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Artsy Shark is pleased to present the masterful portfolio of talented painter Rosemarie Adcock.  See more of her work by visiting her website.

Rosemarie Adcock (née Oehler) studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago (1978-80) under Eugene Hall, an apprentice of the Russian painter, Alexander Zlatoff-Mirsky, who was himself an apprentice of the Russian master, Ilya Repin. After Hall’s death, she studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 1987). She received a stipend from the Minister of Culture of Baden-Wurtenberg, Germany, and studied printmaking and monumental painting at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe (1986-88) under the director Klaus Arnold, and also Max Neumann, guest professor for the class of Markus Lupertz.

Her exhibition of over 120 paintings covering Russians and the overthrow of communism toured in the United States and Western Europe for over 7 years. After the resulting acquisition of over $1.25 million in donations for orphans and impoverished families, the artist founded the charitable organization, Arts for Relief and Missions (1993).

Ms. Adcock’s paintings are in numerous private and corporate collections in the United States and Western and Eastern Europe. She has exhibited extensively, her most recent exhibitions at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Museum for Florida Women Artists and currently the 2^nd of two biennial exhibitions at the Museum of Florida Art. She lives with her husband, the Rev. Ed Adcock in central Florida.

Artist Statement

I love to paint traditional subjects with a modern approach that uses vivid color as well as some humor. Most all of my work is in oil, usually incorporating figures in natural environments, and as much as possible, plenty of animals. The anatomy of the figures may be exaggerated to enforce the structure of the compositions, intentionally causing the eye to traverse the entire canvas, much as one might find when viewing paintings of the Baroque period. I find that paintings in monumental format are most captivating when built around tightly planned lines of composition.

The surface of my figures incorporates changes of color temperature to create depth and form. For me, painting is sculpting with color; and much of that process happens spontaneously, even though the planning of a composition, both in its content and message, is not at all spontaneous. I thoroughly research the biblical themes in the original languages for accuracy and love bringing that timeless tradition to a contemporary audience.

I just finished a painting that is on display at the Museum of Florida Art from 11 November thru 4 March 2012 called Adam Naming the Animals and the Appearance of Eve. I designed it in a way to be a reflection of our contemporary culture, in that all of the birds and animals were chosen as the result of a Facebook poll. I asked people to vote for whatever animal they would like to see in the painting, and received a very long list of creatures. Some of them I had never heard of, such as the Philippine tarsier, and other animals I knew personally.

With the list in hand, I set out to design a composition that would include almost every request. My goal is to paint in such a way that will bring delight and reflect life in the way it was originally intended, and bring joy and beauty to life through my work.

Artsy Shark presents the portfolio of abstract artist Linnea Heide. See more of her expressive work by visiting her website.

I’ve been an artist / designer / visual communicator in some capacity all my life. I hold a BFA in Fine Art + Graphic Design and MFA in Visual Communications.

From 1996-2006, I was a ‘MADwoMAN’ working as an art director in a few advertising agencies, until I finally decided to fly from the corporate cookoo’s nest and began freelancing and creating from my home studio. Ever since, my life has been divinely blissful + creatively satisfying.

I’d like to think that my happiness and sense of peace is evident in my work. Within every painting there is a silent prayer.

My original, resonant abstract paintings are intended to stir the soul and are unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

I focus on elements of color, texture and light by using a good deal of metallic acrylic paint with a heavy impasto technique which creates light-capturing+reflecting effects and a muti-dimensional experience. I paint what I feel and I paint what I feel is missing in the world.

Artsy Shark is pleased to present featured artist Chantelle Sales, who celebrates color in her wonderful abstract work.

Coming from a graphic design background, I appreciate the fundamental ‘orderliness’ of well-executed design—the demonstration of skill that can take raw elements and combine them to create an effective whole, the message uncluttered by extraneous information. Despite this appreciation, I’ve often felt at odds with graphic design’s indelible connection to the coldly impersonal world of commerce, dictated by rules and expectations.

I’ve found liberation through painting. My earlier work was focused on figurative and photo-realism, but I soon found myself gravitating toward pure abstraction. However, my early attempts at abstraction seemed so unstructured and wild that they never felt truly ‘finished’ in my eyes. It was during this exploration that I realized that the thick acrylic paint I had been using was not the ideal medium for the new works I wanted to create.

It dawned on me one day to try using the acrylic inks that had been languishing in my paint box. And as I began to work with this new medium, I knew I had finally found the way. It was truly a ‘eureka’ moment: I now had a means with which to create something that united my disparate creative impulses—wildly unstructured versus tightly controlled, organic versus mechanical—all the while allowing me to hone a ‘craftsman’s’ work ethic.

I developed a customized palette of hand-blended gradients, using this palette to create vibrant compositions built on a ‘skeleton’ of pure line and shape.

My work is a celebratory result of this process. I see my work as a carefully executed ‘visual chemical reaction’—a ‘rainbow viewed under a microscope’ as it were—with each swatch in my palette acting as a molecule—vibrant, energetic and intricately linked with its neighbor. My ongoing challenge is how to find new ways of making these ‘molecules’ interact with each other—to create works that stand on their own and evolve over time, yet remain harmoniously connected to their predecessors.