USSaRT Inspired: Russian Festival 2017

I experience much joy expressing my ideas and passions through my art. I am always surprised at the result as I am working spontaneously, focusing on the process as opposed to working for a particular outcome. In my recent work, I am enjoying the playfulness I experience when making my whimsical animal watercolors and my mixed media/collages.

I have evolved through the years and expressed my creativity in different styles--drawing and painting the figure, making expressionist paintings of jazz musicians and singers, making mixed media pieces and whimsical watercolors. I have also acted in the theater, performed stand-up comedy and wrote and illustrated a book of poetry for children. This varied background in the arts has directed and informed my visual art which is my basic focus and love.

Marlaya Charleston has been drawing and painting since the age of twelve. She began her formal training at the age of sixteen at The Art Students League in New York City. Growing up there, she had the privilege, at a young age, to visit The Modern Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum where she was moved and inspired. She continued her studies in New York at Parsons School of Design, Cooper Union and eventually earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from The School of Visual Arts.

Her influences are African Art, the German Expressionists, Picasso and Matisse.

Marlaya continued her artistic exploration making compositions combining realistic images with abstract shape, texture and color. As of late, she is enjoying making whimsical watercolors mostly depicting animals and the human figure.

Her works have been exhibited throughout the Los Angeles area and are collected internationally.

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

I am a professional scientist, but my genetic makeup always pushed me to the artistic world. I preferred company of artists to the company of peers, which even manifested in my choice of spouses. So, being immersed in the artistic world all my life, I finally realized I needed to let my personal artistic juices out. And allow visceral part of me to kick in and get out.

As a scientist, I thought it will be a good idea to find a balance between cognitive and visceral sides. Hence, I decided to use opto-electronic approach to create images never existed before. But building blocks for creating these novel images are everyday very familiar objects. The closest definition for the final images will be ‘digital still-video’. The reason for that is that either the object involved in the creation of image is moving, or the imaging device, or both.

When creating an image, I seek, by transformation, to reveal in objects of everyday life what they can be, or manifest, given they are brought in motion, which is not particularly pertinent to their nature. So, it’s the opposite of what I try to do as a scientist, where molecular motion at nanoscopic level is translated into steady-state observations with opto-electronic devices.

I hope the approach to creating my images results in new and unexpected visual creations enriching viewers with new emotions and thoughts.

My life is a cascade of transitions, transformations, and quite unobvious and unpredictable revelations regarding what I was, am, and/or potentially can be. There are several examples of that throughout my lifespan. The pertinent one is that I started my adult life as a Ph.D. in Biophysics and may retire as an ‘artist’. The start happened in Russia, and retirement will, hopefully, happen in the US.

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

“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.

I enjoy making a positive connection and an inspirational impact with people through my work. I find anything and everything inspiring and see the world through a different lens, a different perspective.

I believe that art is in everything that we do, see, feel and all things stimulating and apply that in my work transcending my inspirations in to viable forms capturing the essence of its beauty and mystery with a brush (at times, my fingers), paint, nice surface, immense imagination and most of all, with my loving heart

Hi! I'm an emerging artist based in Los Angeles. I made my first oil on canvas last year entitled "Gaze". So far, I have had one group exhibition in Downtown LA last January 2017 and was asked back in April. I was also given the opportunity to donate a themed-piece for an organization, Defending the Endangered, to be part of their silent auction and was very well received on display in their first Gala event in Beverly Hills last March 2017.

Mostly self-taught, I completed several hours of basic oil and pastel painting lessons (with a hint of chiaroscuro) from an LA-based international visual artist and art teacher, Vibul Wonprasat.

I only wish to build my resume and gain presence in many festivals and exhibitions. I'm open to collaborate with other artists, such as Lark Pilinsky! (fingers crossed)

Besides that, I'm also willing to dedicate my time and energy to creating pieces as contribution for many more causes and share my love for the arts and maybe make new friends down the road!

Thank you so much!

Sincerely,

Laela

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 paint what touches me most. Something in my life or in the world around me that moves me deeply. It may be joy or it may be sadness and worry.

Just painting what I feel brings me closer in touch with who I am and what I feel, it helps me process what I might not otherwise understand or be able to digest or let go of.

My artwork always had to do with feelings, my feeling about the world, people, and my relationship with them. I always have put it on paper since I can remember.

Like the feelings between mother and child, that are our most complete bond, or portraits of an emotional mood, that seem to come just out of me when I feel a certain way and sit down with a brush and canvas, to capture the emotion.

Regine Legler Bio

Regine Legler was born in Berlin, Germany during the last days of World War II.

Her first exposure to art was a dark, brown door her mother allowed the family to draw on with chalk, which Regine did frequently. Everything was a canvas, including her schoolbooks, which lead Regine to her first commission; being asked by her fellow classmates to help them with their homework assignment to draw Napoleon.

Regine’s formal education in fine art started at age 17 when she enrolled at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt/Main Germany. There she began a two-year study of figure drawing, portraiture, landscape and still life under Walter Hergenhahn, a student of the renowned Max Beckmann. Later, she underwent three years of intensive study in oil painting, acrylic and watercolor at the Freie Academie in Mannheim, Germany.

In her early years, Regine drew and painted scenes of dreams and emotional situations in a style called Fantastic Realism. Then, in 1994, her interest shifted to wildlife and American Indian scenes. Today, Regine’s style has evolved from Fantastic Realism to a more realistic and personalized technique to create a very bold look and tone to convey strong emotions.

Regine holds juried membership at Women Painters West, Southern California Women Caucus of the Arts, Venice Art Forum, and has taught college-level classes at Santa Monica College and the Fashion institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles.

Jora Nelstein

Jora is a self taught artist born in Amsterdam and currently living in Los Angeles.

As a child she spend four years in the lush green tropics of Suriname, South America, and as a young adult she pursuit a modern dance career in New York City. These two major events in her life are recognized her paintings today. Her abstract work tends to be layered with bold color and big fluid movement. Often the layering represents the layers of the human emotions, and the mere colors underneath fleeing memories like some unconscious whispers hidden in the shadows.

By looking at her work, Jora hopes that the viewer will be stirred and have their own interpretation of the work viewed.

Charlie’s Art Bio

Artist Charlie Patton began his painting career as a young child in Southern Indiana surrounded by the beauty of the Midwest. His love of art began with his first teacher, a 92-year-old artist named Emma Schultz who had been a German Impressionist painter at the turn of the century. Sitting with her during their first painting session, young Charlie was amazed by the old woman's ability to turn a simple canvas and piece of charcoal into a beautiful rendering with a few trained strokes. From that point, Charlie began his passion for art.

While pursuing multiple successful careers, over several years, Charlie arrived at the renowned Laguna Institute of the Arts in Laguna Beach, after which he traveled to Europe and studied at the Florence Academy of Art in beautiful Florence Italy. There he both expanded and refined his artistic abilities and upon returning to the United States experimented in Mixed Media, Abstractionism, and Contemporary Art. Settling in Los Angeles, Charlie has had his collections shown in a variety of galleries and shows, gaining local, national and international praise for his creativity and willingness to push artistic limits.

Charlie Patton resides in Santa Monica, CA and works from his inspired studio in Santa Monica, CA . Charlie's recent work is in several collections around the world thru corporate and private institutions.

EDUCATION

1980 -82 Hutchinson Jr College Hutchinson Kansas

1982-83 Santa Monica Community College, Santa, Monica, CA

1984 -85 UCLA Los Angeles, CA

1997-

My paintings come out as attempts to "translate" from ideograms and fantastic hieroglyphs that I see in the patterns of nature, most often in the tree bark.

It is like listening to a song in an unknown language. Everyone will have their own guess of what the words might say, but the main theme of the song will be recognized.I am so thrilled by the moments of gazing into the patterns of nature when intuition gives a glimpse from the world of archetypes. I think that trees are books and libraries that can be read, perhaps as well as any thing around if we attune to it…

My paintings are sort of "snapshots" from the process of reading the Book of Nature by the mind;these "snapshots" are somewhere in between the imagery and the language.The mind projects meanings onto the shapes and lines, but they are being reflected back, startling and puzzling… there is always a sensation of a mirror dialog, of having been "read" yourself by the Book of Nature...

born in Baku, Azerbajan, lived in Moscow since 16 years old, moved to L.A. in 1992;

M.F.A. in Film &Tv( Animation major) from UCLA;

involved in painting, writing and illustrating, cartooning, mixed media, paper theatre, small size dioramas

These painterly collage pieces are a continuation of my Beach Rock painting series. I was initially inspired by rocks on a deserted beach. Submerged in water, they reminded me of strange creatures pulsating with spirits, and inspired me to reimagine them on my canvas.

The idea behind my collages was to bring out the mysteriousness I felt about these rocks and make their strangeness even more vivid.

Each collage piece has several vignettes generated in the process, either intentionally or incidentally. They are like mini dramas within a bigger show and, when viewed as a whole, meant to heighten surreal feeling.

The way I see and express nature might have been influenced by shamanistic spirit that I had witnessed as a youngster in my old country.

Young Yun Summers is a Los Angeles based artist. She was born in Korea and came to USA as a high school student. She inherited a love of art from her family and always knew she would be an artist.

Majoring in design in fine arts, she earned her BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and worked in retail advertising for many years. However, her passion to be a serious fine artist was not pursued while she was working full-time and raising a family.

After her son went off to college to study piano, she finally decided to fully commit herself to art.

Young started out painting her favorite subjects, such as her family, trees, rocks, things in nature. Then, she began to incorporate collages, as a way to enhance her paintings. Soon the painterly collage took over and became her signature medium, garnering great responses and awards. Lately, her collages have become more sculptural and experimental. Finding beauty and harmony in most unexpected way from items soon to be discarded, while reducing waste and recycle are important aspects of her artistic life.