Abstract | Galatea Fine Art

Jo Smith

Artist Statement:
“I've been painting barns throughout my career. In 1994 I moved to Western MA and lived on a sheep farm for 7 years. During this amazing time I became extremely connected to the agricultural landscape. 32 years later, I now live on land that once was a dairy farm.

Barns fascinate me for their openness, history, and working spaces. I love the way light filters through the walls of barns and the beauty of the evidence of being in constant relationship to the elements. Walking into a barn feels almost cathedral-like to me, a great symbol of our dependence on the land and a place to give thanks for all the
land gives to us.

This series of paintings is inspired by the tobacco barns of the Connecticut River Valley, with their slatted sides and striking geometric forms. In this work, I explore color, texture, and abstraction, reducing these familiar structures to bold, minimal shapes that invite viewers to see barns in a new way.”

Artist Bio:
Jo Smith is a painter from Western Mass. She is known for her bright colors, sense of whimsy and a depth that is profound. This curious combination can be understood when you learn about Jo.

Jo studied art in college and lived off-campus twice, once in NYC with 2 artists, (Elaine Reicheck and Niki Berg) and once in Kenya with the school for international training. “My focus in Kenya was on a cross-cultural analysis of art through field work with the Pokot tribe and in Kisii, at a soapstone quarry. I became deeply interested in undeveloped and unschooled forms of art as well as the universal need for art and self-expression. I started to think deeply about my time in NYC and my time in rural Africa”. It was the juxtaposition of “high art” and the universal human need for expression that dominated Jo’s mind. She was heavily influenced by artists like Joan Miro whose playful forms and bright colors crossed the cultural barriers and talked about such dualities and contradictions. These themes are still part of her work today. “I am constantly being pulled between making “good art” and just allowing myself to paint intuitively and focus on self-expression and our human experience”.

After college Jo started teaching art. In 1994 she moved to Western Mass to paint full time. In 1995 she went to graduate school for Art therapy as she became interested in the unconscious mind and its contribution to art making. She continued to focus on understanding that there is a deep drive within all of us to be creative and that this drive is ancient and crosses all cultures but she also started to believe that art making is essential and healing.

Even as Jo became an Art Therapist and worked with clients in psychiatric settings she was painting. “I have always had a studio of
my own, it is essential. I am constantly in conversations about one’s relationship to self, others and the community. It is the intersection of the human condition and the creative drive that fuels my own
creative process.”

Jo currently works and paints at Jo Smith Studio Gallery located at 9 market street in Northampton, MA. Her gallery is open to the public the 2nd Friday of the month (during Northampton Arts Night Out) or by appointment. “Being open on Northampton Arts Night Out gives me the opportunity to interact with our local community and have these

www.josmithpaintings.com
Insta: Josmithpaintings

Irene Stapleford

Artist Statement:
Upstretched branches, linear form, living presence:
“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.”
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Inspired by landscapes, dreams, and memories, I make paintings incorporating energetic figurative gesture, layered color, organic geometry such as tree branches, triangle or dot patterns, and sometimes digitally manipulated figures or objects via image transfer.
Upstretched arms of tree branches, tracing imperceptible yet undeniable growth and linear form, have been a recurring theme in landscape and abstraction. Working outside painting directly from the subject allows particular, distinct “personalities” to emerge. Trees affect our quality of life, yet are overlooked and underappreciated: unsung climate change heroes, property value anchors, intelligent elders, and constant, gracious companions. My paintings have been transitioning to more powerful massing of tree forms in silhouette, framed against bright, constrasting skies. I look forward to seeing where this shift in palette and tone takes me.

Artist Bio:
I’m a practicing artist and graphic designer, earned my BA and MFA in fine art, and have taught classes in both fine art and graphic design at the deCordova Museum, Worcester Museum of Art, Greenfield Community College, and University of Southern Maine. I have lived in New England for the past quarter-century, and am staying for the foreseeable future, for love of the trees, seasons, and compelling scenery taken in while driving. I currently reside in Merrimac, MA with my two daughters and one cat.

irenestapleford.com
wantknot.etsy.com
@irene.stapleford

Alan Strassman

Artist Statement:
I apply the early 20th century aesthetics of “straight photography” and “modernist photography” to capture unmanipulated images of the real world in the 21st century. I capture the monumentality of the ordinary, whether it is an abandoned building or everyday street life. The images pose questions rather than answers.

Whatever the subject, I never compromise careful attention to line, form, composition, texture and light. The finished product must be a compelling image. I compose in the camera’s viewfinder and use the computer like a traditional dark room to make adjustments of exposure, contrast and color balance in order to more closely approximate what the human eye can see.

Artist Bio:
A serious amateur for many years, photography became Alan Strassman’s second career in 2008. His work has been widely exhibited and is owned in private, corporate and museum collections. Recent exhibitions include group shows at the Attleboro Museum, Griffin Museum, Emerson Umbrella Arts Center, Danforth Museum, Cambridge Art Association, Panopticon Gallery and Connecticut Academy of Fine Art and solo exhibitions at The Harvard Graduate School of Education and The Newton (MA) Free Library. His publications include Signs of Life, an illustrated history of photography and New England Mill Towns, contemporary images from the birth place of the industrial revolution in America. (www.blurb.com )

Alan has studied art history, drawing, sculpture, ceramics and photography at Princeton, Westchester Art Workshop, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Maine Media Workshops. Also, a graduate of the Harvard Business School, he has been active on the Board of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (President Emeritus) and on the Board of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Chairman Emeritus).

www.alanstrassmanphotography.com

460B Harrison Ave. #B-6 | Boston, MA 02118

617-542-1500 | director@galateafineart.com

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Jillian Vaccaro

Artist Statement:
My art is an exploration of my long-term memory with a focus on familial relationships. Each work functions as an emotional response to my past, fabricated to depict the fragility and loss that permeates the act of recollecting. Before I begin a new work, I situate my mind in a previous time. I bring myself to this place through writing, reminiscing with loved ones, navigating through souvenirs and familial archives, and revisiting significant environments from childhood and my adult life. When I arrive in the past mentally, I respond with my materials intuitively. The use of personal souvenirs are woven into my practice as they function as objects of remembrance and assist my recollections. I share intimate parts of my personal history so that others may feel connected through a similar sense of vulnerability, appreciation, loss, and reflection in their own life.

Artist Bio:
Jillian Vaccaro is an interdisciplinary artist and teacher, and currently works out of her studio in Somerville, MA. She received her BFA in studio art from Emmanuel College in 2014 and graduated from the low-residency MFA program at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2021. Jillian works across media describing memories from her past experiences. She is also a dedicated art educator, teaching visual arts in Boston.

www.jillianvaccaro.com
Instagram: @jillianvaccaroartist

James Varnum

Artist Statement:
I am an experimental painter. My paintings are combinations of layered colors, movements and various textures on traditional watercolor papers and on substrates such as Yupo and Terra-Skin. Watercolor pigments, liquid graphite and alcohol inks are my paints. I use a variety of materials to create texture: plastic wrap, waxed paper, masking fluid, salt, and spray bottles with water or alcohol. I move the pigments with various tools including brushes, combs, squeegees, and palette knives. Finally, I add lines and marks with ink or graphite. Occasionally I cut up my work and weave two paintings together to produce a new creation.

By adding wax paper or plastic wrap to the pigments as they dry, various textures evolve. When I start my drawings, I follow these contours to produce interesting lines, shapes and maps upon the dried image.
The method creates a “give-and-take relationship” that emerges and guides my work during the process. I start with ideas about color, texture, line, and composition with a limited palette. I realize that when I create lines and marks on my work, I engage in a deliberate process of emphasizing the topography of the painting while using inks or graphite. Often this revelation in structure becomes a meta-cognitive and unifying experience. It is an absorbing and meditative process.

In my work I have always been conscious of creating a dichotomy: soft edge/hard edge; light touch/pressured touch; straight mark/curved mark; warm tones/cool tones while using color and line.
The artwork is the result of my interpretation of the communication that happens during the process of painting. For me, there is a story that is woven into the creation of my paintings. In the end these patterns, symbols and maps will be discovered by the viewer. My intent is for viewers to create an association, or an interpretation of the painting that triggers their own narrative.

Artist Bio:
I was a creative child who liked to sit at the dining room table and draw. I took art classes at the local library during the summer in the small, rural village where I grew up, in Southern New Hampshire. After high school I studied art in Boston and San Francisco, where I earned a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute.

I soon learned that I could not support myself and a new family as a fine artist, so I went into education, earned a M.Ed. and became a classroom teacher. After nine years, I wanted to specialize my work with children. I earned a M.S. in communication disorders and worked as a Speech Language Pathologist before retiring in 2011. During those thirty-plus years, I kept in touch with my creative side by taking art classes through various continuing education organizations.

Upon retiring, I promised myself that I would pursue art once again. I kept that promise and am an active artist in the Boston area. I belong to several other art associations and actively exhibit my paintings. I classify myself as an experimental watercolor painter.

jcvarnumart.com

Don Warner

Artist Statement:
After a hiatus of over 40 years, I started painting again in 2020. I primarily do portraits, and figurative drawings and paintings. My work is not intended to record life like a photograph, but to express a sitter’s thoughts as I see them.
I paint in an expressionistic style, that gives me the freedom to not copy nature, but instead to use it as a starting point to convey my vision, that can sometimes be at odds with natural appearances. My tendency is to work fast that can lead to "mistakes", but also to new discoveries.

The artists that have influenced me the most are Van Gogh for his revolutionary use of color, and ability to reflect mood and emotion; Modigliani for his simplification of shapes, removal of extraneous details, and uneven application of paint; and Schiele for his boldness, and expressive lines and marks.

https://donwarnerart.com

Carol Wontkowski

Artist Statement:
There is design and order in the universe, in spite of and apart from human influence. Gravitational pull, the seasonal changes, cellular replication, animal behavior, biological homeostasis, oceanic tides, the miracle of human gestation, mathematical equations and constructs all reflect and point to a Designer. Amidst the complexity of it all, as we peel away the outer layers, there often emerges a simplicity to what we see, think or feel. And the result can be surprisingly beautiful.

Though we live in a world marred by man’s pain, sorrow, violence, injustice, greed, prejudice and hate, there is still much beauty; beauty in the common things, everyday things around us. My desire is to create the most evocative image possible; to portray common things, often, in an uncommon way, in order to capture some of the essence of the Designer and to transport the viewer, no matter how briefly, to a more tranquil and serene view of this world.

I am drawn to both natural beauty and patterns that are naturally created, the everyday things we too often take for granted. It is a challenge the render this common beauty in an uncommon way or to simply woo its essence from what is seen.

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” -Dorothea Lange

Artist Bio:
Carol began her career in commercial photography, moved into freelance and in the last ten years has exhibited throughout New England, in New York, on the East Coast and California. She is represented locally in Boston and the Boston area and the Canterbury Shaker Village Museum Gift Shop. A member of the Cambridge Art Association, Wickford Art Association and the Attleboro Arts Museum, Carol’s work has won awards and is in private collections. She is a published finalist in Photographer’s Forum magazine’s “Best of Photography", 2011 through 2014 and 2016, and is a published artist in the Winter 2016-2017 issue of Studio Visit magazine. She offers photography lessons privately as well as to groups through galleries in Southeast Massachusetts.

carolwontkowski.com

Jay Wu

Artist Statement:
I never have much to say about my work. They are not really about anything other than maybe an attempt to offer homage to the ordinary objects and places that are special to me. I feel that I have already projected myself into the work during the process of making and therefore find it difficult or unnecessary to supplement the work with words afterward. Thus, instead of having a statement about the work, it is more about the need and the want behind the work. When I sit in front of you, I could not help but look at you with awe, thus I look at you timidly as if I am on a mission to get it right. No longer am I painting with a theme in mind or a statement to make, but with the hope and yearning to offer the proper love and respect.

jaywuartwork.com