Painting | Galatea Fine Art

Carol McDonald

Artist Statement:
In my work as a printmaker, tugging at the threads of our shared humanity, I address issues of community, life, transition and communication. An evocative visual vocabulary is created through images that support our well being by giving visual form to the issues and experiences that have the power to connect us.

Artist Bio:
Carol MacDonald is a printmaker, teacher and community arts organizer. Her work has recently been exhibited in ImMIGRATION, Musee des Cultures du Monde, Nicolet, Quebec, Canada; 6th National Juried MGNE Monotype Exhibition at Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA; 11th International Printmaking Biennial Douro, Portugal; 22nd Mini Print International in Ithaca NY and Hyde Park, MA. Her work is included in many museum, corporate and private collections. MacDonald has been an artist fellow at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. She is a member of Boston Printmakers; The Monotype Guild of New England; Mapping Printmaking: World Book of International Printmakers; and Galatea Gallery in Boston.

www.carolmacdonald.com
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Robin MacDonald-Foley

Artist Statement:
I’m a multi-faceted artist with a passion for landscape themes in real and abstracted forms. After ten years of maintaining a studio, in 2004 I began working directly in nature—a haven of creative ideas ensued. Empowered by our ever-changing environment, my photography and sculptural work has been influenced by islands and coastal regions, places I’ve known since childhood. Documenting close and distal views, a myriad of colors, texture, and shapes, informs the way I process my art while recording time and being present in the moment.

Artist Bio:
A Quincy, Massachusetts native, Robin MacDonald-Foley received her BFA from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, where she developed her creative expression in a wide variety of mediums, including painting and the traditional art of stone carving. Her work has been included in many exhibitions both locally and nationally, and has been widely published in healing arts materials, educational textbooks, and sports magazines. Prior to her fine arts pursuits, Robin held a career in design and graphics. She currently teaches art in Mission Hill and is a recipient of the Mission Hill Fenway Trust Grant for art workshops. In 2019 she was awarded a Boston Harbor Islands Artist in Residence position, inspiring her work specific to islands and climate change. An avid bicyclist, Robin loves exploring the less traveled roads that inspire her art and writing.

robinjmf.com

Rebecca Anne Nagle

Artist Statement:
Training for many years and becoming a professional figure skater, the graceful physical process of creating visible rhythmic patterns on huge ice canvases strongly influences my work. That physicality energizes the edgy, abstract mark making to produce movement and emotional impact. Using pastels, acrylics, oil and a wide variety of collage materials, a bond is forged between the integrity of the subject matter and the empathy of the viewer. Materiality is ever prominent in my creative process and I often use it to define the why and how of a piece. What excites me is that through the material’s properties certain issues and challenges arise and as they are resolved they give a soulful birth to a body of work.

Artist Bio:
Graduating from the New England School of Art & Design and Northeastern University in the early 1980s with a degree in Visual Communications, I began my career in marketing before taking an unexpected turn—joining the World Premier Tour of Disney On Ice. That experience launched a career as a professional figure skater and choreographer, which continues to shape the movement and rhythm of my artistic practice today. After retiring from coaching, I remained connected to the sport as a United States Skating Official. In 2021, I returned to my artistic roots, earning a BA in Fine Art from Montserrat College of Art, where I continue to explore the intersections of motion, form, and visual expression.

www.RebeccaAnneNagleArtist.com
@rebecca.nagle.artist

Vicki Kocher Paret

Artist Statement:
As I wander, I see my surroundings through the medium of paint. I notice formal elements, and imagine a painting composed of the patterns, textures, shapes, color, and values I see. The imagery provides a structure for the process of painting. As I proceed from one painting to the next in a series, I explore color and spatial relationships, different marks and methods for rendering the image, and their effect on the tenor of the piece.

Elements in forests and urban neighborhoods are woven together to create a sense of place, recreating the feeling of being in these environments, where trees figure prominently. The woods are dense, yet there are pathways through – created by light getting through to the ground or openings in the tangle of things growing. I like finding the passage through the visual chaos. In the neighborhood paintings, trees provide a powerful visual counterpoint to the close space, patterns and colors of the buildings. Trees are an amazing element in the city – uplifting visually, spiritually, and environmentally.

In the end the paintings are the product of my desire to spend time with paint, and to portray the beauty I see in my encounters. Sometimes my subjects are beautiful in odd, quirky ways, and sometimes as expressions of the power of nature, and I am compelled to paint them in detail.

Artist Bio:
Vicki Kocher Paret currently lives and paints in Cambridge. She is a representational painter, exploring beauty in objects and place.
Her formal training began with a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University, and later she completed her Master of Arts in Teaching in Art Education at Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Her paintings are in numerous corporate and private collections, including Children’s Hospital Boston, Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Fidelity Investments Corporation, and Wellington Management Company, LLP.

Vicki’s past positions include serving as the Chair of the Art Department at Waring School in Beverly, and being on faculty at the DeCordova Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. She currently offers classes at the Arlington Center for the Arts and the Eliot School in Jamaica Plain.

vickikocherparet.com

Deborah Perugi

Artist Statement:

After a career in Graphic design, I returned to painting In 2016, and quickly transitioned to the non-representational practice of cold wax and oil. Painting in cold wax is an intuitive process adding multiple applications and/or removal of paint. Paint is usually applied with squeegees and palette knives with only seldom use of a brush. My latest cold wax paintings on cradle board present landscapes suspended in stillness, isolated terrains shaped by the undercurrent of change. My work is informed by artists such as Wolf Kahn, Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko, and Gerhard Richter."

Artist Bio: After receiving a BFA in printmaking from Penn State University, I made a career as an illustrator and information graphic designer for the Boston Globe. During this time I co-founded a local art exhibition at the Charlestown Navy Yard for Charlestown artists. Post college education includes graphic design, typography, photography and illustration. Attending Jerry MacLaughlin's worshop in the beautiful town of San Miguel Mexico in 2023 was a career highlight.

Deb has exhibited her abstract and non-representational work in numerous shows in the Boston area, including Concord Art Association, The Copley Society and Newton Art Association. Besides Galatea FIne Art, I am active member of The Copley Society of Art and registrar and webmaster for Newton Open Studios, a yearly open studios art fair in Newton, Massachusetts.

perugistudio.com

Nora Charney Rosenbaum

Artist Statement:
Each painting is a close view of the natural world. Sometimes, it’s a fragment – a view of trees, a slice of sky, clouds, the patterns of water lilies, reflections in water. Sometimes it’s the stillness, the light, the color. I use photographs that I take as stimuli. Then, during the process of painting, the initial concept evolves and other things enter in. For me, the process of painting is the solving of problems - color, form, texture, composition – and leads to something that was unknown at the start.

During the Renaissance and the Baroque periods in Europe, artists painted on copper, utilizing the reflective qualities inherent in the metal to accentuate a sense of spiritual luminescence in their two-dimensional works.

I use copper sheets and apply chemicals to create patinas. I find that the copper surfaces interact with the subject matter in ways that are both apt and surprising. I use impasto and transparent glazes together with lines I scratch into the copper to produce depth and luminosity.

noracharneyrosenbaum.com

Rani Sarin

Artist Statement:
My work is a constant push and pull of seemingly opposite forces and the search for the underlying harmony of our common human experience. I grew up in India, a dynamic world of vivid color and design. Rooted in India, I have lived and thrived in the US and Europe my entire adult life. My formal education is in Textiles, English Literature and Printmaking. My art is a joyful self expression that uses my hands, my inner life, and my experience of the physical world to create something new. As a printmaker who also makes handmade paper, and works with textiles , I am influenced by the complexity and traditional Indian approach, the spare Scandinavian sensibility and the experimental American approach that inform my unique use of color, space and form. My mixed media paintings and my collages are a vehicle to explore these diverse and seemingly disparate forces, revealing their underlying harmony.

I am done when my work sings.

https://ranisarin.com
@ranisarin2018

George Shaw

Artist Statement:
Philosophers essentially try to answer the question of meaning and existence. They go through incredible intellectual exercises but in the end ask the same question: why am I here? Even Marx, whom I believe many misunderstand, wanted an answer. There's an interesting thread that flows through Hegel, Marx and Jim Morrison which revolves around the phrase "I was doing time in the universal mind, when you came along with a suitcase and a song and turned my mind around." While in school I discovered the Existentialists and I took them to heart - wanting to strip everything away and live for now. EXIST. Meaning is found in existence. I also discovered "Eastern Religion" in particular Buddhism and Taoism. I'm a beginner and hope to be. But I still wasn't satisfied.

The physics of consciousness, in relation to modern quantum mechanics theory illustrates my intention in regards to my paintings. Many are starting to analyze what consciousness is and the physical connection between our consciousness and/or spirit and the universe, that we are truly interrelated. This concept fascinates me.

In the sciences, both physical and metaphysical, a singularity represents a unique and unfathomable moment when logic and non-logic become one and shift meaning. A singularity is simultaneously the beginning of time and the end, as well as its revelation. One both exists and ceases to exist. One is both infinitely massive and void of volume. The singularity remains a focal point in my work. While considering this, which harbors the most illogical of places, the desire for the most logical appears as a shelter, an anchor, a sanctuary: home. Gradually, in my works, a house-like shape emerged, and became an important element: a counter-point to a universe, poised on the knife edge of meaning and the precipice of the void.

The paintings are on panel, and consist of oil paint, oil pastel, dry pigment and wax medium. This combination produces a balance between luminosity and saturation, with a focus on texture and the relationship between minimal objects and space. The background and foreground is interchangeable, creating an illusive space, yet there are very distinct relationships between them.

I believe that the search for meaning is at the core of our purpose. This search is a duality. By giving meaning to our existence we give meaning and purpose to existence. The goal is to unite or reunite our essence with the universe out there, to become one.

Artist Bio:
George Shaw is an artist residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduating with honors from Massachusetts College of Art in 1983 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. George’s aesthetic interests also extend to his studies of classical architecture and restoration. Attending the Boston Architectural College he received a Certificate of Historic Preservation. He feels that within the classical idea in architecture one can establish proportion, unity and order to untamed reality, which is mirrored in his paintings and sculptures.

George is known for an architectural influence on his sculptures and paintings, employing classical facets of light and structure. His work is introspective and atmospheric.

georgeshawart.com