Rebecca Clark

Perhaps because she lives on a farm in Massachusetts, Rebecca Clark draws her inspiration for her soft pastels from the bumps, slopes and curves of various elements found in the organic shapes of nature. In these forms she sees the endless possibilities for playfulness, quiet calm, eroticism and the pure celebration of color. Her images can impart feelings and emotions that are universal and encourage us to move from the concrete and real to the abstract and the invented and then back again.

Michael Eisemann

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1943, Michael Eisemann studied at the Academy of Art in Wiesbaden, West Germany. Upon his return to Israel he taught at the Art Institute in Bat Yam and later at the renowned Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem.

The art of Michael Eisemann is unique in that it offers the viewer not an inert object to be seen at a glance, but a document which is alive with the intricacies of the associations it weaves and suggests. Each work carries a central motif which is then developed and enlarged, the basic idea giving birth to satellite images which take on a life of their own while maintaining a resonant link to the main image. His work combines freely executed miniature versions of masterpieces by artists of the past and present. Through this process of selection, fragmentation and refinement, as well as their relationship with one another, these works assume a fresh identity. Renaissance portraits, Impressionist marinescapes, academic nudes and color filled works are variously arranged on the paper. Together they engage in a dialogue which underscores their collective abstract rhythms of light, color, texture and, above all, flattened, linear pattern. Eisemann’s calculated, almost mathematical approach to the scale, placement and rendering of each component - suggested by his use of graph paper - is tempered by playful, scattered counterpoints of colored brush strokes, stipples, doodles and caricatures, calligraphy, and even needlepoint designs. The varying influences of his Middle Eastern origins and his European education create an interesting blend of shape and color in his work.

Nissan Engel

Born in Haifa, Israel in 1931, Nissan Engel trained primarily in figural and representational painting in Jerusalem, Paris and New York City , each place exerting its influence on his style. Engel’s collages reflect his complex background and draw on all the traditions of the cities in which he has lived, alluding to both music and Jewish mysticism in what he sees as a celebration of harmony. The lively but subtle colors and rich painterly effects found in his art reflect a strong French influence, yet when he interlaces Islamic calligraphy and metallic substances, an exotic opulence appears which also reflects his Middle Eastern background.

Yale Epstein

Yale Epstein, a resident of Woodstock, New York, has developed a reputations as one of New York City’s most interesting and creative painters as well as a gifted and skilled printmaker. Epstein is an artist who explores the meaning of life through his love and commitment to the landscape. Experiencing earth, sky and sea in a profound way, he transcends the material world and creates a cosmic universe of order and beauty, which is reflected in his art.

Throughout his early developmental years as an artist in New York City, a small group of radical artist were making history by expanding the boundaries of modern painting and changing the concepts of art. They became known as Abstract Expressionists and created an environment of experimentation. Epstein was fortunate in that his teachers were part of this movement, Hoffman, Rothko, Motherwell, Reinhardt and Bolotowsky. From them he learned new concepts of color, gesture, formal balance and respect for the two-dimensional picture plane. Ultimately, he transformed these early influences into his own language.

Epstein’s work reflects his reaction to nature which is both spiritual and sensual. A noted painter, printmaker and educator, Yale Epstein’s career has spanned 45 years in the arts, and his highly detailed, contemporary works have been shown extensively throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. His work is also featured in dozens of significant corporate and public collections including the National Academy of Design, the Pew Charitable Trust, the Brooklyn Museum, the Library of Congress, Yale University and the Bibliotheque National in Paris. Among other noteworthy institutions, Epstein has also taught at the Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Connie Fiedler

Despite family objections, Connie Fiedler was irresistibly drawn to a career in fine art. Her indirect path involved sixteen successful years as an award winning professional photographer, before she allowed herself the excitement of becoming a full-time professional painter.

Painting in her expressive though realistic style, Fielder’s power is often felt in the large brush strokes rich in color and abundant in texture. Her process begins by choosing an inspirational scene. Drawing on her memories and several photographic elements of this minimal landscape, she creates a larger, more abstract painting in her studio. Inspired by Kahn, Whistler, Wyeth and Sargeant, Fiedler admires their contemplative manner, their ability to capture the mood of a landscape in a moment of time.

Intrigued with the fleeting sense of time and the changing light of the seasons, Fiedler tries to reflect these in her work. She is sensitive to the muted tones and the flowing minimalism of spring, winter and fall and is challenged by summer’s overpowering greens. Although Fiedler has painted landscapes throughout the world, she especially loves the Northeast and Tuscany, where variations in light and landscape continually delight and inspire her.

Lydia Johnston

Lydia Johnston’s oil landscape paintings reflect the natural beauty of southern Vermont, where she has lived for the past twenty-eight years. Much of her inspiration comes from the passing seasons and the fields and woods that surround her. One of Johnston’s favorite subjects is the meadows near her home. She is drawn to their continually changing conditions, the intense glow of a late day sunset, the quickly changing cloud patterns of a stormy sky, the lushness of midsummer, or the last blooms at the end of a season.

Johnston’s work is impressionistic. Her goal is to capture the mood of the moment. When weather permits, she paints en plein air. Her paintings create a sense of place without providing all the details, drawing you back continually to find something new.

Johnston is a self-taught artist who has been working with color and design for many years. Her work has been exhibited throughout the country and hangs in many private collections.

Katherine Kadish

Katherine Kadish, painter and printmaker, has exhibited since 1973 in museums and galleries throughout the United States, Canada, the U.K., Japan and China. Her abstract and expressive paintings and monotypes are concerned primarily with color and shape relationships, with light and with gesture. They are inspired, in part, by nature, by Japanese and Chinese calligraphy and by the Fauve painters of France. In her most recent work, elements of the geometry of the city and architecture has entered her work in counterpoint to the organic shapes of nature and the human gesture.

Kadish, working with Master Printer Sheila Marbain, uses a process to make her monotypes which fuses elements of silk screen printing with painting and drawing, yielding unique results. Referred to as “oil and wax,” a stretched silk screen is clamped upright or set flat, and Kadish paints and draws directly on it with oil paint and solvent. When the screen is ready, it is hinged into printing position over a piece of printing paper and the image is squeegeed through the screen with a wax medium onto the paper. The wax holds the colors in place and retains brush marks and gives luminosity to the print.

“The monotypes of Katherine Kadish exhibit spontaneity, joyous abandon of brushstroke, glimpses of a fleeting reality, momentary glimmers of light or shifting horizon lines. Nature - a sense of place on the planet - lingers beneath each image, informing the sinuous lines and shifting tonal shadows, playing games with perspective and perception.”

Kadish’s work is included in the collections of the British Museum, the New York Public Library, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Zimmerli Museum (Rutgers University), the Dayton Art Institute, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum (Cornell University), GTE Corp., Pfizer, Inc. (NYC), North Carolina National Bank, and many other public, corporate and private collections. Her work also has appeared in two collaborative exhibitions with poets: Patterns (mixed media paintings & assemblages) at the DePree Art Center of Hope Collage, Holland, Michigan, and The Cape Split Cycle monotypes by Katherine Kadish & poems by Sue Standing, a traveling exhibition mounted and circulated by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Kadish currently lives and works in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and in New York City.

Maj Kalfus

Now a resident of the Hudson Valley, Maj Kalfus was born in Brooklyn, New York. After attending the High School of Art and Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, as well as classes at the School of Visual Arts, her career, which began in the field of fashion illustration, evolved into fashion merchandising, marketing and design. The influence of her extensive career in the fashion industry, where she worked on projects for industry leaders such as Ralph Lauren, Gloria Vanderbilt, Tommy Hilfiger and Liz Claiborne can be seen in her paintings and drawings.

As a fashion illustrator, Kalfus employed elements of Sumi-e, the art of Japanese brush painting in her drawings. Today these influences are reflected in her drawings and mono-prints. Her landscape paintings reflect the lushness and special light found in the Hudson Valley, where she paints both in her studio and en plein air. Kalfus’s very personal style of family portraiture, recounting a poignant moment in a person’s family history, resonates with the viewer in a particularly special way.

Willie Marlowe

Willie Marlowe has been working with intimately scaled acrylic paintings on paper for a number of years. She is attracted to the intensity, focus and presence a small painting can have. Early influences on her work were medieval manuscript illuminations and Persian and Indian miniature paintings. Her work reflects clear colors, intricate detail and sense of space. Although her paintings are small in size, they are not quickly accomplished. The contrasts between textured surfaces and luminosity are achieved through multiple layers of translucent glazes. Ms. Marlowe states that making a painting is a way of going someplace she hasn't been before and that she is always interested in the next adventure.

"Willie Marlowe's small paintings on paper delight us with their many-sided surprises. Her prismatic scenes deliver the same mind-jolt as today's super-microscopy, which transform a fiberblast cell or microphage into a fabulous chromatic tableau. They seem drawn from tropical gardens and Caribbean reefs, and the psychedelic spots the retinas record when our eyes are pressed shut. Surely, there is calypso music in them, and sometimes the mysterious waves whisper to the sand at night. In their buoyant suspension and asymmetric balance, these tiny rectangles oscillate between reality and dream. It's nearly impossible to keep from smiling at their extravagant claims, or to feel their ripples of bliss. A saturated sensuality bursts from Willie Marlowe's art. Looking at it, we feel the same way. " (Timothy Cahill, April 2003, "Times Union", Albany, New York. Timothy Cahill is an arts writer and commentator. He is also the Editor of The Capital Region edition of CHRONOGRAM.)

Marie-Louise McHugh

Creating symbolic and narrative images always interested Marie-Louise McHugh. She is looking for strong images and finds them through her relationships and family. The imagery in her present work deals with the pear, the cone flower and the female figure. Marie-Louise paints their beauty without controversy, focusing on form and organic qualities. These images never fail to fascinate her. In her narrative paintings Marie-Louise McHugh uses these images again to relate events that have affected her.