“Time, memory, and the natural world always play a key role in my work.” – Marcia Lamont Hopkins

By applying a poetic and often metaphorical language to her photographic images, Marcia Lamont Hopkins opens the door to the unknown, to multiple realities, both real and artificial, so that one questions what is really happening.

Her images establish a link between the landscape’s reality and the artist’s imagination. While this could, to some extent, be said to be true of any artist using landscapes, Hopkins pushes the limits of our perception of what is real. Each object or environment seems entirely natural and plausible, yet the juxtaposition within the artist’s gauzy, dreamlike atmosphere creates an uneasy sense of mystery. Is our understanding shifting in relationship to time, memory, or some other reality that we can’t quite define?

"Casaubon" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 | BUY NOW — *"Casaubon" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 |* *BUY NOW*

In her artist’s statement, Hopkins explains it this way: “The series, Causabon’s Illusion, crafts a series of metaphorical vignettes rooted in elements of magical realism and the mind’s tendency to search for all-inclusive answers. In George Elliot’s Middlemarch, Edward Causabon spends his life in a futile and absurd attempt to find a comprehensive explanation for the whole of civilization’s knowledge and mythologies. Deluded, he believes that he alone has the key to humanity’s searching, an illusion which may be reflected in our culture today.”

"The Beekeeper" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 | BUY NOW — *"The Beekeeper" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 | BUY NOW*

As part of her 60WRD/MIN project, Art Historian and Chicago Tribune art critic Lori Waxman wrote of Hopkin’s work: “We like to control animals and nature, but when they get beyond our understanding things tend to get interesting. Hopkins envisions overgrown forests, historic graveyards, farm animals, and occasionally people, often in combination, in impeccable digital prints that blend multiple shots into believable wholes. The weirder and more convincing, the better: a sheep enmeshed in a dense forest seems as if it and the trees are made of the same stuff, a lama in a rolling meadow becomes one with the horizon and the clouds.”

Hopkins currently has a solo exhibit at Gratz Park Inn in Lexington, KY.

*Burnaway: The Voice of Art In The South, March 27, 2017

Hometown: Lexington, Kentucky
Education: BFA in Film and Fine Art and a Ph.D. in Psychology.
Website: http://www.marcia-hopkins.squarespace.com/

"Cemetery Sheep" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 | BUY NOW — *"Cemetery Sheep" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 | BUY NOW*

"Wedding" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 | BUY NOW — *"Wedding" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 | BUY NOW*

"Pyramid" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 | BUY NOW — *"Pyramid" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 | BUY NOW*

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

Photography, Mixed Media

Vignette: Melissa Hall

Josh Jenkins · June 13, 2017

“Integrating my photography with encaustic processes blurs the line between reality and narrative.” — Melissa Hall

"Look Outward" by Melissa Hall, 24x36in, photography, encaustic, oil paint (2017), $820 | BUY NOW — *"Look Outward" by Melissa Hall, 24x36in, photography, encaustic, oil paint (2017), $820 | BUY NOW*

Melissa Hall is “drawn to locations and objects that are patinaed, worn, and wear their age like a badge on their surface, displaying their history. These decaying spaces spark my imagination and allow me to tell stories of the lives that could have been lived between the walls.”

"The Weight" by Melissa Hall, 24x48in, photography, encaustic, oil paint (2017) $940 | BUY NOW — *"The Weight" by Melissa Hall, 24x48in, photography, encaustic, oil paint (2017) $940 | BUY NOW*

We see female figures that are literally imprisoned within physical circumstances: a mermaid struggles inside of a ticket booth aquarium. The cubical is ludicrously small for her, but even if it were more spacious, it would remain confining. And another woman occupies an attic space, her body disappearing into a window, and even if we cannot see her face, we might, without too much difficulty, imagine a look of longing in her face. In any event she seems ready to depart; she clutches ropes tied to a brace of travel cases, her life further confined within even smaller spaces.

“My imagery evokes conceptual undercurrents from myths, twisted fairy tales, and simple aspects of everyday life. My work is built by combining photographs with translucent layers of encaustic medium, oil paint, and pastels. Integrating my photography with encaustic processes blurs the line between reality and narrative.”

In the work we see here, that layered effect is perhaps most obvious in “Stand,” an image in which the woman is not constrained by space. She stares out at a horizon filled with the ocean, typically a symbol of boundless freedom. Yet how is it that even in this instance, this figure also feels somehow limited? Hall plays with our expectations, crafting a tension and speaking to troubling issues of identity.

Hall has a solo show, Aggressively Fragile, running June 13 – July 21, 2017 at the MS Rezny Gallery in Lexington, KY. There will be a Coffee & Artist Demo on July 8th, 11am-1pm, and an Artist’s Closing Reception July 21st, 5-8 pm, in conjunction with the LexArts Gallery Hop.

Hometown: Lexington, Kentucky
Education: BS Computer Science & Mathematics
Gallery Representation: MS Rezny (Lexington)
Website: http://www.melissathall.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melissathallstudios/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissathall/

"Endure" by Melissa Hall, 21x36in, photography, encaustic, oil paint (2017) $820 | BUY NOW — *"Endure" by Melissa Hall, 21x36in, photography, encaustic, oil paint (2017) $820 |* *BUY NOW*

"On Display" by Melissa Hall, 24x36in, photography, encaustic, oil paint (2017) $820 | BUY NOW — *"On Display" by Melissa Hall, 24x36in, photography, encaustic, oil paint (2017) $820 | BUY NOW*

"Hurry Up and Wait" by Melissa Hall, 24x36in, photography, encaustic, oil paint (2017) $820 | BUY NOW — *"Hurry Up and Wait" by Melissa Hall, 24x36in, photography, encaustic, oil paint (2017) $820 | BUY NOW*

Painting

Vignette: Barry Burcaw

Josh Jenkins · March 17, 2017

*Burcaw standing next to one of his sold paintings.*

Geometry is the mathematical method of understanding specific spatial relationships and forms through numbers. Humankind requires it to build the society they occupy, but is also can be applied to less concrete forms, such as the construction of music. In the paintings of Barry Burcaw, architectural vistas are rendering in abstract terms that are schematically precise, but the structures don’t seem bound to bedrock.

The connecting forms could be the levels of skyscrapers stretching out to the far horizon while simultaneously obscuring that line, but Burcaw cites music as an influence as well, so that one is forced to ponder the shapes and forms as elements within a symphony; layers of notes and phrases meticulously constructed on the page in an academic method. Yet, when played, the score lifts away from the cold, analysis of the blueprint to become something that feels organic and heightened. Musical and visual harmony become metaphorical companions as Burcaw’s strategy with color and composition do the same for the viewer.

*"Blue Plateaus" by Barry Burcaw, 50 x 50in, oil on canvas (2016)*

Burcaw recently exhibited work at Jenkins Eliason Interiors. He is now preparing to offer a selection of his paintings as giclee reproductions. Burcaw paints on a large scale, and he hopes making them available on a different scale will be a smart marketing choice. “I have realized that if the price of an original isn't a problem the size often is and vice versa.”

Hometown: Palisades, New York
Age: 73
Education: BS in Graphic Design, University of Bridgeport, CT

"Vanishing Point" by Barry Burcaw, 50 x 50in, oil on canvas (2016), $3200 | BUY NOW — *"Vanishing Point" by Barry Burcaw, 50 x 50in, oil on canvas (2016), $3200 | BUY NOW*

"Global Warming" by Barry Burcaw, 50 x 50in, oil on canvas (2016), $2800 | BUY NOW — *"Global Warming" by Barry Burcaw, 50 x 50in, oil on canvas (2016), $2800 | BUY NOW*

"Parthenon" by Barry Burcaw, 50 x 50in, oil on canvas (2016), $4500 | BUY NOW — *"Parthenon" by Barry Burcaw, 50 x 50in, oil on canvas (2016), $4500 | BUY NOW*

horizon

Vignette: Marcia Lamont Hopkins

“Time, memory, and the natural world always play a key role in my work.” – Marcia Lamont Hopkins

Vignette: Melissa Hall

“Integrating my photography with encaustic processes blurs the line between reality and narrative.” — Melissa Hall

Vignette: Barry Burcaw