The Overall Winning Artists Category consists of the 10 Best Entries received from the 2 media categories of the Painting & Other Media Category and the Photography & Digital Category.
The winning artists will now be featured on the Light Space & Time website for the month of March 2018 and thereafter, the artworks and links to the artist’s websites will remain online in the Light Space & Time Archives.
The overall winning artists’ category of the "Abstracts" Art Exhibition will receive extensive worldwide publicity by having their winning art presented on Artsy.net. The LST Artsy.net page will feature the artist’s art, an excerpt of their artist's statement and their website URL’s as part of the gallery’s overall prize package.
In addition, the winning artists will also receive extensive worldwide publicity in the form of email marketing, 1000+ press release announcements, event announcement posts and social media marketing.
Winning artists will also have their art exhibition results posted and promoted on Artjobs/Artweek. Artweek produces 800,000-page impressions per month, 280,000 website visitors per month and has 30,000 newsletter subscribers.
Congratulations to our artists who made our 9th Annual “Abstracts” Art Exhibition so successful this month. At any time, we invite our winners and other interested visitors to link their websites to the Gallery’s Archive section for further ongoing promotion.
The Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery will have digital “Abstracts” Award Certificates, Event Postcard, and Press Releases sent to the winning artists within the next week or so. Thank you to all of the artists who participated and for being a part of the gallery. To return to the Abstracts Home Page here.
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Barry Rafuse is a Canadian abstract artist who resides in British Columbia. He retired from a 35-year career in the judicial field. He was always a hobby painter; in his earlier years he used mainly oil paints and his subjects were traditional landscapes and seascapes. He is primarily self-taught however, he has taken numerous courses over the years which have helped him develop his own style. His love of watercolor on paper gave him permission to "trust the flow of paint" and from that, came his passion for abstraction. The less he could control the end results, the better he liked it. His love of combining mixed media (paint, pastels, graphite, and crayon) also gave him permission to experiment.
In the past fifteen years, he has become an established, professional abstract artist. He was awarded his signature status (SFCA) with the Federation of Canadian Artists (CFA) in 2013. He is an art instructor as well as a juror and he frequently exhibits his work in Canadian galleries.
Rafuse describes his painting process by stating, "Rarely do I commence a painting with pre-conceived ideas or a predictable outcome in mind. I like the challenge of working with the unknown and discovering satisfying results when paint and textures interact". His work "evolves" from what he calls, "his inspiration from nature". He is heavily influenced by patterns, designs, and compositions seen in nature. The textures and colors from rust, the deterioration of leaves, the power of erosion, the complexities of cloud formations, the magic of snow and frost – they all catch his attention.
He states, "I like to push the medium, to take chances and to explore the paint and textures. I see nature doing just that. I listen to what the painting wants to become". Rafuse uses large brushes to keep his paintings look loose and non-detailed. He uses large canvas surfaces which allow him to obtain energetic, spontaneous results. From his fondness for texture, he uses acrylic gels, cheesecloth, sand granules and layers of paint to build his surfaces. He then scratches and/or scrapes back paint using a sharp tool to expose patterns beneath. He likens painting as an adventure because each piece is different and the process often changes throughout. He states, "Painting is an essential part of my life. It keeps me grounded".
Barry Rafuse is now in his seventies and he has not slowed down. He wants his abstract paintings to be enjoyed by the viewer, but he also wants people to appreciate what seniors are capable of doing. Barry’s Website is www.barryrafuse.com
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Varghese Thomas (°1967, United States) is an artist who works in a variety of media. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle-class values, Thomas often creates work using creative game tactics, but these are never permissive. A play is a serious matter: during the game, different rules apply than in everyday life and even everyday objects undergo transubstantiation.
His artworks never show the complete structure. This results in the fact that the artist can easily imagine an own interpretation without being hindered by the historical reality. With Plato’s allegory of the cave in mind, he seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. Moments are depicted that only exist to punctuate the human drama in order to clarify our existence and to find poetic meaning in everyday life.
His works are presented with the aim not to provide an idealistic view but to identify where light and the environment are important. The energy of a place and its emotional and spiritual vibrations are always important. By examining the ambiguity and origination via retakes and variations, he tries to focus on the activity of presenting. The character, shape or content of the presented artwork is secondary. The essential things are the momentary and the intention of presenting.
His works sometimes radiate a cold and latent violence. At times, disconcerting beauty emerges. The inherent visual seductiveness, along with the conciseness of the exhibitions, further complicates the reception of their manifold layers of meaning. By emphasizing aesthetics, he tries to increase the dynamic between audience and author by objectifying emotions and investigating the duality that develops through different interpretations.
His works are an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete ages and situations as well as depictions and ideas that can only be realized in art. By replaying the work for each exhibition and pushing the evocative power of the work a little further, he makes work that deals with the documentation of events and the question of how they can be presented. The work tries to express this with the help of physics and technology, but not by telling a story or creating a metaphor.
His works are characterized by the use of everyday objects in an atmosphere of middle-class mentality in which recognition plays an important role. His website is www.artsbyvst.com
3rd Place - Tracy Armstrong - "What Lies Within"
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Tracy Armstrong’s artistic journey began on her honeymoon in Greece when she glimpsed a man painting by the white-washed cliffside of Santorini surrounded by the brilliant blue of the Mediterranean Sea. That was her ah-ha! moment.
Tracy channels her daily observations, feelings, and adventures to create abstract art centered around the colors, textures and memories that speak to her. She is drawn to the natural line formations of rocks, the movement and reflections of water, the ever-changing sky as the sun sets and the beautiful earth tones of Canada’s four seasons. Looking at nature, shapes, and textures from a new perspective, and incorporating these elements into her artwork is what inspires her artistic creations.
Tracy paints in her art studio in Ottawa (Canada’s capital), at her cottage in the Land-of-Lakes region of Ontario and during her travels while her art hangs in galleries and private collections across Canada and the United States. Tracy’s website is www.artbytracyarmstrong.com
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Will Nourse is a landscape photographer known for his use of color and texture to bring his outdoor experiences to life.
He has been an avid photographer for almost twenty years, and his work reflects a lifetime of hiking, backpacking, climbing, skiing, and sailing, all of which have given him a deep appreciation for the wonders of the natural world.
He held his first solo exhibition, entitled 'Moods and Motion: Exploring the Icelandic Landscape' at the Newburyport Art Association in July 2017 and is currently showing images of Iceland and the Gobi Desert at the Paula Estey Gallery in Newburyport, MA as part of the group show: Expeditions - from Iceland to the Gobi.
He has exhibited in juried shows at the Cambridge Art Association, the Newburyport Art Association (NAA), 1650 Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and various online galleries. Recently, he exhibited in the Cambridge Art Association’s National Prize Show (2017), his image ‘Seljalandsfoss #2’ was selected as Best in Show for Photography in the NAA’s 20th Annual Regional Juried Show (2017) and his photo ‘Vestrahorn #1’ won the Newburyport Development Award for Work in Photography in the NAA’s 2016 Fall Member’s Juried Show Part II.
His work can be found online at www.willnourse.photography
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After years of utilizing traditional painting styles—landscape, figurative, portrait, etc.—Barbara Bailey has turned to abstraction as her latest passion.
She finds the rhythm of painting, the texture of the patterns and the music of the colors all reveling on the canvas together in a harmonious balance that helps her to express, for example, what “ ‘Spring’ feels like”.
After graduating Cum Laude from Mount St. Mary’s College in New York, studied the medium of watercolor at the Jacaruso Studio in Rhinebeck, New York. After several years of operating a successful Bed and Breakfast business in the Hudson Valley, she retired and moved to Lake Worth, Florida where she continued studying at the “Armory Art Center” in West Palm Beach. Using both Acrylics and mixed media; she is currently working in various procedures in abstract art and has won several awards including 1st, 2nd, & 3rd, prizes in various locations throughout Florida. Barbara’s website is www.barbarabaileyartist.net
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I look through a camera’s lens and move more slowly, breathe more deeply and become part of the world around me. My images focus on the intersection and interplay of color, light, and line of everyday things to tell a story of what has been, what is, or what will – or can – be.
Raised on film and in a dark room, I expose and frame through the lens as with film even though I now shoot digital. I believe photographs are the art and science of painting with light, and that a negative is still a negative regardless if it is a glass plate, a roll of film or an SD card. My love of the photographic printing process combined with a belief that bringing the image to life on paper is as much a part of the creative process as clicking the shutter leads me to personally create archival prints of my images whenever possible.
Each picture I take captures a moment in time, never to be repeated yet destined to exist beyond the moment. Beyond bridging time and space, I hope my images spark individual memories and universal emotions for those who see them. Deborah’s website is www.dlbohren.zenfolio.com
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Gerald Chodak has been an avid abstract art lover and collector for over 40 years. His own artistic career began 13 years ago after viewing a video of the notable glass artist, Dale Chihuly, blowing glass in Murano, Italy. He was stimulated by the challenge of the hand-eye coordination needed to achieve a well-constructed piece. He immediately began private instruction to develop his skills as a glass artist with an interest in combining varied shapes and bright colors. In 2013, he started displaying his work in commercial galleries.
More recently, Gerald was drawn to acrylic painting, which offered more time to evolve each piece as compared to the urgency required with blowing glass. He began taking painting classes at the Boca Raton Art School and has focused on creating non-objective abstract works using a vibrant color palette that he combines with irregular shapes.
Currently, he is exploring the varied effects that occur as the colors partially mix when different pressures are applied to the paint moving across the canvas. His goal is to excite the viewer as they interpret each work through their own persona. His website is www.artbygerrychodak.com
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Cynthia Fleury is a Minnesota photographic artist. Her passion is experimental photography and creative processes/mixed media and techniques such as gold leaf backing on transparent vellum, digital/acrylic painting, infrared photography, light painting, and digital hand coloring.
Cynthia studied art and over the years has painted in acrylic, oil, and watercolor. Her interest in photography as an art form began in 1998 when she studied photography at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Her digital artistry began in 2004 when digital image capture became a more viable art form than traditional film photography. She most recently has been using a new process of applying precious metal leaf to the backs of photos printed on transparent vellum.
Cynthia’s work has been in many exhibitions and is in collections throughout the world. Recent exhibitions include NAWA Gallery NYC, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA), Center for Fine Art Photography CO, Artistry MN, Hopkins Center for the Arts MN, and Arts in Harmony MN. Cynthia’s website is www.cynthiafleury.com
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Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1943, Lia Galletti is a painter and printmaker. She left the island with her family at the age of 17 and moved to New York, where she finished her education and started to paint and exhibit her work in New York’s Greenwich Village and other venues on the east coast. Her father, also an artist, influenced her path towards becoming an artist as she watched him paint as a child.
Lia is an abstract artist and has been painting ever since, developing her individual style and technique. She studied printmaking within the disciplines of etching, drypoint, linocut, silkscreen, and monoprint. Lia exhibited her work and received an award at The Boston Printmakers, Brockton Art Museum, Boston, MA (1988). Her work is in their collection, as well as in the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, where she participated at the Ibero American Printmaking Biennial of San Juan, Puerto Rico. She recently participated in the Tokyo International Mini-Print Triennial at Tama Art University Museum, Tokyo, Japan.
Lia has had solo exhibitions in Washington, DC; Orisha, Kingston, Jamaica and in Florida at Art Miami and Art Americas in Miami and Interstices at the Capitol Complex in Tallahassee. She has participated in collective expositions in the US, including Caribbean Visions: Painting and Sculpture (a traveling exhibition in 1995); Cadaqués, Spain; Ottawa, Canada; and Mexico City (VI Bienal Iberoamericana de Arte Pedro Domecq). She participated in the Art In Embassies program in 1995 at the American Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica. Lia has received several awards, including State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship HM Visual Arts/Painting (2000). Her work is in several private and public collections, including Bacardi International and The Art Museum of the Americas at the Organization of American States, Washington, DC. Her work has sold at Sotheby’s New York. Lia Galletti currently lives in Miami, Florida, where she has her studio. Lia’s website is www.liagalletti.com
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Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Danielle Austen is an award-winning fine art photographer specializing in intimate portraits of the environment. She received her BFA from Cornell University and worked as a graphic designer before attending the master’s program at the Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, in photojournalism.
Working for newspapers and magazines, her editorial work has been published locally, regionally and nationally, including “Life’s, The Year in Pictures.” Returning to her fine art roots, she has combined her skills and training and has participated in over four dozen national and international juried exhibits, two group shows and three solo exhibits. Her most recent solo exhibit, "Echoing Cascades", was at the Romano Gallery in Blairstown, NJ in January 2018.
She has attended six Artist-in-Residency programs; the Rocky Mountain National Park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, twice at Acadia National Park, Everglades National Park and was a Fellowship recipient at the Vermont Studio Center.
“I have always been drawn to nature, especially to the elements that make up the landscape. I have been investigating the movement of water and how it interacts and shapes its surroundings by exploring the interplay of light, patterns, and tones, and the abstract imagery it creates. The results can be surreal and even ethereal. I believe these images are pathways into an unexpected depth of the natural world.” Danielle’s website is www.danielleausten.com
