Vignette: Monica Barnett

“Thoroughbred Stallion” by Monica Barnett, Graphite, 40x30in, 2019, $975

In Kentucky, you will find horses as a subject in the work of many artists. It seems particularly inevitable for painters. Perhaps it is the power and speed, or the movement even in more relaxed moments, that draws them. For Monica Barnett, it seems to be all of these things.

“I have been an artist my entire life, and while I have focused on animals in my drawings and paintings, my work is centered on horses.”

In one image we have an anatomical study suitable for a veterinary text, and in another, the equine forms are highly stylized as figures on a spectral carousel, uneasily situated in an undetermined fantasy space that elicits the opposite of the expected reaction to a child on a carnival ride. The subjective use of color even lends the human child in the image a slightly sinister aspect. 

“Carousel Ride” by Monica Barnett, Acrylic on wood, 48x48in, 2019, $3000

Barnett was for many years a Part-time Staff Artist at The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times, where she created drawings, maps, and charts for daily news articles and was a page designer for all feature sections, The Saturday Scene, and the Sunday Magazine.

In March of 2019 Barnett was in the Huber Farm Winery Art and Wine "Stella di Luce" Show; in May she was in the Mother's Day Spring Art Show at Mellwood Art & Entertainment Center; and early March through late May she had a drawing in a juried show in Lexington at the Living Arts and Sciences Center.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: Berea College, B.A., 1986, drawing and sculpture.
Website: monicawbarnett.wordpress.com

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“Mare and Foal” by Monica Barnett, Acrylic on wood, 48x24in, 2019, $975.

“Cougar Outlook” by Monica Barnett, Graphite, 24x30in, 2019, $500

“Cougar Outlook” (detail) by Monica Barnett, Graphite, 24x30in, 2019, $500

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 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.

Vignette: Sharon Weis

“Color Slice” by Sharon Weis, Oil paint on birch plywood, 13x42in, 2019, $1200

would that we could wake up to what we were
when we were ocean and before that

to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all----- nothing

-       From “Singularity” by Marie Howe

Are landscape painters drawn to nature as a subject because of a spiritual affinity, or do they discover that affinity through the act of painting nature? Such chicken and the egg queries may indeed miss the point, but we come across that relationship between nature and spirituality all the time. By quoting this Marie Howe poem, written in tribute to Stephen Hawking, Sharon Weis lets us know in no uncertain terms that her practice may be nothing less than a search for understanding about the very beginning of life. Hawking was a scientist, but Howe is a poet and Weis a painter, and both of these artists find beauty in the level of discovery in the work of the world-famous physicist. 

Weis describes her act of creation, the action of painting in language that reinforce that connection between rationality and the spiritual:

“Moved by lavish paint and painters, I love the lush, liquid stokes attainable with oil paint. I use birch plywood as it is the ideal surface to accept the viscosity of paint I work to acquire. For color and compositional rhythms, I look to the natural world for inspiration.”

“In my latest series, the sea is lush, I play with composition and perspective shifts using panoramic views, emotive color correlations, and natural rhythms set up by sea and sky to create aesthetic divisions of space. However, it is the physical texture of the paint itself, the charge of paint I push into the clouds or the clean, thick, fluid stroke added to the sea that excite me most when creating these works.”

“Sugar Fix” by Sharon Weis, Oil paint on birch plywood, 13x42in, 2019, $1200

“These paintings heighten our connection to the sea, intensifying our vast range of emotion in the form of water, land and sky.”

Weis teaches Art at Walden School. In the past two years she has exhibited at Ann Tower Gallery and New Editions Gallery in Lexington KY as well as Art Prize in Grand Rapids, MI.

Some of the work we see here is currently on public view as part of the Spring Invitational at Kleinhelter Gallery, 701 E 8th Street, New Albany. The exhibit runs May 10 through July 6.   

Weis has exhibited in the Louisville area for years, and her work was shown in two International Shows; Septemberfest International at Period Gallery in Omaha and Across the Atlantic in Dublin Ireland. 

She is included in these corporate collections:

Barnstable Brown Center for Diabetes ~ Lexington KY
Bluegrass Eye Center~ Crestwood KY
Brown Forman Corporation~ Louisville KY
Caritas Medical Center~Louisville KY
Cobalt Bravura Lofts~ Louisville KY
Commonwealth Bank and Trust~ Louisville KY
Masonic Homes~ Louisville KY
Pediatrics South~ Lexington KY
Saint Joseph Hospital~ Lexington KY
Summit One Partners~Louisville KY
Square One Offices~ Louisville KY
The Center for Women and Families ~Louisville KY
Time Warner~ Louisville KY
Turfland Medical Clinic~ Lexington KY
U of K Woodland Glen Dormitory~ Lexington KY
Ventas, Inc~ Louisville KY
Waterfront Park Place Club Room and Lobby~ Louisville KY
Woodward Hobson and Fulton~ Louisville KY

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BA, University of Louisville
Website: sharonweis.com
Gallery Representation: Kleinhelter Gallery (New Albany), New Editions Gallery (Lexington)

“Tide Pull” by Sharon Weis, Oil paint on birch plywood, 13x42in, 2019, $1200

“State of Contentment” by Sharon Weis, Oil paint on birch plywood, 13x42in, 2019, $1200

“Begin After” by Sharon Weis, Oil paint on birch plywood, 13x42in, 2019, $1200

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 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.

Vignette: Amy Welborn

“Summer Sunflowers” by Amy Welborn, Oil, 24x30in, 2019, $1200

Nature is often connected to divinity. Even among agnostics there is often found a deep spiritual relationship to the natural world.

The other common spiritual association is in the act of creation – the act of making art. Painter Amy Welborn sees herself as part of the centuries-old tradition of painting landscapes as an expression of religious belief. 

“My work is typically created from oils in vibrant colors and lush brushstrokes. God's creation and man's connection to the land never cease to provide inspiration for me. Everywhere I look, I find God's joy in design. When I slow down to pay attention to what I see, I find the essence of holiness; God's thumbprint in all creation is evident. Translating my awe for God's amazing planet into paint is my lifelong passion.”

An engineer by profession, Welborn began painting with oils as a hobby, but eventually was encouraged by friends to begin exhibiting in community art festivals. As do so many plein air painters, she finds order and pattern in her observations. The hand of humankind imposes some of that discipline: the occasional fence line or a field furrowed for planting. But the greater harmony emerges from the relationships between the elements: the rolling hills seen beyond the fields, and the trees that break the horizon to reach into the sky.

Although Welborn’s style is typically naturalistic, she incorporated aspects of primitivism in her mural for the Dixie Highway Kroger in Louisville, "Bird’s Eye View of Louisville".

Welborn teaches children and adult art classes through the Arts Association of Oldham County. 

Recent Exhibitions:

2017 - “Joie de Vivre”, group show with Louisville, KY artists and Dijon, France artists, Louisville Metro City Hall, KY
2017 - “Joie de Vivre”, group show, Dijon, France
2017 - Governor’s Derby Exhibit, juried exhibition, Rotunda of the Capitol, Frankfort, KY 

Amy Welborn with the Dixie Hwy Kroger Mural

“Snow & Sycamore” by Amy Welborn, Oil, 8x10in, 2018, $400

Public Collections:
Owensboro Medical Health, Henderson Clinic, Henderson, KY
Owensboro Medical Health, Madisonville Urgent Care, Madisonville, KY
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Cincinnati, OH
NICoE Camp LeJeune, Jacksonville, NC
Riverside Hospital Surgical Expansion, Newport News, VA,
Owensboro Medical Health, Henderson Clinic, Henderson, KY
Lanthier Winery. Madison, IN

Home: LaGrange, Kentucky
Education: Bachelors of Science in Civil Engineering, Purdue University
Website: PaintingsbyAmyWelborn.com
Gallery Representation: Gallery 104 (LaGrange)

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“Brush of Spring” by Amy Welborn, Oil, 24x24in, 2018, $650

“Graf Farm Revisited” by Amy Welborn, Oil, 11x14in, 2018, $450

“After the Storm” by Amy Welborn, Oil, 16x20in, 2017, $800

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 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.

Vignette: Macel Hamilton

“Rooster” by Macei Hamilton, Acyrlic on wood, 12x18in, 2018, Private Collection

“Serious” art people are often skittish about paintings of animals; simple, straightforward, portraits of pets are the work of “hobbyists” they might say. Yet the concept that any artist’s practice draws directly from their immediate environment and experience is a common point of discussion in any critical appraisal.

Macel Hamilton resides in the knobs of Casey County, Kentucky, a rural area in in which her menagerie of12 dogs and 12 cats is not that unusual. So why shouldn’t these plaintive yet precocious subjects serve as a valid expression of Hamilton’s environment? Hamilton was raised in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, so the attachment to the land and its non-human inhabitants comes naturally to Hamilton.

A nurse by profession, Hamilton has only been painting for about 4 years, and for having painted for so brief a time, there is authoritative us of the brush in capturing the details of this “Rooster” that is compelling. Nothing is overworked. The relative lack of experience seems to have merged with the intimate understanding of subject to finish a simple, naturalistic expression of wariness in this Bantam’s face. It is as individual as any portrait of a human subject.

Hometown: Ligon, Kentucky
Facebook: Macel's art

“Dobey” by Macei Hamilton, Pastel on sanded paper, 14x10in, 2019, Private Collection

“Horse” by Macei Hamilton, Acrylic on wood, 12x10in, 2018, Private Collection

“Baby” by Macei Hamilton, Acyrlic on canvas, 16x20in, 2018, Private Collection

“Low Rider” by Macei Hamilton, Acyrlic on canvas, 12x16in, 2019, Private Collection

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 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.

Spotlight: The Academy at LVA Graduating Seniors, Part One

“Bliss” by Madelynn Hicks, North Oldham High School

On May 10, Louisville Visual Art will open the 2019 Academy Exhibition for high school students. This is the first of a two-part look at the senior students included in that exhibit.

“LVA has made a major difference in my life” - Alexis Fromm

“Mushroom Bride” by Natalie Stastny, Atherton High School

In the work of these three graduating seniors we see a preoccupation with a deconstruction of the human form. Bodies are modified through dismemberment, the peeling of skin, or a grafting of mushrooms onto the epidermis, not for horrific effect but as metaphorical signposts for the adolescent introspection building a foundation for identity. Each of these artists is still finding themselves, searching for who they are by peeling themselves like an onion.

Whether or not the exact images are self-portraits is beside the point; all art expresses the aesthetic concerns of the individual. In “Moulting” Madelyn Hicks depicts a woman’s torso, bereft of hips, legs, or feet, stripping away skin. The piece may be inspired by a case of post-beach vacation sunburn, but it elicits feelings of discomfort in the viewer in part because the woman so casually changes her physical form without any preciousness or hesitation.

Natalie Stastny’s “Mushroom Bride” wears a garment made of the plants, or is the fungus a part of her skin? The ambiguity is compelling, but the choice of color, gesture, and expression do not suggest distress. Whatever the reality, the bride seems happy enough.

A print from Alexis Fromm is slightly more gruesome. It shows a naked female torso in which the skin has been pulled away to reveal an oversize eyeball surrounded by teardrops. The merging of vivisection and whimsy is pure surrealism. We want to turn away but we cannot.

These are arguably the more overt examples of a fascination with the physical self that might be claimed as a teenage stereotype, but the level of confident, even sardonic self-awareness and forensic examination is impressive. One of Fromm’s favorite subjects seems to be animal skulls, although she extends them into fantastical forms beyond the mundane farm inhabitants whose brains they once held. “Hellboy” imagines the horns and stretched earlobes of the comic book character.

And Hicks’ young person eating Tostitos from the bag while prone on their bed in violation of how many rules of civilized behavior is not quite “Ladylike”, but the image suggests that they could care less about outmoded nomenclature intended to restrict all natural impulses for comfort.     

Meanwhile, Stastny is fond of entangling her figures in organic forms that seem to bind and blind them. We assume it is not because she doesn’t like drawing eyes that she inevitably shields them from view.

All three artists are fearless in exploring the plasticity of the body, lending it malleability that aligns them with Modern and Post-modern movements.

Alexis Fromm has been in LVA classes since 7th grade. She will be attending Spalding University with a $6,000 Merit Scholarship and a projected major of Studio Arts.

“After my first class with Rodolfo Salgado Jr., I fell in love with Printmaking and have taken every printmaking class with him that was available. Before LVA I did not know what printmaking was and I didn’t know the large variety of art that was in the world besides clothing, painting, and drawing. LVA has inspired me to go to college and pursue my love for art.”

Fromm has worked as a volunteer for Steam Exchange Community Arts Center over the past four years. With Steam Exchange she attended the Mayor’s Give A Day to help clean out their building and clean up around the Smoketown neighborhood.

Madelyn Hicks has taken LVA classes every semester for all four years of high school: Studio Art with Rudy Salgado, Drawing 1 and 2 with Wilma Bethel, Painting 1 with Dennis Whitehouse and Sunny Ra, and Painting 2 with Sunny Ra, Julie Leidner, and Tenille Novinger. She was accepted into several schools and will be attending The University of Cincinnati’s DAAP program in the fall and majoring in Industrial Design 

Hicks was accepted into GATES (Gifted and Talented Educational Services) for art, and the Governor’s School for the Arts (GSA) 2018 program. She also won an LVA competition to have her work featured on the 2018-19 season poster for The Kentucky Opera.

“LVA truly taught me how to make art. My teachers all taught me different techniques and styles of creating that shaped me into the artist I am today. The classes I took with Sunny Ra in drawing and painting established the foundations I needed to discover my perspective as an artist and work not only technically but also conceptually. Sunny definitely went above and beyond for me and was extremely helpful in building a portfolio for both GSA and college auditions. The different perspectives and skills I learned through LVA have provided a strong base for me as a creator.”

Natalie Stastny has taken Academy at LVA classes for three years: 2 Digital Art classes with Lilly Higgs, one Drawing and Painting class with Sunny Ra, and one Drawing and Painting class with Julie Leidner. She has been accepted at and received scholarships and/or financial aid for the Art Academy of Cincinnati, the Columbus School of Art and Design, and Eastern Illinois University.

Stastny is also involved in National Art Honors Society and the Atherton High School Art Club and earned a varsity letter in Swimming. She has represented Atherton on WLKY and the PBS News Hour talking about the school’s transgender bathroom policy.

“My favorite class with LVA has been the Digital drawing class. I’ve taken it twice mostly because the program itself helped me understand digital media but also because my teacher (Lilly Higgs) was very encouraging and helped me practice digital drawing with tablets, which at the time was a resource I did not have access to at home.”

“I loved all of my classes and think they have helped me a lot in both my personal and school related art projects. Lilly Higgs and Julie Leidner especially seemed to want to talk to me and get to know me better. I won’t forget the kindness that those teachers offered me. It also allowed me more practice time during the day and a space where I can just be creative and also learn the basics of art at the same time.”

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“Frida Kahlo” by Alexis Fromm

“Moulting” by Madelynn Hicks, North Oldham High School

“Siren Queen” by Natalie Stastny, Atherton High School

“Lady” by Alexis Fromm

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 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.