Featured Artists

Artsy Shark presents the vivid, energetic portfolio of British abstract artist Marc Lawrence. Learn more about Marc’s work by visiting his website.

What are You Working On?

Colour is my key to the door of an Aladdin’s cave. When I treat colour effectively, it’s like revealing a treasure trove of exciting and unexpected things in a secret place. The art of painting colours on top of and adjacent to each other to me, lends an artwork a particular depth of feeling unobtainable in other mediums.

I’m currently working on a series of abstract paintings where my use of colour is less thick than normal. Using acrylics gives me the option of laying colour with varying degrees of viscosity which can yield markedly different results. The thinner the layer then the more transparent the paint will be, which in turn alters the colour and feel of the underlying layer.

Consequently I have found that I use less effort in physically scraping back layers of dried paint using sand paper, a technique I have come to appreciate that allows a unique look and feel to the canvas surface. This then allows me more time for colour consideration and mark-making. Although this latest process is less labour intensive, the overall result of this technique reflects the energy and spontaneity of a chemical reaction.

These new explorations in colour challenge an inherent resistance I had to using colours unhindered. It has been a liberating performance and experience for me and I view these new paintings as each having a life and character of their own.

What Inspires You?

US artists Robert Rauschenberg and Mark Rothko and UK artists Howard Hodgkin and Patrick Heron have all produced work that amazes me. Their use of colour is markedly different but they each have a clear fascination with how it can be manipulated in order to convey emotion.

The location of my studio at the foot of the North Downs, South East England serves as a huge motivation and I can create highly charged works here. So, to simply reproduce a scene would be to do it no justice at all.

The amazing thing about abstract art is that it’s incredibly accessible. You don’t need a degree to appreciate something that uplifts, saddens or makes you want to look harder. British artist Brian Clarke sums up his motivation with stunning simplicity:

‘So long as I remember the power of liberating oneself through imagination and through the subjective interpretation of the world I feel I can go anywhere.’ Brian Clarke

What Are Your Goals?

In the near future my paintings will include imagery produced by silk screen printing directly onto the canvas. I’ve built my own screen printing studio in my garage and I’m keen to combine these two disciplines. My older screen prints portray a contemporary, urban and edgy style and this is a look which will soon inhabit my canvases. Transparency and colour can be manipulated in different ways through printing and it is these relationships that fascinate me with my art and is an obsession that I can see myself pursue vigorously for a long time yet.

Developing productive relationships with clients is a skill set I’ve recently learned to appreciate. Selling is not just a one stop shop, if someone admires your work then as an artist you should understand why in order to provide your audience with more product without selling out. Learning the business side of being an artist is just as important to me so I thank Carolyn at Artsy Shark for the unending advice and guidance.

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 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.