studios – Inaugural Debut - Zen of the Land

LA Photo – Fabrik Magazine Gallery

1995-1997 B.A. University of California, Irvine, Studio Art

1966-1969 B.A. University of Hong Kong Kong, History & Political Science

My lifelong passion in art could be dated back to the sixties, when I was taking private classes by local artists including Ng Po-wan (1965-1970), and afterwards, Chen Hok-shu (1971-1973), who cultivated my interest in traditional Western art and equipped me with a store of painting techniques. After graduating at the University of Hong Kong in 1972, I served as a social worker, and later, administrator in the Hong Kong government for two decades. It was, however, not until 1991, after immigrating to the United States, that I resumed her artistic endeavour.

Works

2010-11 Bondage

2008 Assemblage

2007 Ellipses...

My City 2007

2006 Unbottled

2004 Crooked Metal : 'Blue Nude' Deconstructed

2002 Untitled

2001 My City

1999 Double Boiler

1997 Boxes filled with colors

Solo Exhibitions

Sept 2004 Economist Gallery Hong Kong

Oct 2003 Hong Kong Cultural Centre Hong Kong

Sept 2001 Fringe Club Hong Kong

Group Exhibitions

Oct 2012 NinaTorres Fine Art Miami USA

Sept 2012 Hong Kong Cultural Centre

Jan 2011 Hong Kong Cultural Centre Hong Kong

Jun 2010 Southern Nevada Museum of Art USA

Jul 2010 Galerie Le Createur Hong Kong

Oct 2004 Tai Koo Place Hong Kong

Apr 1999 Galerie Lindenberg New York USA

May 1999 Galerie Gora Montreal Canada