Karen Halbert
Oil Painting
|
© Copyright Karen Halbert - All rights reserved
|
Email Karen
Visit Karen's Website
After working in academia as a professor of Mathematics and then on Wall Street as a vice president of NYSE's computer software, Karen Halbert is now an oil painter in Santa Fe where she concentrates on New Mexico’s beautiful landscapes. She has had a life-long interest in art and won the Art Award at her high school graduation. Although Halbert chose to become a mathematician she kept her interest in art alive throughout her academic career. In her introductory and advanced college courses, for example, she used art to explain mathematical concepts such as Perspective and the Golden Mean. After retirement, as a counterpoint to her analytical career, Halbert began to refine her artistic skills in the qualitative world of art and painting with passion--if passion were an art, it would look like a Karen Halbert painting. In Santa Fe she follows her dreams: she paints full-time, has constructed a website, and built a studio to showcase her paintings. Halbert exhibits her work in Plein Air Society of New Mexico shows, various charity events, and private viewings. She studies with: Roger Williams, Joseph Breza, Don Finkeldei and Lee Rommel.
Halbert says: “I would like my paintings to go beyond my analytical training to reflect the depth of nature’s magnificent diversity. In the process my left brain analyzes edges, values, composition, and the chemistry of paints, while my right brain focuses instinctively on a subject and its setting. Painting on location--en plein air--enables this subliminal reaction, resulting in paintings I wish to share.”
|
Marce Rackstraw
Oil/Oil Pastel/Charcoal
|
© Copyright Marcia Rackstraw - All rights reserved
|
Email Marcia
Marcia Rackstraw grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, studying art at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Academy of Art. Marcia found the sun in New Mexico, moving to Placitas in 1981. She completed her BFA and MFA at UNM where she also taught drawing and painting. Rackstraw was a partner in Kendall and Rackstraw Art Consulting, leaving that position to become the Art Director for a small publishing company in Albuquerque. Rackstraw has maintained a studio in Placitas for 30 years, working in charcoal, oil paint and linocut. Her work has evolved from an emphasis on the figure into her current interest in the landscapes of New Mexico and the island of Kauai. Rackstraw has shown her work in various venues across the Southwest and in California and Hawaii and is represented on www.placitasartists.com.
Rackstraw says: “My current work is inspired by the high desert environment of New Mexico and the lush tropical island of Kauai, a combination of dramatically different landscapes. With many trips to Limahuli Garden and Preserve, a botanical park dedicated to preserving species native to the Kauai habitat, I created a series of images of the various plants and settings. I expanded on those images with charcoal drawings of the lily ponds in my Placitas yard where the plants shimmer in the intense sunlight, shading the dark, cool spaces below the water. I like to bring the tropical colors into the clear light of the desert in small sections of landscape creating playful spaces where what is familiar becomes slightly strange, not quite what one expects or can explain.”
|
|
© Copyright Ann Pollard - All rights reserved
|
Email Ann
Visit Ann's Website
Ann Pollard grew up in Plainview, Texas. She spent 25 years living in the Washington Dc area where she studied extensively at the Alexandria Art League in Alexandria, Virginia. Returning to Plainview in 1990, she continued to actively pursue her live painting. In 2006 she moved to Placitas. Pollard;s work has been featured in solo and group shows in the Washington Dc area and throughout Texas and New Mexico. Her work has received numerous awards and is in public and private collections nationwide and in Mexico. Pollard's work is represented by Houshang's Gallery, Santa Fe; Ward-Nasse Gallery, New York, NY; and Forms Gallery, Del Ray Beach, Florida.
Pollard says: "Working in either abstract or impressionist style in acrylic and mixed media, I paint with a heart intuition and instinct, not bothering with conventionality and often abandoning literal representation. My goal is to create pictorial harmony while ever stressing the importance of intuitive expression. I work exclusively with sponge, pallet knife and fingers which allows great looseness and freedom for creativity to flow. Bold color, pattern, and texture are paramount in my work, creating many lush layers of washes, glazes and impastos which unite to form the spirit of the whole. I like the combination of the many effects throughout the depths of layers which create a varied and interesting surface area. There is never a preconceived plan, no drawing. I find it exciting to let intuition serve the expression of each experience. I trust that the relationship of all the colors and textures result in an uplifting, joyful living harmony."
|
Marilyn Stablein
Mixed Media/Books
|
© Copyright Marilyn Stablein - All rights reserved
|
Email Marilyn
Marilyn Stablein exhibits her assemblages and award-winning artist books at universities, museums, libraries and galleries in the US and abroad. Recent work has been exhibited at the University of San Diego, University of Nebraska, Pyramid Arts Center, Rhode Island School of Design, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, the Harwood and Albuquerque Museums and in Bound & Lettered Magazine. Marilyn is also an author. Her tenth book, Splitting Hard Ground, won the New Mexico Book Award and the National Federation of Press Women’s book award. She and her husband own Acequia Booksellers a used bookstore in the Albuquerque’s North Valley.
Stablein says: “95% of my materials are recycled and include discarded and recycled cultural artifacts, found objects, shamanic tools, ritual objects, and green and ecological specimens from nature. I actively embrace and support recycling and green awareness, which helps to reduce landfills and heal the earth.
Object Poems, a term borrowed from the Surrealists, may describe some of my assemblages. By isolating, arranging and creating new contexts I hope to transform discarded, commonplace and weird objects into creations that inspire wonder and curiosity.”
|
|
