Vignette: Macel Hamilton

Macel Hamilton, “Love”, oil, 11in x 14in, 2021, NFS

By profession, Macel Hamilton has been a Registered Nurse for 34  years, but seven years ago she started teaching herself to draw, and within a year she was painting. A native of Beaver, located in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, her simple portrait work captures a rural sensibility. Whether through technique - Hamilton favors natural lighting and has a knack for capturing it - or subject - each portrait is of a family member or close friend - the artist expresses the prosaic existence of the Appalachian region.

“My main goal with my art is to improve and learn. I really enjoy my art when I feel like I am learning and improving.”

Macel Hamilton, “Uncle”, oil, 11in x 14in, 2021, NFS

Not that the inspiration is the cliche of rural unsophistication. In “Husband”, Hamilton paints a spouse who was a professional studio musician for over 50 years with Capitol Records, working with many famous musicians in the 1960s, and an “Uncle” who was an Old Regular Baptist preacher in Eastern Kentucky. The focused energy present just before he begins a sermon is palpable.

Hamilton’s gift for rendering people with such unsparing realism doesn’t prevent her from capturing their humanity, it elevates it. There is empathy in the exploration of every hair and wrinkle in the flesh, and great warmth injected into the details. With “Love’, the deep connection between a middle-aged man and his aging father acknowledges the complicated emotions in familial relationships while hinting at the pain of witnessing the passing of generations. In 2021 “Love” was exhibited for six months in the Kentucky Capitol as a part of the Team Kentucky Gallery.  

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Macel Hamilton, “Husband”, oil, 16in x 20in, 2020, NFS

Macel Hamilton, “Old Rusted Lock”, watercolor on paper, 16in x 20in, NFS

Macel Hamilton, “Uncle”, oil, 11in x 14in, 2021, NFS

Macel Hamilton, “Life Is Good”, acrylic, 16in x 20in, 2019, NFS

Written by Keith Waits

Entire contents are copyright © 2022 by Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

Artebella On The Radio: August 12

Painter Julio Cesar is our guest this week, talking about his new exhibit now on view at Revelry Gallery. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 each Thursday at 10 am to hear Keith Waits talk with artists on LVA's Artebella on the Radio.

Julio Cesar Rodríguez Aguilar was born in 1976 in Holguin, Cuba. Enthusiastic about drawing from a very early age,  he studied at the Vocational School of Art Raúl Gómez Garcia, and the Professional Academy of Visual Arts in Holguin, graduating in the specialty of Painting, Drawing, Photography and Artistic Weaving in 1995. Julio also became a professor of the arts and has experience in book illustration, stage and costume design, muralism, and more. 

His new solo show, Perpetual Contours, opens at Revelry Gallery on August 6 with a reception that evening 6-9 pm.

Artebella On The Radio: July 15

This week we spoke with Louisville native but Brooklyn resident Dean Christensen about his new solo exhibit at Galerie Hertz opening on July 18. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM or stream on Artxfm.com Thursdays at 10 am to hear Keith Waits talk with artists.

“Smile” New Work by Dean Christensen opens July 18 at Galerie Hertz with a reception from 1-4 pm and runs through September 5th.

N. Dean Christensen (aka Deansace, b. 1992, Louisville, KY) is a figurative painter living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Christensen's body of work is an ongoing commentary on the influence of the smartphone in our lives.

Using satire, social media iconography, and techniques that mimic in-app editing tools, he compels us to examine online persona, the human need for connection and approval, the inescapable pervasiveness of advertising, and the hidden constraints of social media. 

Vignette: Shawn Marshall

“Autumn Skies” by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 36x36in, 2019. Selected for the Mazin Juried Exhibit

Watching Shawn Marshall’s work over the last few years, it is interesting to observe that she has moved away from abstraction and into a sort of updated impressionism. Most artists move towards the abstract, finding that it emerges from the representational, yet Marshall has allowed a looser, more spontaneous approach to her mark making to embrace a more robust and muscular reading of the landscape.

Landscape has always been important to this artist: “ (It is) an outlet to let go of preconceived ideas and rules of how I interpret and portray the world,” she states. “Using palette knives and brushes, I work to create atmospheric depth on the canvas with a focus on the horizon. Though the horizon can never be truly be reached, it is a metaphor for hope, wonder, and perseverance.”

Where Marshall once isolated the horizon as a point between two adjacent fields of color and texture meant to show earth and sky, she now articulates detail in the ground plane that force depth and distance. Where we once read the surface texture in two dimensions, we are now welcomed into a definable space of rough and treacherous terrain. And the shift does not feel a repudiation of her previous exploration of the fundamentalism of identifying the geometry of natural forms; rather Marshall seems to be led by the medium and a new vigor in her practice that has enabled a retrograde point of view.

Marshall is a member of ENID, a collective of women sculptors named in honor of Enid Yandell. In recognition of her 150th birthday the group has participated in two recent exhibits. But that was only the beginning of what is clearly a fertile time in her practice, and her work will be available for viewing in several locations in the coming weeks:

October 2019 - September 2020 - Selected Artist "Art in City Hall", City Hall, Louisville, KY

June 2019 – December 31, 2019 - Selected Artist for the AC Hotel - Louisville, KY

November 3 – December 26, 2019 - Mazin Juried Exhibition, JGallery, JCC, Louisville, KY

 November 8-10, 2019 - A painting and photo exhibition of work by artist Shawn Marshall and Emmy Award winning filmmaker Michael Fitzer, Tim Faulkner Gallery, Louisville, KY.

November 14, 2019 – January 11, 2020 - 3rd Annual Small Works Juried Show - Art Room, Fort Worth, TX

Marshall’s work is in numerous private collections including PNC Bank, Pittsburgh, PA, Commonwealth Bank, Louisville, KY, and the University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington, KY. 

“Northern Sea” by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 48x48in, 2019

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: 1992, Bachelor of Architecture, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY; 1996, Master of Architecture, Minor Fine Arts, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; 2009, Master of Art in Teaching, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY
Website: www.shawnlmarshall.com
Instagram: shawlmarshall
Gallery Representation:
Moremen Contemporary (Louisville) www.moremengallery.com 
New Editions Gallery (Lexington),www.neweditionsgallery.com

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“Cool May Morning” by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 30x48in, 2019. On exhibit at AC Hotel in NuLu, Louisville

“Dreamers” by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 16x40in, 2019

“Crimson Fall” by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 12x12in, 2019

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2019 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

Are you interested in being on Artebella? Click here to learn more.

Open Studio Weekend Spotlight: Megan Bickel

“You’re Put in A Place Where Everyone Has The Same Delusion” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 22x29in, 2019

Sometimes artists can speak quite well for themselves, with an Artist’s Statement of such depth and detail that it can be difficult to make any comment on the work in question without seeming at best redundant and at worst meaningless. Megan Bickel is a contemporary Renaissance woman, a multidisciplinary artist who writes and thinks with precision and clarity so that her very thoughtful words are arguably insightful enough to challenge the need for further observation. Of her work in her upcoming exhibit at Quappi Projects, Bickel writes on allusion and illusion:

“Being primarily literary, an allusion can be commonly articulated as an expression designed to call a subject to mind without mentioning it explicitly. It can appear as an indirect or passing reference. The author is allowed freedom in the expectation that the reader is aware of the reference made in the “allusion;" but as an object of literature, it provides safety or security for the reader in requesting the use of the readers’ imagination. Thus, the readers are limited to their own experience or consumption— they are safe to play in deception or truth, because they know the origin of the falsity provided by an allusion.

An illusion —of course—is a trick. Perhaps it appears as camouflage, or perhaps it appears in the process of convincing a viewer that they are witnessing something. It can also appear in the cultivating of a false belief, but however it appears the one in control of the creation of an illusion is the maker. An illusion can be as benign as an illusionistic still life, or as malignant as propaganda. No matter the moral positioning, the illusion is an object of convincing.” 

You can read the full statement on her website, but Bickel appropriately places a burden of interpretative responsibility on the viewer before she concludes:

“Though my approach to media differs from object to object, I would generalize that this body of work utilizes haptic curiosity as a means with which to encourage visual, ethical, or empathic critique of contemporary media images. This skill of inviting curiosity into our daily consumption of images may become an important skill as we approach a period in history where we have to understand and decode how our images may be deceiving us— and just as quickly as we learn to create those deceptions.”

All of which seems to pose the question of how much trust we can place in Bickel’s images. Her work does not accommodate passivity, and we might go further and question the worth of any art that doesn’t provoke us to think differently.

“There Was No Template for His Perceptions” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 44x60in, 2019

Bickel is the embodiment of the restlessness of contemporary artists who are proactive in creating opportunities for themselves and others. In 2016 she co-created Five-Dots, a visual arts blog that covers the Midwest Region, and in 2017 she founded houseguest Gallery in Louisville, an example of the growing trend for non-traditional exhibition spaces. She most recently showed work in PLAY THAT ONE BACK, JOHNNY, Megan Bickel and Louis A. Edwards, Erie Art Gallery. Erie, Pennsylvania.

Bickel is an MFA candidate at the University of Louisville and will be participating in the Louisville Visual Art/ Hite Art Institute Open Studio Weekend November 2 and 3. She also is included in the Open Studio Weekend Juried Exhibit opening at U of L’s Cressman Center on November 1, 6-8pm.

Her new one-person show, We Are inside the Fire, runs November 15 through December 20 at Quappi Projects, 827 West Market Street in the NuLu neighborhood.

Education: University of Louisville, Master of Fine Arts Candidate, 2021
Art Academy of Cincinnati, BFA, Painting, Magna Cum Laude, 2012.
Website: www.meganbickel.com

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“TOO FLAT APARTMENT” by Megan Bickel,. Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 3x4ft, 2018

“To My UFO Friend” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 44x60in, 2019

“Aesthetic Think Tanks” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 29x36in, 2019

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2019 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

Are you interested in being on Artebella? Click here to learn more.