71st Annual Juried Exhibition: Patrick Crofton

Alex, oil on three copper panels, 6 x 6 inches

I trained originally in South Africa as a graphic designer, and a lot of the restrictions of the adverising industry - extremely small scale, random cropping and folding, translation of color images into monochrome - I've tended to retain in my work. Much of my painting is done on metal panels, which I like not only for their contemporary feeling, but also for the historical association: the Romans made exquisite miniature portraits painted on gold and covered with glass, and Dutch artists prized copper as a smooth surface impervious to damp or warping.

After working in advertising for many years, first in Cape Town then New York,  I moved to Philadelphia to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. I'm now represented here by Artists' House Gallery in Old City.

Most of the panels I use for painting are zinc and copper etching plates, although I've also used steel. I sometimes treat the plates with acid for a textured, corroded surface but usually I sand for a slight key for retention, and then use either a transparent lacquer or an opaque aerosol metal primer depending on whether I want the metal exposed. The plates are cut to size on a jump shear and reassembled for the image to be transferred. My portraits are always based on my own photographs which I've either then redrawn or manipulated in Photoshop. 

71st Annual Juried Exhibition: Beth Shapiro Prusky

Playing with materials is an integral part of the beginning of some of my work. The delicious looseness of the acrylic paint as the it mixes with water. I know the formulas. They are old friends to me. 

Wonderfully, each time there is a freshness for me in how the brush carries the paint. Decisions about Mars black or Panye's grey give me deep satisfaction in the choosing. The mediums when added to the paint all have a signature like a finger print, it becomes an intensely personal adventure.

As I begin to explore a new idea I don't categorize a work as a drawing or painting. The final pieces are all drawings/paintings to me. My intention to create a painting on any particular day in the studio becomes subservient as the form emerges. 

The drawing comes in as needed, at the right time. Sometimes the emotion of subject as the form emerges dictates where I move next. This more than anything helps to move the process.

71st Annual Juried Exhibition: Mikel Elam

Labyrinth by Mikel Elam

The basis of my work is about identity, perception, race, and gender contrast. This narrative began for me as I evolved into adulthood and began to place myself within the spectrum of the world. Asking the question: Just how do I fit into this complex society?

I try to implement language and varying degrees of structure and deconstruction into my work and use the figure as a way of communicating information. I like to think of my work as a painted collage--a mirage of mixed emotions wrapped into some representation of the figurative world.

I don't always have the opportunity to work with a model so I use myself, photographs, and collected images that resonate with my thought process. The process is like making music or writing poetry. Sometimes I think several combinations of pigment and tools will work only to find an altered solution later. A lot occurs between the technical and my mind's eye.

I start with an idea that speaks to me. Sometimes I will draw out the concept on paper but I prefer going directly to canvas or board with brush and paint, allowing this action to be my working sketch. I am looking for spontaneity between the paint and other elements and like to incorporated different materials such as drawing tools, spray paint, oil, acrylic, enamels, and more. I also use tracings and incorporate images from previous renderings. The experimental occurs often. Everything comes together and the painting becomes a dreamscape to me.

71st Annual Juried Exhibition: Amanda Rombach

THE SCALE, Collaborative mural painted for the Santa Fe Community.
Artists: Natessa Amin, Amanda Dunham, Britt Kuechenmeister, AJ Rombach

I recently returned from a month-long-road-trip across the country. This marks my second trip in ten months, totaling in over 17,000 miles of traveled terrain. In addition to the healthy break I needed from my Philadelphia routine, these two journeys served as business trips in which I painted five independent murals and four group murals in New Orleans, Santa Fe, Minneapolis and Wolfeboro, NH.

The two trips have inevitably informed much of my work.  Many of the spaces and forms that take shape within my paintings and drawings, I have seen somewhere else, out there on the grid, on the field, --somewhere out there.

71st Annual Juried Exhibition: Cynthia Harvey

My art is largely an intuitive process incorporating different textures, colors, shapes and forms. It typically occurs organically with minimal planning and a lot of reactive decisions. They are often made quickly, sometimes only discovered after setting it aside for a period of time, then bringing it out again to look at with a fresh eye.
 

When I bring the painting out again, I can either continue with what I have going, or allow it to morph into new shapes and objects, turning it sideways or upside-down. I’ll often realize it’s not working at all and then paint over a good portion of it. I will still allow small sections of the previous layer to show through, giving me new potential forms to play with.

71st Annual Juried Exhibition: Roger Chavez

Untitled Still life #11, 2012 by Roger Chavez

In the past three years, I have returned to painting the still-life.

For me, the subject matter serves as a point of departure, allowing me to find my own forms through exploring the subject. The immediate accessibility of the still-life facilitates my focus on the objects themselves, their shadows, shapes, and the space they occupy.

In my process, I focus on the same object(s) over an extended period of time. In working on one subject over this stretch of time, the physical arrangement of the subject is not based upon a scheme for a potential source of new visual information, but to confront the subject matter as a whole.  Thus, the placement of the objects rarely changes, and this provides an environment to discover something new within the same objects and the space around them.  Each attempt to paint my subject matter becomes new and different. 

71st Annual Juried Exhibition: Nicole Michaud

What The Past Tells Us by Nicole Michaud

I consider my work to be primarily conceptual, with symbolic and process elements. Since I rarely have a complete vision of the finished work before beginning, I find it important to work in a medium such as oils, gouache, or collage. This allows me to layer and change the work as it progresses and inspires me. 

I work both with and without initial studies and combine painting from life with printed and found reference materials (old photographs, patterns, books, etc.). 

The original imagery is developed over several weeks, and I generally work on more than one painting at a time in order to allow for drying and the next intuitive step to reveal itself. Occasionally, I will work from a completely abstract ground, and respond to the work until the final imagery becomes clear.  Other times, I will begin with a primary reference or set-up and make additions and alterations, adding and removing features as the painting progresses. I also remove paint from the surface by sanding, scraping, or rubbing.

I find it useful to work in groups or a series, which allows me to come at a concept from multiple directions, or explore variations to fully engage in a topic. I often combine organic and inorganic forms, personal narrative, and pattern to symbolize the ways in which our lives, nature, the products of our modern world, dogmas, or other guiding forces collide and interrelate. With this series, I have incorporated landscapes modified from my personal history, representational and abstract spaces, and geometric forms. In these works, the geometric elements represent for me guiding forces, veiled messages, and generational patterns.