Stacy Wills
www.stacywills.com
The circular mandala is a symbol of wholeness and unity, and has been known to have a calming and inspirational effect. In some ways, the talented Stacy Wills is herself a mandala; a multi-dimensional wife, mother, grandmother, self-taught artist, devotee of music and literature and student of life. Stacy enjoys the playful and magical aspects of using Citra Solv in her work, and we are truly pleased to name her December's Citra Solv Artist of the Month.
I consider myself a contemplative artist...a lover of mystery and beauty. For me, art-making is about healing, self-expression and transformation. A guiding element in my work deals with exploring the intersection of creativity and spirituality. Since I have no formal art training, I learn by doing. I really enjoy experimenting with various mediums and methods and in the process, making them my own. For the last 5 years, my primary art form and focus has been the mandala (a Sanskrit word that simply means, "circle"). This year, along with drawing and painting them by hand, I started creating them digitally using photographs I have taken or National Geographic pages treated with Citra Solv as source images. The creative process I embrace is an organic, intuitive one...I never know where it will end up. In essence, I create by playing - with shape, color and light. This is one reason the Citra Solv method appeals to me so much, it allows for lots of contemplative play time! I am a native of Savannah, Georgia, currently living in Mississippi. My husband and I recently celebrated our 30th anniversary. We have three wonderful children and four precious grandchildren.
www.stacywills.com
www.amagicmomandhermandalas.blogspot.com
Gary Reef
http://www.garyreef.com/
He's from Australia, lives in Norway, and literally has a world of international admirers and students. This talented and engaging man lives his life true to his motto: "inspire, create and educate," which is why we are proud to make Gary Reef our November Citra Solv Artist of the Month.
Take one Aussie kid living in Outback Australia in the 70's. Administer a big spoon full of country Bumpkin seasoned with extra amounts of creativity. Add good old fashion table wisdom served in loving heapfuls from a wise parent. Shake, bake, then relocate to the tropical Rainforests of Northern Australia. Add nature, a playful attitude and stir vigorously, layer hormones, hammer in early 90's music with a love for drawing.Combine a sense of humor and a good sprinkle of laid back attitude, then leave to rise naturally. Next add a keen interest in experimentation and a love for art, lightly whisk 1 part 'ability' with 8 parts love for all things weathered and decayed, throw in some bitumen, nails, glue, found objects and a few lumps of heartbreak. Then some art school, add a twist of fate for good measure. Season and relocate to Norway, add love, a language , isolation with a good hearty dousing of dedication and determination. Let simmer for a few years and garnish with copious amounts of passion.
I am an Australian Mixed Media Artist who now lives in a remote part of Norway (surrounded by forests). My work for the past 6 years has been focused on creating interesting texture and layering techniques.
Being a mixed media artist i like to use lots of different materials, those include- Bitumen (Tar/Asphalt), Glue, Acrylics, Tiling filler/Sparkle, Spray Paint,Oil crayons, Foil, Metal, Encaustic Wax, Plexiglass and other found objects. I also like to work with video.
My two main areas of interest are Painting and Assemblage. In regards to painting, I have two distinct styles, one I would classify as being figurative and the other Contemporary Abstract.
I have followed my heart in terms of my art education and have been a bit of a nomad. Studying art at university and taking many workshops/courses over the years with traveling and local artists.
I exhibit rarely due to location and also lack of interest of being in the spotlight.
I conduct workshops both 'live' and 'online' and I am also the creator of a social network 'Loving Mixed Media' which is a meeting place for mixed media artists from all over the world.
I am very laid back, I drink far too much coffee and my moto is 'Inspire, Create and Educate while having a darn good time'
Lyric Kinard
http://www.lyrickinard.com/index.html
You can get totally wrapped up in some of the pieces that the aptly named Lyric Montgomery Kinard creates – literally! The uber-talented mother of five creates award-winning quilts and wearable works of art, and often includes Citra Solv in her process. We're proud to be a part of her creations, and to name her the October Artist of the Month.
View some of her art here.
Lyric Kinard
Lyric Kinard is an artist with a serious addiction to fabric. Her award-winning wall quilts and wearable works of art are a product of her need and passion to create order and beauty while living a chaotic life as the mother of young children. She often says that her art is the only thing she does that is not undone by the end of the day. Her second love is teaching, which she has been doing in various capacities for the past 12 years. She loves to share her joy in the process of transforming plain fabric into a work of art.
Much of Lyric’s work begins with plain white cloth which she dyes and paints to create the palette from which her designs spring. Her abstracts begin with an emphasis on color and are created on the design wall while her pictorials begin with a specific message in mind and are often meticulously drafted on paper before cloth is cut. All of her artwork is quilted to a layer of batting to add texture and to emphasize line. While traditional quilts are then bound and done, Lyric often adds more embroidery or beads and even more paint if the design calls for it. This further emphasizes the dimensional and tactile quality of quilts as a medium for expression.
Lyric has studied with many well known textile artists around the country and continues to expand her skills in the area of surface design. She has a BA in English Literature from the University of Utah and has also formally studied music and architecture. She currently lives in Cary, North Carolina with her husband and five children.
Joan Dorrill
http://www.JoanDorrillArt.com/
As a proud sponsor of ISAP, Citra Solv offered the prestigious organization the opportunity to name one of their artists the September Citra Solv Artist of the Month. The competition was tough, but the highly talented artist Joan Dorrill now has another honor to add to her already impressive list of awards.
The scope of Joan’s multi-media work ranges from thought-provoking abstract to stunning landscapes and portraits. She’s looking forward to incorporating Citra Solv inspired art at her upcoming demonstration for the Society of Mixed Media Artists in Jacksonville, Florida, where she currently resides.
View some of her art here.
Joan Dorrill
Joan Dorrill finds working experimentally, using mixed media and collage, an exciting way to find freedom of expression. She builds a motif while exploring design, texture and color. Joan paints her own collage papers using watercolor or acrylic paints on a variety of papers. She then prints them with patterns from her hand made print blocks or found objects. She finds inspiration from within, but also from using a new material, a new color or just seeing a change of seasons.
Joan’s first career was teaching elementary school in the public school system. She then learned to paint while raising a family of 3 boys. Her beginnings were in drawing and traditional watercolor painting, but strayed into acrylic, collage, pastel and oil. After years of painting, exhibiting and winning awards in local and state shows she went back to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and earned her BFA in painting and drawing at the age of 55. Since that time she has moved to Florida. In her home studio she is continually exploring and inventing new approaches to improve her artwork.
Joan recently earned her signature membership in ISAP, International Society of Acrylic Painters. She is involved in several local and state art associations and is President of a local co-op gallery in St. Augustine, Florida. Check out her website at www.JoanDorrillart.com
Sarah Winkler
http://www.sarahwinkler.com/
When we first saw Sarah Winkler’s work, we were speechless. Her ability to draw out magnificent vivid colors and endearing characters made her an easy choice for the August Artist of the Month.
Sarah clearly puts a lot of research into her subjects and translates her experiences onto multi-media canvases with incredible flair. Her travels through the continents, and encounters with nature and new cultures, is beautifully reflected in her art. She seems to be able to capture nature and magical dreamscapes, and gently lay them on her canvas.
Sarah Winkler is a contemporary painter, art instructor and amateur poet. She was born in Manchester, England, but has lived abroad in Africa, Asia and America longer than on her own home soil. Cycles of travel and relocation have afforded her a curiosity for new horizons, exotic cultures and creative expression that transcends barriers.
Sarah studied fine art, writing and theatre at William Patterson University in northern New Jersey. The proximity to New York allowed her to have exposure to professional artists, take workshops and visit many museums. She has trained under many talented artists whose experimental and conceptual approach to painting is still an influence today. Her work has been sold in galleries and curated into non-profit, university and museum exhibitions. Corporate collections include the Viceroy Resort Residences and commissions include the Justin Vineyard Artist-Series wine label and an album cover for the band, War Stories.
Her art studio is located in a small town half way between San Francisco and Los Angeles in California.
She has used CITRA Solv in her paintings since 2005 to mutate National Geographic magazines into an art material. Using these repurposed pages of exploration and adventure to tell a more personal story: "I gravitate to imagery and themes associated with the journey, a sense of place, suspended states, identity, make-believe and blended cultural experience. I combine contrasting media together to coexist and form a new identity." ~Sarah Winkler
Carol Andrews Jensen
http://www.carolandrewsfineart.com/
Great photography has outstanding technical elements, but it also offers compelling style and content.
The photography and mixed media art from master craftsman and professional photographer Carol Andrews Jensen offers all that -- and more. She has the talent and ability to move her audience, which is why she was chosen as the July Citra Solv Artist of the Month.
Master Craftsman photographer Carol Andrews loves to create the magic of a photograph. Over the last 20 years, her award–winning photographs have included exhibitions at Photokina in Cologne, Germany; Disney's EPCOT theme park and the International Masters Loan Collection of the Professional Photographers of America.
Her work has been acquired by the Sherman Hines Museum in Nova Scotia, Canada. She was inducted into Cameracraftsmen of America, an international photographic society of which there are only 40 members, and was only the fourth woman in the society's 95-year history to be admitted.
She teaches and judges photography and art internationally and has taught as a creative-uses consultant for Polaroid. Currently on the board of directors of the Professional Photographers of America, Carol is also a photography consultant.
"I enjoy expressing beauty and my love for life through a camera and sharing the images and stories with others. I show people what love looks like," Carol says.
Theresa Girard:
http://www.tgirard.com/
Anyone who calls herself a “paintbrush warrior” has got to be something special, and Theresa Girard, the Citra Solv June Artist of the Month, surely is!
Theresa Girard, a celebrated artist/educator, is the winner of several juried awards, and is the art director of “Access to Art,” a community-based art program in her hometown in Rhode Island. She received the Emily Harvey award for Outstanding Service in Program Development and Art Fundraising efforts. She has been involved in several solo and combined artists shows throughout New England & Florida.
Theresa is a signature member of The International Society of Acrylic Painters and is the recipient of the Golden Artist Award for her work on the international level. Her work is currently featured at the White Space Gallerie in Naples, FL.
“I am influenced by an emotional connection to art and most things that make life interesting,” Theresa says. “My work is a purposeful and mostly intuitive motion.”
Using materials that she has collected, Theresa enjoys combining the old with the new. “I work in layers, much like my life itself. Texture is important to me and I can't get enough. I love rediscovering and recycling my artwork. It is a total resurrection.”
Theresa’s use of vivid colors reflects her enthusiasm for her art, her students, and her life. Even the classes she leads have fun in their titles, with “OMG Big Art,” and “Hey I’m Open” among them.
“When most kids were drawing nurses and firemen that resembled what they wanted to be when they grew up, I drew the same thing all the time. A picture of an artist with beret and easel, taking her Mom with her to Paris. Well she died long before I could, but I know she sees me painting now. Art is my one true voice.”
Jane Dávila:
www.janedavila.com
One look at Jane Davila’s work, and you’ll see why she was so easily chosen as the Citra Solv Artist of the Month. Jane uses Citra Solv to transfer images onto fabric for her magnificent quilts. She’s co-authored several books, teaches many classes, and inspires all of us with her understated, classical designs. Brava, Jane!
Jane Dávila is a fiber and mixed-artist who began her professional art career as a printmaker, specializing in etchings and intaglios. Her prints can be found in many private and corporate collections around the world. She switched to fiber and quilting in the 1990s but still incorporates many printmaking techniques in her work. The experience of living in Peru in the 1980s has had a lasting impact on her appreciation for the diversity of cultural expression and iconography, which as a theme frequently shows up in her work.
Jane teaches art quilting, surface design and mixed media classes all over the US and around the world. For the past twenty years she has encouraged her students to experiment and push boundaries, and to grow as artists. Jane is the co-author, with Elin Waterston, of Art Quilt Workbook and Art Quilts at Play for C&T Publishing. In January 2010, her latest book, Jane Dávila’s Surface Design Essentials, was released. She is a frequent contributor to Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors magazines, and has appeared on The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson & Ricky Tims, as well as several episodes of Quilting Arts TV, shown on PBS stations nationwide. She has taped two instructional dvds, one for C&T Publishing with Elin Waterston (Jane & Elin Teach You Art Quilting Basics) and the other for Quilting Arts, Mixed-Media One Page Book.
She lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut with her husband, Carlos, an oil painter and sculptor See more of her work at www.janedavila.com and janedavila.blogspot.com.
Mary Bailey Thomas:
http://www.fcds.org/faculty/MaryThomas/index.htm
Our April Artist of the Month is the multi-talented Mary Bailey Thomas. A former middle school art teacher and current photography teacher, Mary’s motto is, “When you teach, you learn.” Mary is as much an educator as she is an artist, and her passion for all she does comes through in her work. In fact, Mary is the one who generously contributed the
powerpoint presentation about photo transfers
on our website!
An avid photographer, Mary is continuing to teach part-time at her studio in Winston-Salem. Her influence is as widespread as her talent.
Mary Bailey Thomas Educator and Artist
Photos and story by Martin Tucker
Feature from
“When you teach, you learn”, says Mary Bailey-Thomas. Using that motto as a measure, Thomas should know a lot. She started out twenty-eight years ago as a teacher at Brown Middle School in Thomasville. She spent her summers taking classes and workshops at Penland School of Crafts and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. While at Brown, she was asked about creating new photography classes there, and she immediately enrolled in photography classes at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art in Winston-Salem. It was there that she would meet and study with her mentor, Merry Moor-Winnett.
Winnett was the 1995 Artist of the Year in Winston-Salem, the head of the photography department at the Sawtooth School and she taught all the black and white darkroom classes there. Thomas and Winnett became friends and continued their relationship and love of photography at the Penland School. Winnett, suffering from cancer at the time, would share her thoughts on life and art with Thomas. Merry Moor told me, “You plant seeds in students and hope they grow”. Winnett would pass away shortly after but her legacy and respect for the craft would live on in Thomas.
Thomas took photography classes at the Sawtooth School for three years and eventually joined the photography department staff as the black and white darkroom instructor in 1995. After health problems sidelined Mary’s public school career in 2000, she had more time to devote to her personal work. “One door closes - another opens”, she says. About her years of teaching Mary says, “I know I’ve made a difference”. It was during that time that Mary first entertained the idea of having her own studio and gallery space. As a member of Associated Artists in Winston-Salem, she was aware of the logistics of exhibiting. A space came available on Trade Street in Winston-Salem and Mary moved in. “I have to create. The studio is an outlet to meet people and share my work”.
Thomas currently teaches photography part-time at Forsyth Country Day School in Winston-Salem, maintains her studio at Studios at 625 in the arts district, is a respected judge at photography shows and continues to teach her first love, black and white photography, at the Sawtooth School. Her studio displays a refreshing mix of her work and her students work. She’s just begun a photography project funded by the Kenan Institute for the Arts that will showcase the diversity of women in our community. And a second project, with three of her current students at Forsyth Country Day School, will focus on photographing women who have had an influence on them. “I teach to pay the rent and then my art is my art”, she says. “I don’t do it for the recognition, I do it for my soul”.
From the who’s/who list of her former students and the collectors of her work, Mary’s influence on the art of photography will be felt for years to come.
For more information contact Mary at marythomas@fcds.org
Robert Burridge:
http://www.robertburridge.com/
March’s featured Artist of the Month is Robert Burridge. His incredible accomplishments, multiple awards and cheerful attitude made him an obvious choice for this honor. We are grateful to Robert for being instrumental in teaching others how to use Citra Solv, and for sharing his beautiful work with us! Bob lives in California with his wife and career manager, Kate.
Robert Burridge is a full time contemporary painter and teaches combined media, collage and painting throughout France, Italy, Mexico, Central America, as well as the USA. As the Honorary President of the International Society of Acrylic Painters, a Signature Member of both the Philadelphia Water Color Society and the ISAP, his honors include the prestigious “Crest Medal for Achievement in the Arts” and the Franklin Mint award. His paintings are featured in many art books and magazines, on Starbucks Coffee mugs, Pearl Vodka bottles, on eight commercial tapestries and his paintings are sold in galleries, cruise ships, corporate spaces, universities and embassies worldwide.
He is a popular lecturer and has written over one hundred articles in a wide variety of publications on creativity, inspiration, professionalism in the art world and related painting subjects. Another high point, Burridge was commissioned to recreate twelve of his large abstract canvases for the Hollywood movie “Dean Quixote,” produced by “Swingers” producer Victor Simpkins.
He has published two books: “Robert Burridge’s Loosen Up and Studio Notes” and “Hot Art Marketing: The Business of Selling your Art.” His newest DVD is “Abstract Florals from Loose Colorful Splatters.” Burridge’s country studio is located on eight acres overlooking California’s central coast in San Luis Obispo County.
Why is Making Art Important to Me?
I’ve always felt making art was something I just had to do. Painting pours out of me easier than any other skill. It always felt natural for me to draw, make things and do things with my hands. Crafts and models as a child, doing magic tricks as a teenager and inventing new products as a corporate designer. The underlying and connecting thread to all this was my “life long” preoccupation with making things better. Conceptual painting is important to me because it has always been there with me-- making art. I always felt safe to play with new ideas. I was the middle child of 5 boys so I suspect I was the overachiever getting attention. “Hey look at me!” I think, deep down, all artists are saying the same thing... “Hey, look at me!”
Robert Burridge
Cathy Taylor:
http://ctaylorart.com/
February’s featured Artist of the Month is Cathy Taylor. Cathy is a popular workshop instructor whose work in mixed media has garnered several awards. Her work created with Citra Solv was recently featured in Cloth, Paper Scissors magazine. Cathy, her husband and 2 dogs reside in Florida and North Carolina. Our thanks to Cathy for sharing her beautiful artwork and delightful spirit with us!
Cathy Taylor is an award winning mixed media artist and popular workshop instructor. Her water media artwork is a celebration of the patterns, textures, and color found in the the natural environment. Cathy is known for her ability to interpret a subject in a variety of styles. From her colorful detailed alphabetical designs including the Florida "Shell-A-Bet", to her whimsical collages and multi-dimensional abstracts, Cathy's work is represented in museums, nature centers and private collections throughout the U.S. and abroad.
Some of Cathy's work is licensed for use on clothing, textiles, and gift items. Her work was represented by a licensing agent in New York City who secured rights for a fine art print of a collage which was distributed nationwide. Cathy's collages were juried into the National Collage Society's annual exhibition in 2005 and 2007. Her articles, "Anthologies", "The Nature of Art", and "Creative Spirits" were featured in Cloth, Paper, Scissors art magazine.
Cathy is a featured artist on artacademylive.com and has created two DVD's; Watercolor Collage and Mixed Media Collage.
She is a member of the International Society of Experimental Artists (award winner), National Watercolor Society, High Country Watermedia Society (Pres.) and the National Collage Society (award winner).
She lives with her husband Scott and Elle and Gracie the magic "doodles" in Pass a Grille Beach, FL. and their mountain home in North Carolina.
All images are copyright by the artsit. Please do not use without permission.
