Kirstin Ilse
https://www.instagram.com/kirstinilse/
https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/kirstinilse
I chose these three works for “Art Heals: Transforming Ourselves and Our World,” because the layered technique resonates this idea in key ways. The technique is layered, giving the picture through levels that come forward and recede back, all under the inner glow of moonlight cast through the image with a large holographic moon. Dusk in the woods is a time of mystery, color and emotion. A tree is more apparent by the light around it than the bark it is made of. There are trees at every layer of these works, but the top layer gives mainly the glow of the air around the trees, the light of the moon; the reticence and quiet of the mind at night.
Dye painting on silk is an ancient technique that produces intense color and hard dynamics of chaos and control. A fundamental "feeling in your bones" for physics and chemistry is the underpinning for successful mastery. I typically paint with two hands full of mop quill brushes, each brush loaded with a different color. I drop dye into dye, wet-on-wet, using rubbing alcohol instead of water for a vehicle, as it makes the color move faster. Painting color into color, pools of dye moving across the threads, being sucked into dry areas, controlled by masks, resist lines, and sometimes other chemistry, I create pictures of the collusion of natural forces.
SUSAN JONES
https://www.instagram.com/susanjones4732/
When the pandemic hit last spring, I couldn’t go to the studio and for a while I really couldn’t work. Until then I had mostly used my iPad for Life Drawing, but I began trying my hand at landscapes, at first, mostly from other people’s posted photographs. These are three of the earliest ones. I like the medium particularly because it takes up no real space, only pixel space and the images can be scaled and printed to a variety of sizes. And setup and cleanup is a breeze.
Peg Kane
Painter
Malden artist
I began over a year ago sketching faces of kids held at the southern border ( from photos on the web). That led to clay faces, paintings and now, collages, incorporating the clay faces in wooden containers/ boxes.
Peg Kane
Anne Katzeff
Pastels
Brief Description of Work
This drawing is based on a dream I had about sitting atop the Grand Canyon,
watching several eagles of different colors soaring in the air. The dream taught me
to be present in the process of creating and not rush to the "finish line".
Artist Statement
The Earth is sacred to me. When I begin a painting, the moment the pigment touches the paper, my mind slows down, and I enter a peaceful, meditative state. As I paint, I become deeply immersed in my surroundings, and the joy of playing with color and light fills me. These are sacred moments—when I feel both awe at the beauty around me and humility at being part of something greater than myself.
Website https://www.askdesign.biz/
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Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/annekatzeff/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/annekatzeff_askdesign/
Fine Art America https://anne-katzeff.pixels.com/art
Lidia KENIG-Scher
Intuitive Artist
What started as a desire to paint a sunrise became a source of deep karmic healing. For in contemplating the art and noticing its powerful color palette and spiritual healing properties, I knew that what I created was helping me process a recent and very difficult interaction with a loved one.
Colors have a very particular vibration; the color turquoise and the mineral with the same name both embody the energy of wholeness. Magenta vibrates with the energies of harmony and emotional balance. Gold is the quintessential color of healing; it symbolizes spirituality, higher understanding and communion with Source; with All That Is. Blue, the dominant color in the painting vibrates with the vastness of the sky, conferring a sense of peace, serenity and connection to a higher consciousness.
From conception to completion, both in creating the art and finally in meditating with it, I was able to come to a place of peace, deep love, healing and trust in Divine timing. There is a post on the blog with the same title as the painting, https://wp.me/pwP90-1yg
There you will find a bit more about my healing process and what the images meant to me. You may find a different connection to the art yet you will have similar healing effects. If you are drawn to it, this painting will help you and offer beauty, love, joy and peace to your home or business as well.
An Artist Statement:As an intuitive artist, I create what I am guided to do in the moment and after a meditation. The title and narrative come during a post-completion meditation.
Website: www.lidiascherart.comSocial
Instagram: www.inktr.ee/lidiascherart
Facebook: Facebook.com/LidiaScherArt
I accept private commissions
781-643-2758 | LidiaScherArt@gmail.com
Barbara Kibler
In this long year of isolation, fear, sadness and sometimes anger my art has been my joy and in many ways my savior. Painting has given me hours to create, relax and meditate as our lives closed in on me, on our families, our friends and our world. Before this agonizing year, my paintings usually interpreted places that I knew well—whether a light airy day on a distant hill at Millennium Park—a sultry, quiet path in Allendale Woods--wandering wetlands at Brook Farm--the thousands of majestic trees in nearby Arnold Arboretum--or the many beautiful parks, lakes and forests of New England. These nearby places gave me inspiration to paint the many complexities of nature: the changing light, vibrant and quiet colors, cycles of the seasons, and the mysterious relationships in the world around me. I have always been fascinated by trees and their magical and intricate branches that sweep the earth, soar upwards and embrace the surrounding space. Having grown up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the complexity of trees and the ever-changing beauty of nature are my passions. They inspire my creative energy and bring my art to life. This difficult year has enabled me to paint my passions but with different interpretations. My work continues to embrace the natural wonders in nature but in new ways that speak to the agony and isolation we feel and our hope to move beyond our twisted lives. I feel that my “Open Spaces” (painted last March, 2020) was the beginning of my series of Twisted Trees/Twisted Lives. Just as our immediate world was closing in on us, several friends shared with me photos of their recent trip to the Grand Canyon. I was intrigued by the cascading colors and wide-open spaces. I began to interpret the deep canyons, rolling hills, high mountains and strange trees in my paintings. In April, I was invited to paint with other artists in “our home studios” two or three days each week. During our many hours painting together, we have shared our feelings, our aspirations, our isolation, and our work with each other. We created a marvelous healing space and a lasting bond among ourselves. My paintings began to express some of the feelings crushing in on so me. My first “official” Twisted Tree/Twisted Life –“Tangled Branches” was painted with subdued colors and perhaps a hint of changes to come. I investigated the desert Junipers found in the western states. In my paintings, the trees grew larger as their trunks and limbs twisted and expanded. My colors emboldened. I was unwilling to allow the pandemic to destroy my spirit, my energy, or my life. Painting with new friends became a space for being myself and for giving order to my fractured life.Throughout this year I have painted seven Twisted Trees/Twisted Lives paintings. I found that these strangely entwining Juniper trees spoke to how uprooted and twisted our lives had become. They expressed my wandering thoughts, my fears of sickness or dying, my sadness in not hugging my children or grandchildren, my frustration at not walking closely with others. Initially these twisted trees---beautiful but haunting---were the center of my paintings and expressed my ruptured life. Later in the series, I introduced figures. One painting expresses the “Loneliness” a young child must feel. Other paintings show our desperate desires to be with others, our collective loneliness, and our hope to “Climb Out” of this terrible isolation. This series embraces my passions for trees in a complex world—it’s changing seasons and colors, light, and mysterious energy. Finally, as “Spring Arrives” we begin to hope. Will we visit one another again? Will we hug our children and grandchildren—our friends—and our far-away families? Perhaps I will travel to wide-open spaces with strange trees.Painting this series of Twisted Trees/Twisted Lives has soothed my soul. Painting helped create a healing place for me. I have met new friends and shared collective feelings of sadness, desires and hopes for when this terrible pandemic is over. Strangely this difficult year has brought new joy as my art has become my guiding light. My art has saved me from the isolation, depression, and loss that so many have felt this year.
Leah Kolidas
Painter
Art Heals statement:
I love the theme of the show as I believe that art is a healing force. I know art has been healing for myself and I've seen it be a powerful source of healing for others. I've always found it difficult to express myself with words. Perhaps that is why I was drawn to art from a young age. Art allows me to express the inexpressible, the things I have no words for. As I've grown older, creating intuitively allows me to process difficult feelings and experiences. I might not even know what it is I'm feeling, until I begin to let it flow out of me. After creating, I feel a sense of relief and peace.
One of the things I love about sharing art is that the viewer may viscerally connect with a piece and see their own story in it. I love that I can share that sense of hope, inspiration, and healing with others. People can connect through themes, symbols, and colors that have personal meaning for them and find a deep sense of peace that can't be found in other places. I've been asked many times to create pieces for people who are grieving a difficult loss. For those who are suffering, a piece of art can be healing in a way that words cannot.
In each of these pieces, I felt a sense of healing and hope in creating them. The images of the night sky, birds, whales, and the ocean, often come up in my artwork. The convey to me a feeling of awe, wonder, and beauty that connects me to the wider world. My wish is that the viewer connects to that sense of hope and finds healing in my work as well.
An Artist Statement:
When I heard the expression that "all art is self portrait", I understood. Even though I'm not painting myself in my work, I think each piece I create is an expression of a moment I was in at the time. For me, art is a way to express the inexpressible. Things I'm feeling, poems I've read, some conscious thoughts and some subconscious ones, find their way into my artwork. I feel an affinity for certain symbols, like trees and birds, that often come up in my work, and can be seen in these pieces. Instead of telling the stories I see in these pieces, I love to leave space for the viewer to find their own stories within them.
Website URL: http://www:LeahKolidas.com
Your Social Media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leah_kolidas/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/art.by.Leah.Piken.Kolidas
Susan Kottler
Photographer
Art Heals statement:
Transformations
The pandemic has transformed us. We've had hardly any real world social or work events in the past year, and the pace of life has slowed. Now we have time to watch the sun move across the sky through the days and the seasons, and to notice the wildlife and plant life sharing our habitat.
We don't travel, and not many people are out and about. So I have gone from wandering in cities to capture street scenes, to hiking through woods and fields to find new subjects for photography. It was only by returning to the same places over and over that I began to see plants whose movement through the life cycle inspired a new group of photos.
This series is At The Edge of the Pond. The plants I've watched have survived changing conditions, including the harsh winter, and now await the renewal of spring. I am making photographic portraits of them through this unusual year.
Susan Kottler is a photographer who strives to create pictures which tell small stories about the human condition. After years as a mental health clinician and a parent, she has gravitated to street photography because of her interest in how people live, what they build, and how they relate to the environment around them. She has exhibited her work widely in the Boston area.
"I like to think that every one of my photos tells a small story. I’m particularly interested in observing how people live, what they build, and how they relate to the environment around them, whether it’s natural or constructed.
It seems to me that life is made up of a succession of moments, some very meaningful, and most quite ordinary. Wandering with my camera, I try to capture moments that make a time and a place unique."
Kwan Kew Lai
Painter
In the midst of the pandemic, during a respite in a remote part of Vermont, we immersed in and surrounded ourselves in the mysterious, vast, and unfathomably peaceful universe. The immenseness and the unspeakable beauty of the Milky Way sends a subliminal message that our presence on this earth is insignificant and fleeting, we are mere particles and a blip in the passage of time, barely making a mark in the long history of our mysterious cosmos.
I painted the Milky Way from a photograph my son, Charles FitzGibbon, took. He caught it in a moment in time. Looking at it in the sky, I could feel myself melting into its vastness and immenseness and becoming one with it. The pandemic when it is over will be a blip in the history of our universe.
I am not a professional artist, I paint when I'm inspired. This is my first self-portrait.
I am an author and to me, an artist builds a story through her paintings instead of through words. When one is done, one can sit back and enjoy the fruits of one's work.
Website: www.kwankewlai.com
Social media: https://www.facebook.com/kwankewlai.authorpage/
twitter: @KwanKew
Kwan Kew Lai, MD, DMD, FACP
Harvard Medical Faculty Physician
New book: "Into Africa Out of Academia: A Doctor's Memoir"
Book debut: "Lest We Forget: A Doctor's Experience with Life and Death During the Ebola Outbreak"
Ruth Leiberherr
Painter
Statement for “Art Heals” (March 2021)
My social distancing began in September 2019 when I was diagnosed with cancer. Fifteen
months of intense treatments followed, which was physically and emotionally hard on me and
my extended family. Not quite half way through my treatments the pandemic changed not just
my world, but the whole world. But I had a bit more energy again. I went back into my studio and began to paint again. Being creative, plus the physical process of applying colors to canvas saved me and helped me heal during my continued treatments and isolation. I tried to deal thematically and spiritually in my art work with some of the pain and emotional turmoil, but also with the tremendous outpouring of
love I received from many people. In my paintings “Forest Bathing I” and “Forest Bathing II” I tried to capture the healing I felt in my meditative walks in nature by myself and with
friends. I especially loved the serene atmosphere of a specific grove of tall pine trees. I hope the
viewers will experience some healing from my art work as well.
Facing You:
I used to paint a lot of portraits - of family and also commissions for customers. Now that people's faces are hidden behind masks, looking at some of my portraits in connection with the exhibit "FACING YOU", was a wonderful way to go back and have a conversation with loved ones I am not able to see in person right now and also with some who are no longer with us.
"Two Friends" is a portrait of my younger daughter Eva, when she was about seven or eight years old and her closest friend at that time.
"Andrea" is a portrait of my older daughter in her late teens.
Both my daughters are adults now with their own families. One of them lives close by and the other one in Switzerland. I miss being able to hug and hold them all.
"Portrait of My Father": My father died quite a while ago, but the portrait brought back dear memories of him and my mother. I recently published a picture book about his life that I wrote and illustrated, The Boy Without A Name. My father was one of the contract children or indentured child laborers ("Verdingkinder") in Switzerland. You can read more about it on my website
https://www.ruthlieberherr.com/news.html
I am not interested in private commissions of portraits, but if you fall in love with any of my (non portrait) work on my website, please contact me.
My website:
My email:
Jennifer Leigh
Drawing - Prints - Paintings
I am consistently drawn to the human form and all of the expressions it can convey. I love the challenge of trying to capture a person's essence or state in a particular moment. I've studied bodily movement and anatomy extensively, both as an artist and a practicing Massage Therapist, and I always come back to figurative work.
I have a formal background in Printmaking (BFA Syracuse University), specializing in stone lithography and textile collagraphy. Over the years, I've enjoyed worked with oils, acrylics, watercolor, ink, graphite, charcoal, and clay. Most recently - now that I am a mother of two small children - I've been producing digital work, as it is more practical for this time in my life. All five pieces that I submitted for this show were recent forays into this new medium. The pandemic and the social unrest of 2020 have both forced me to re-evaluate what I find inspirational or pressing, and to ultimately grow as an artist.
Professionally, husband and I are co-inventors and product designers for various niche markets. In my "free time" between running our household, overseeing remote learning, and managing our family business, I am currently working on writing and illustrating a series of whimsical children's books.
“Antwon” and Breonna” and they are both digital paintings, made in Procreate, sized 13”x15.”
These pieces were created as a memorial to these individuals, who died at the hands of law enforcement officers.
They are not for sale, but individuals may contact me for reprinting rights.
Website:
Social Media:
Jane Levin
Painting
Statement for Art Heals:
Making paintings is one of the ways I record what I see in front of me. These past many months I have had more elongated moments to consider things closely, such as the interior of my own living space and the outsides of other buildings. This painting is about confusion and disarray early in the pandemic, and a really nice moment in the midst of it.
I have come to art in different ways, through technical illustration, graphic and logo designs, architectural drafting, and painting. Painting allows me to indulge my sense of order but also to immerse myself in color and stroke.
For me, the work of painting is abstractly observing and absorbing visual information. My art is recording the information with nuance. I am drawn to compelling compositions, both in portraits and interiors. Paths of light guide my first marks on the canvas. I try to balance looseness with underlying structure in my work.
When not painting I write grants and otherwise consult to non-profit organizations.
Accepts Private Commissions: jane.levin@verizon.net
Bette Ann Libby
Mosaic
Bette Ann Libby’s studio, is filled with a curious assortment of raw materials, finished sculpture and mosaics, works in progress, notebooks of drawings, clippings, books and photos of places, and objects which fascinate and inspire her.
Many of her narrative sculptures & mosaics embody her own mythology, which explores well-being, womanhood, and passages, using irony, humor, and metaphor to create the unexpected. Shapes are exposed or forms are hidden. Rhythm and grace are found. Mosaics are created when fragments are united in a new order. Balance is restored from chaos; often meanings are intentionally elusive or ambiguous. Libby’s work evokes memories of the familiar, which lead to improbable realms of the mind.
Living in the Massachusetts community of artists and ceramicists for the past 34 years, Bette Ann has been fortunate to be the recipient of the most beautiful handmade and unique glazed shards from these artists. She has been in many juried and invitational gallery exhibitions of clay and art, created many public community mosaic projects.
Balibby@gmail.com
Www.Betteannlibby.com
GREAT SHORT FILM:
Jessica Parsons Lomelí
https://www.instagram.com/artbyjpl/
Art brings joy when it can be hard to find. Art brings hope, light, rest, and calm. My paintings offer a respite from a busy world or a busy mind. With flowers, landscapes, and seascapes I aim to provide a momentary escape.
Painting during a pandemic can feel frivolous. Unhelpful. Pointless. But every painting I created in the last year has brought someone a smile, a lift to their spirit, or at the very least a short pause from their stress. In this way, painting is the opposite of frivolous, it is vital and deeply necessary. Art heals.
Michelle Lynds-Schwerin
Photography
Girl with a Hoop Earring - The famous painting by Vermeer was my inspiration. This is my more contemporary take on his painting.
LIVE OPENING RECEPTION!
ELAINE HAWKES speaks on Art and Healing.
Cellist SARAH FREIBERG ELLISON performs
Special presentation by artist JOHN WILLIAMS
LIVE on Ch 96 (Comcast) Ch 30 (Verizon)
and Online: