Gardens and flowers of every kind will grace all 4 walls of the Studio Gallery as Artworks Around Town introduces its FIRST ANNUAL WINTER FLOWER SHOW. Leaving behind the blustery cold of February, visitors can bask in an atmosphere of warm and sunny mid-summer, if only briefly. The show will open at the regular monthly Gallery Hop, Friday, February 3rd from 5:00 to 8:00. Gallery members will have their finest examples of everything floral on display. Not only the painters and photographers but the 3 dimensional artists including jewelers and potters will display pieces carrying out the theme.
The Gallery Hop is free and open to all. Artworks is located in the North end of the historic Centre Market at 2200 Market St. in Wheeling. Visitors will also enjoy refreshments and music.
Well known artist, Marilyn Phillis, who is a member of Artworks Around Town and the curator of the Studio Gallery, had some interesting information and comments about the history of floral painting, “Going back to the great masters of Renaissance painting, artists combined representational painting of flowers with still lifes, landscapes, and figurative works. Flowers were seldom the main subject but a natural part of the environment depicted within the context of the subject.
In the 20th and 21st centuries great changes took place in the art world and the sociological world. It was a time of experimentation and new thinking.
In our own time, most of us were students whose teachers set still lifes of flowers before us or took us outside to paint the beauties of gardens. Flowers were popular subjects for clients purchasing art, and the advent of competitive art exhibitions also offered venues for display, comparison and evaluation. Florals were IN!
Few serious artists of modern times paint floral subjects exclusively but use them in a general approach to form and concept. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, for example, shine today as just one example of his approach to painting his world. Charles Demuth captured the lushness of floral exotics while illustrator, Charles Reid, is captivated by the fragility and place in design of ordinary flowers. The growing understanding of Zen made a huge impact on flower arranging which affected floral design in painting. There is no end to using flowers as a conceptual element in painting.
Flowers are not just a feminine subject, but an element of color, shape and beauty that can be expressed in many different forms. Photographers have long relished the formal beauty of gardens or the color added to landscape forms by flowers. Artists are learning to look at a flower in a new way through design, color, space and placement. Floral painting is here to continue challenging today’s artists.”
Janet Rodriguez, Artworks member and watercolor painting instructor, loves to paint flowers and shares this enthusiasm in her teaching. She cites Art Nouveau artist, Louis Comfort Tiffany who once said that one can learn everything one needed to know about painting by painting flowers.
This is how Janet describes the watercolor process. “Flowers are simply fun to paint – the use of all the many colors in nature(nothing has ‘to match’) or the use of wet on wet techniques in watercolor that allow the paint to run, blending together forming unplanned leaves and flowers. This technique is both exciting and challenging. All of these painting experiences are creative enough to encourage the painter to continue, hopefully with success. If not, the artist can turn the page over and try, try again.
Sometimes success comes without planning-often after several hours of no success. Flowers may appear with a few splashes of color, guiding the artist to a completely new composition. That is when painting flowers is really fun and rewarding, and, without being trite, flowers make people happy, the artist as well as the viewer.”
The North Gallery will host the work of Shadyside High School students. Their instructor, Jeff Mamone, is also a member of Artworks Around Town.
For further information, visit the website, artworksaroundtown.org or call (304)232-7540.