Elise Phillips. I love the name of this painting… Happy Hour. Many of her paintings depict Pennsylvania scenes. She did a great job, because before I even read her bio I looked through her paintings and thought of Pennsylvania. This is nice, the cows eating on a cold winter day, the house in the background, all toasty warm with a fire in the fireplace… and lights on in the house. The subtle shadows on the snow are just beautiful as are the trees. A very nice painting indeed!

Read a bit about Elise, from her website, and be sure to check out her paintings while you’re there!

Elise Phillips was born in Wayne, Pennsylvania into a family with an extensive background in the fine arts. Her great, great grandfather founded Newman Galleries in Philadelphia in 1865, and today she is the fifth generation of the family to exhibit there.

A graduate of The Hussian School of Art in 1983, she was an accomplished illustrator and graphic designer with many successful commissions in the business community. With an inherent passion for painting, she enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, emerging well schooled in the tradition of the Academy.

Elise has for many years maintained a studio in Elverson, Pennsylvania, where the bucolic countryside is a source of inspiration for many of her paintings, as is the Jersey Shore, New England and the Eastern shore of Maryland, where she is a frequent visitor.

An award winning exhibitor, she is a signature member of the Philadelphia Water Color Society, a member of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, Oil Painters of America, Mid Atlantic Plein Air Painters, and the French Creek Art Colony.

Images via ENPhillips.com, used with permission…

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Suzie Baker. Gorgeous, loose, fabulous paintings. Absolutely stunning in every way. Check out her portraits, landscapes and still life paintings! I was so excited when I ran across her work! I saw it on Twitter of all things. I’m trying to get with it and figure Twitter out… I’m getting it a little more… so I am thrilled that my little learning curve ended up with a prize… finding Suzie’s work!

This painting, A Negative View on Saloons, drew me in immediately. I love paintings with a dark, dark and then something to offset it, and these greens are perfect!

I think the abstract quality to this piece is so nice – fresh and different. Not too far out for people who need a painting to look like “something”. You know exactly what this is, it has great movement and luscious paint!

Read a bit about Suzie from her website – this made me smile:

“I have a degree in Advertising and Fine Arts, and for years I worked as an Art Director in ad agencies before trading in my Pantone swatches for a palette and brushes. My business trips are now en plein air. I love my job! I paint in oils and am motivated by color, immediacy of stroke, composition, the camaraderie of other artist and ultimately the desire to evolve as an artist. I endeavor for my paintings to communicate confidence in execution with a fresh, intuitive, spontaneous, quality. In my life, I will paint till I can paint no more. When I’m not painting I’m thinking about what I want to paint next. I can’t, not paint.” – from Suzie Baker, Fine Artist

Images via SuzieBakerArt.com, used with permission…

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Signe & Genna Grushovenko. Unique. Retro. Cool. Two for one!

I think it’s so cool that this husband-wife team work together on each piece. I love the retro’ness (is that a word?) of these paintings, reminds me of when I was a kid. Each painting has such life, color and expression.

Check out their work, but also check out their blog!

Read about Signe & Genna, from their website, I love reading about how they collaborate on a painting:

Partners in both life and art, Signe & Genna have been collaborating for nearly ten years.  

Genna begins their process by applying rich layers of pattern and tone to gessoed masonite or linen supports. Signe then selects an inspiration image from their extensive collection of vintage found photos, draws with oil pastel atop the abstract underlayer using the photo for reference, and completes the image with blocky ‘panes’ of oil color.

The final results of their collaboration are multi-layered paintings with deep surfaces, crisp at first glance but rewarding the careful viewer with an undercurrent of complex tonality and colorplay.

And because I’m so interested in the artists themselves, I thought you might enjoy this… from Bennet Galleries website:

Signe was born Kerry Signe Cornell in Michigan in 1974. She spent her first five years in the small town of Houghton Lake until she moved with her family to the equally small town of Washington, Georgia in 1979. Always drawn to the creative outlet of drawing and painting, art was a natural choice for a major upon entering college at Young Harris in the even smaller town of Young Harris, Georgia in 1991. After one year at Young Harris, Signe transferred to the big city to attend LaGrange College. After four years of art study at L.C., Signe opened Gallery 155 in Pine Mountain. A short lived venture, Gallery 155 closed it’s doors in August of 1998. The next month, Artists in Residence gallery opened with Signe as one of it’s founding members. Married to fellow gallery partner and potter Gennadiy Grushovenko in 1999, Signe teaches and paints full time at Artists in Residence and is proud to show her works with successful galleries in Atlanta, Knoxville, Chicago, and Asheville. Over the past five years, Signe has been honored with a number of awards at shows and festivals throughout the southeast and has been featured at the Period Gallery in Omaha, Nebraska, the LaGrange National Biennial, and at the Art With a Southern Drawl exhibition at the University of Mobile, Alabama.  Her recent exhibitions include solo features at the Tucker Gallery in Evanston IL & Gonchary Gallery in Kiev, Ukraine.

Image via Grushovenko.com, used with permission…

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 Mike Kowalski. This painting, Read All About It was selected for the American Watercolor Society (AWS) Show for 2015, and guess what?? Mike received the Silver Medal! Quite an honor indeed!  The show is held this month at the Salmagundi Art Club in New York.

I love everything about this painting. It’s a cool place that I want to go visit and spend time reading through the different magazines or newspapers. I like that he leaves the details to your imagination, very nice! The areas of shade and light – I just think it’s stunning!

Mike’s watercolors are brilliant. They’re well thought out and brimming with life! I am so impressed by artists who can paint with watercolors! I highly encourage you to check out his website… Gorgeous paintings, you just have to see them to believe!

Read a bit about Mike, from his website – I love how he writes!:

A friend recently told me that a good indication of what would make you happy in life would be to look back at what you were doing at the age of four or five. I was happy outside, observing nature. No need of added stimuli, just the sight, sounds and smells of our natural world. I also drew a lot. After over twenty five years as a freelance illustrator I have started pursuing art that………….. makes me happy. I was recently on the coast of California painting early in the morning. The sun rising quickly, shadows changing, wind whipping up from the west. The colors of the surf were yellows, and ochres, olives and innumerable shades of blue. I had only about an hour to get it all down. Those hours painting are what I live for.

Here’s the boring stuff:

Graduated from Utah State University with a BFA in art/illustration. The instruction at that institution was stellar.

Moved to Southern California in the early eighties where I had the opportunity to paint with Dan McCaw ( who also just happened to be on my soccer team ). I learned an awful lot in that time.

I relocated to the San Francisco bay area where I met my wife leading bicycle trips. After the birth of our first child I got a bit more serious about illustration. We moved up to the Seattle area where I began to concentrate on architectural illustration.

I’ve been busy ever since.

About five years ago I began to take steps toward a career as a fine artist. With four children that transition is slow but steady. I have many years ahead of me.

Image via MikeKowalskiFineArt.com

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Andrea Peters.  I think her work is so amazing. She’s got a cool style that is quite different. Her trees are my favorites… the trees and the funky clouds, love them! I think Andrea’s paintings are so happy. One of Andrea’s paintings made the cover of LL Bean! Pretty cool, since it seems like a majority of the country receives that catalog, ha ha…

I hope to feature one of her spring/summer images in the coming months, they are amazing!

Read a bit about Andrea, from her website:

Whatever you call it, energy, spirit or soul, grasping that is my primary goal in painting, which then becomes a personal journey for my life.
…When I paint all else ceases to exist. I am caught in a space and time that has no measure or proof other than the visual painting result. My painting transcends the now of the physical and transports me to another plane. There is only pure joy. It is comfortable yet unpredictable, exciting yet peaceful, a place to lose myself and yet find myself. This experience doesn’t happen when I plan for it, but rather when I least expect it, I’m submerged in it.
…I like the element of unpredictability and let each painting be guided by itself and that particular period in time, to let it be whatever it will be, accepting it only for what it is..a moment in my life.
…The more personal struggles there are in my life the stronger my work becomes. This is both encouraging and satisfying, yet mystifying too. But I am not concerned with this or the picture result as I am with the satisfaction and peace that the experience of painting brings me. That is personal gratification!

Images via AndreaPetersArt.com, used with permission…

While I don’t normally feature jewelry, I have to say… Apparently creativity runs in the family! Andrea’s daughter Christine Peters creates some beautiful jewelry! Check it out!

Catch you back here tomorrow!

Lisa Noonis. Fabulous! Loose. Wonderful. Stand back from the painting and look again… How does she do it? Just look at those colors! Feel the movement? Hear the ocean? This painting is too cool!

These lemons are so luscious against the dark background – whoa! Brilliant choice of background in my opinion… This is stunning to me!

Not only is Lisa’s art spectacular, her bio is fabulous. I included her artist’s statement below…

Read a bit about Lisa from her website:

artist’s statement

I strive to paint the way my mother cooks.

The process is absorbing, spiritual, sometimes transcendent—and complete only when artist and viewer, cook and eater, are invested in the outcome. 

My goal is to initiate shared experiences that will be enjoyed again and again. For that reason, my paintings are never too finished; in fact, they succeed only when there are conceptual spaces for the viewer to fill. There’s no right or wrong way to accomplish this.

In contributing my half of the shared experience, I engage fully with my inspiration, nearly forgetting myself and reacting directly to what’s occurring on the canvas. I revel in bold colors, generous amounts of paint, applied with big brushes and palette knives. I look for the essence of the subject, its truth, more than its details. Rather than rein in this state, I work to sustain it.

If you stand close to one of my paintings, you should begin to feel the way I felt while painting it. If you step back, we can resolve the image together.

biography

Images via NoonisFineArt.com, used with permission…

Catch you back here tomorrow!