In September 2023 I curated and participated in a figureative painting show at Agitator Artist Collective in Chicago which included seventeen artists, most of whom contributed several paintings to the show.
Figurative Painting Show
Artist Statements
Artist Bios
List of Paintings Exhibited
Agitator Artist Collective – 3851 W Fullerton Ave, Chicago
www.agitatorgallery.com Instagram: agitatorgallery
Opening 6:00–10:00pm, Saturday, September 02
Closing 6:00–10:00pm, Saturday, September 30
This group show curated by Agitator artist member Andrea Kaspryk features the figurative paintings of seventeen artists working in oil and acrylic paint in a wide variety of styles from painterly to linear and with figures placed in settings from the everyday to a fantastical world.
Participating Artists:
Joanna Aslanian, Peter Broitman, Michelle Burns, Jenny Chernansky,
Meg Eastwood, Zen Evans, Su Jang, Andrea Kaspryk,
George Lindmark, Jonathan McKay, Adrienne Elyse Meyers, David E. Morris
Brooke Raven, Rachel Rosenfeld, Sara Thobe, Kateryna Tkachenko, Alex Wilson
For a month during the course of a year, each Agitator member-artist curates an art show
Joanna Aslanian
Artist Statement
I am both an artist and art therapist. My work reflects this by highlighting the psychological impact of art through depictions of emotional vulnerability. Working with acrylic and oil paint on canvas, I create imagery that exposes my own vulnerability through the revealing nature of art-making.
Viewers are invited to find consolation and solidarity from the universality of these human emotions—and in doing so, unveil the meaning and beauty derived through connection with others.
This body of work celebrates rest and features the complex array to emotions arising from living in a post-pandemic world, spanning from disillusionment to hope.
Artist Bio
Joanna currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. She has exhibited her artwork in California and throughout the Chicagoland area.
joannaaslanian.com www.instagram.com/jaslanianart
Joanna Aslanian
Cotton Candy Dreamland, 2021
Oil on canvas, 36” x 30”
$1,350.00
Joanna Aslanian
Afternoon Nap, 2021
Oil on canvas, 30” x 36”
$1,100.00
Joanna Aslanian
Sunset bench, 2021
Oil on canvas, 35” x 26”
$1,100.00
Joanna Aslanian
Insomnia, 2021
Oil on canvas, 36” x 29”
$1,100.00
Peter Broitman
Artist Statement
My paintings, The Great Lake Jumper I and II, are based on photos in a New York Times article about Dan O’Conor, a Chicagoan “who jumped into Lake Michigan every day for nearly a year…as the pandemic was raging …never mind Chicago’s winter.” See https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/us/lake-michigan-coronavirus.html
Dan O’Conor, aka, The Great Lake Jumper, was an inspiration and great comfort to me during the dark times of the pandemic.
Artist Bio
I began painting full time in 2012 after working thirty-one years as a trial attorney for the United States Department of Labor. On the way to getting my law degree, I studied figurative sculpture and art history at Hartford Art School, and studied figurative sculpture, art history and drawing at SUNY at Stony Brook. While at Stony Brook, I studied under the sculptor George Koras, assistant to the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz (1891– 1973). More recently, I studied figurative sculpture and painting at the Lill Street Art Center in Chicago under the sculptor Sergio Ceron and the painter Bob Horn. I am a member of the Chicago Alliance of Visual Artists.
My paintings are in multiple private collections in Chicago.
peter-broitman-lzsp.squarespace.com www.instagram.com/peterbroitman
Peter Broitman
The Great Lake Jumper I, 2021
Acrylic on canvas, 36” x 36”
$1,500.00
Peter Broitman
The Great Lake Jumper II, 2021
Acrylic on canvas, 40” x 30”
$1,500.00
Michelle Burns
Artist Statement
Expectations and Transformations
I have recently returned to art making after a ten year hiatus during which I got married and had kids, and also took care of my step kids. As a young artist I always struggled to make work that was ‘deep’ and ‘profound’—but fortunately for everyone my goals have shifted to making work that is authentic, relatable, and always asking questions.
In these paintings, I aim to examine expectations placed on female-assigned adolescents and female-identifying adults prevalent in our culture. I want to shine a spotlight on small moments of daily life, and ask, Why are certain expectations placed on our children, on ourselves and on each other? Are “traditional” expectations and roles helpful? Who benefits from female-assigned children and femme-identifying adults adhering to these expectations, and who is harmed?
Alone Time is a self-portrait from memory, of a specific time when I was realizing how little information is shared about the realities of marriage and motherhood. It was a startling realization to experience the loneliness, the disappointment, and the changes to both my body and my life in addition to the wonder of bringing forth and guiding new life.
Kids is a challenge to explore how and why female-assigned adolescents’ behavior and dress are controlled. Why is female autonomy feared? What would happen if gender roles and modest dress were not rigidly enforced? If adolescents were allowed the space to explore identity and self-expression freely, and to become their most authentic and happiest versions of themselves? How would that impact their adult lives?
Above all, I hope to contribute to the unraveling of these roles and expectations and add to the continuing conversation.
Artist Bio
Michelle Burns grew up in rural Illinois before escaping to Chicago immediately after high school. There, she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, miraculously graduating in 2004 with a BFA and concentrations in painting and drawing, art history, feminist studies, and visual communications. She draws on all of these mediums and experiences to explore gender, economic disparity, and relationships. Burns works primarily in oil to pose questions about small but poignant moments in daily life, and about humans connecting and living alongside each other. Burns currently works out of East Garfield Park, Chicago.
www.instagram.com/michelleinchicago/
Michelle Burns
Kids
Oil on canvas
For price contact artist
Michelle Burns
Alone Time
Oil on canvas
$250.00
Jenny Chernansky
Artist Statement
Drawing from historical, symbolic, religious and mythological imagery, Jenny Chernansky uses new media paired with classical techniques to explore contemporary issues surrounding perceptions of female roles and femininity. By tracing anew an ontology of female representation and inequality Jenny translates contemporary feminist ideas in the context of mythological and religious ideologies into works using image transfers, oil, watercolor, pencil, charcoal, and other media.
Concepts of the shadow self, feminine archetypes, and the virgin/whore dichotomy are often addressed. Jenny’s practice explores themes relating to historic depictions of female figures from religion and mythology which have embodied negative societal archetypes in an attempt to rewrite the narrative from a more empathetic viewpoint which seeks to confront and unify the split in perception.
Taking a new look at the classic odalisque, I created a self-portrait reversing the gaze back on the viewer, questioning their intentions and purpose, asking them to look at themselves and their own viewing intentions. Just the act of looking can be a form of invasion, and our perceptions of other people turn into judgements which become weapons. How can we look without trying to take ownership?
I revisit several myths related to women, primarily the relationship to the serpent as a figure of sin but also of wisdom and rebirth. The trinity is common in male dominated monotheistic religions, but also in pagan beliefs a trinity of women is often seen across cultures. I’m trying to expand our understanding of these ideas from condemnation to inclusion.
Artist Bio
Having Slovak roots while growing up in Chicago and spending almost twenty years in New Orleans, Jenny Chernansky’s work reflects on how the feminine identity has developed from history, religion, and mythology. Using a mixture of contemporary and historic mediums and techniques such as oil painting and photography, she attempts to take a new look at the narrative that has held a long shadow over our modern culture.
Jenny Chernansky’s work has been shown internationally in Hong Kong, London, Budapest, as well as shows throughout the U.S. and Mexico. Jenny’s work has received several Juror’s choice and honorable mention awards, as well as the R.K. Mitchell Award for Excellence, and in 2020 Jenny was interviewed for a solo feature in Les Femmes Folles: Women in Art. Jenny attended the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, received her BA from Columbia College, Chicago and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Perception is not whimsical, but fatal.” This work questions how observation and what we choose to observe reflects back on the viewer, how looking can be a violent act and how the act of seeing can be revealing in itself. This work attempts to confront the viewer and our use of technologies that enhance these voyeuristic tendencies that pervade modern society.
www.jcherna.com www.instagram.com/bastnoir
Jenny Chernansky
Mourner’s resurrection
36” x 60”
For price contact artist
Jenny Chernansky
Lament of Lamia, 36” x 24”
For price contact artist
Jenny Chernansky
Halo, 36” x 24”
$1,500.00
Jenny Chernansky
Moratorium
40” x 30”
$1,350.00
Meg Eastwood
Art Statement
My work focuses on outward expressions of identity through portraiture and objects of personal value that tell larger stories about one’s cultural and social identity. I am interested in communities that sit outside of the larger heteropatriarchal American culture and how they are (or are not) represented, hoping to connect my present experiences to the buried histories of my queer ancestors.
This work is a self-portrait of my body in recovery from “top surgery,” a gender-affirming double mastectomy. Though I feel grateful to have been able to undergo the procedure, I must now cope with the heavy financial burden that comes with transgender care. This piece displays a body in transition while under the weight of the physical and mental strain of the medical system.
Artist Bio
Meg Eastwood is a painter, collage and installation artist based in Chicago. Their work considers historical and contemporary notions of identity, particularly as they relate to queer communities. Their paintings and sculptural installations utilize found materials and archived texts and images in order to recontextualize and elevate devalued or concealed histories. Their work has been shown in Plein Air at Viaduct Gallery in Des Moines, Iowa and in Parlour and Ramp’s Pilsen Open 2023 in Chicago. Meg graduated with their BFA from the University of Illinois-Chicago in 2023.
www.megeastwood.com www.instagram.com/macabre.meg
Meg Eastwood
$39,292 (insurance pending), 2023
Oil on wood panel, 24” x 16”
$350.00
Zen Evans
Art Statement
These works were created in the unnerving first year of the covid pandemic. While “work from home” sounded like an adult snow-day at first, the subsequent months of indefinite professional isolation shattered almost all norms the 9-to-5, and all its social rituals were lost.
The paintings were made with a complicated mix of feelings about the corporate milieu, and the demands to keep marching along virtually, “business as usual”, while the designated physical workspaces evaporated.
That is to say, the works don’t offer simple nostalgia for these lost grounds. The office environment was simultaneously sterile and hostile.
The paintings are in isometric perspective, speaking the preferred visual language of cookie-cutter PowerPoint “slideware” illustrations, which lends a floating and detached quality to the art, while the contents range from the slice-of-life (in the case of Business Casual) to the bad-dreamy (Human Resources).
These nod toward the works Edward Hopper for some sentiments; even when there isn’t a singular figure in the paintings, the figures are solitary—they don’t directly interact, they face away or askance. When the figures are isolated, they’re frantic.
Artist Bio
Zen Evans is an artist practicing in Chicago. His primary medium is oil paint. His art circulates through a variety of themes, subject matters, styles, and techniques.
The aesthetics of corporations, software, religion, propaganda, and meta-topics around phenomena-and-noumena and patterns-and-antipatterns.
From conventional oil portraiture executed in pursuit of technical exercise, to thickly tactile mixed-media abstractions applied with a sense of experimental play, through unconventional inter-media and tools such as chicken wire, gouges, and cake piping tubes
www.instagram.com/zenonevans
[email protected]
Zen Evans
Whiteboarding, 2020
Oil on canvas, 30” x 24”
$300.00
Zen Evans
Human Resources, 2021
Oil on canvas, 30” x 24”
$300.00
Zen Evans
Business Casual, 2021
Oil on canvas, 24” x 30”
$300.00
Su Jang
Artist Statement
Corners have had a tremendous impact on the way I see the world and on my interest in certain subjects, which crop up in my artwork.
Like many artists, I began my art career as a small child doodling and scribbling in the corner of my house while my parents watched. Holding a pencil to the wall, I would walk around my living room, leaving a line as I went, taking special notice of the different feeling and texture of each corner. Each side of the wall gave me a unique feeling and sense of a new, distinct face. I have a special relationship with doodling on the wall—physically experiencing corners, spaces, and the act of drawing.
To me, the leap from the corner to the canvas was a short one.
The canvas, like my living room, is also a sort of walled box that offers a door to the action that is unfolding within it. The canvas comes pre-equipped with four haven-like corners, and I am free to create as many corners as I wish within the canvas itself. The canvas offers infinite shapes of corners, and each corner offers infinite intimacy and stability.
Viewing a work of art on a flat, rectangular canvas invites another short leap—from the canvas to the theater. The stage in a theater is but a 3D canvas, adding depth and another set of corners to what was two-dimensional. But the principle remains the same—the theater offers a viewer an intimate, yet distant view of the action unfolding onstage; the canvas does the same for the art admirer.
To come full circle from corners, to canvases, to theaters—I see the aspects of corners like an atmosphere of friendship and intimacy and safety and freedom. I want nothing more than for you to feel like you are sitting right next to me in the theater, as the scene that I designed and created unfolds in front of us. I want the viewer to know the world from my perspective and to feel the closeness safety that the corner/canvas/theater affords us.
Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space talked about the corner as a haven where, free from the burdens of participation, we could safely watch the world unfold in a scene around us, feeling the intimacy and safety
that the corner affords us. “The corner,” he says, “is a sort of half-box, part walls, part door” that has a far-reaching impact on both our actual childhood, and our childhood as we remember it as adults. The corner is a place where children fantasize, and where we as adults fantasize of being children.
As a child, I spent lots of the time in the corner contemplating myself and expanding my imagination. It was me having a conversation with me—talking to and listening to myself at the same time. I felt comfortable and relaxed in the closed shelter with an open view. In the corner I could confirm my own existence. As I grow older, I missed spending time in the corner, being able to view the whole picture from a cozy place. The result of looking out at the world from my corner is that I became used to that view—interacting with the outside, but from a safe distance. This view provided me with intimacy and friendliness but also safety and the feeling of freedom. In the corners I had both the sense of safety and of the freedom of viewing whatever I felt like focusing on, giving me a feeling of control. From this viewpoint within the corner, I could give my own existence more definition. I became a silent observer that can grasp everything at the same time, while remaining removed from the scene.
Artist Bio
Su Jang was born in Seoul, Korea and now resides in Chicago, Illinois. She studied painting at Hongik University, South Korea and received a BFA degree at The School of the Art Institute in 2023. She is currently working as an intern in Western Exhibitions.
[email protected]
Su Jang
Living Room, 2022
Oil on canvas, 24” x 36”
Contact artist for price
Su Jang
Bedroom, 2023
Oil on canvas, 30” x 23”
$1,375.00
Andrea Kaspryk
Artist Statement
My paintings tell a story. In college I studied literature and wrote some poetry, and taught writing in the City Colleges of Chicago, but I did not write fiction. When I resumed drawing and painting, I began to tell stories through my art, often, though not always, my own personal story as a transgender person. I learned a lot myself and others when I was a member of The Living Circle, a GLBT spiritual support and discussion group from the mid-1990s and early 2000s, and belonging to this group, helped me to decide to pursue my new passion in life—painting.
For me the process of finding and creating visual narratives is a process of self-discovery and self-understanding: one image drawn or painted can set off a chain reaction in which one image leads to another. As a result, I travel in new and unexpected directions I had not anticipated, becoming an explorer of the imagination. And by relying on universal symbols in my paintings, I allow viewers to conceive of their own stories and interpretations of them.
Some of paintings in the current show are based on a series of black and white photos that Eleftheria Lialios took in a Detroit Mannequin Factor in the 1970s. These paintings for me constitute formal, technical exercises in composition and color and value:
Other paintings in the show address LGBT themes, like The Equality Bill, which is a federal bill to provide LGBT equality on national level because now such equality is only provided on a state by state basis. Another painting is inspired by Grant Wood’s iconic American Gothic painting with its glum couple replaced by happy and nude trans couple.
Artist Bio
After studying English and then Slavic literature and language in graduate school and then teaching writing at the City Colleges of Chicago and elsewhere, Andrea turned to study art, taking classes at The Drawing Workshop, the Continuing Studies program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving a certification of painting and drawing and BFA in Painting and Drawing from SAIC in 2013.
Andrea has been in over forty art shows since the early 2000s, and has been a member of the Spudnik Press Collective, the Fulton Street Collective, collaborated with AnySquared Projects, working on murals in the Logan Square neighborhood, and been a Painting and Drawing Department monitor at Lill Street Art since 2019.
Andrea has continued to take painting and ceramic and drawing classes after graduating at the Lill Street Art Center. Andrea has attended a portrait painting workshop at Corktown Studio, Detroit, Michigan and the Print Bootcamp at Evil Prints Studio, St Louis, Missouri.
In 2017 Andrea became one of the co-founding members of Agitator where they have been often frustrated and unsettled facing the daunting challenges of running a nonprofit art gallery and community event space, but also has been elated and inspired by the fact that a group of rag-tag, yet resourceful and tenacious and selfless, artist misfits can actually, in part, thanks to a new location and a magnanimous landlord, who is a patron of the arts, taken the initial steps to start making this into a successful art enterprise.
www.andreakaspryk.com www.instagram.com/andreaalewise
Andrea Kaspryk
The Manikins Awaken in the Light, 2023
Oil on canvas, 30” x 40”
$990.00
This painting is based on the
photo of Eleftheria Lialios,
5th floor, Women, 1978,
from the Detroit Mannequin
Factory series.
Andrea Kaspryk
Showgirl Spectators, 2023
Oil on canvas, 30” x 40”
$990.00
This painting is based on the photo of
Eleftheria Lialios, Come this way, out this
door, 1981, from the Detroit Mannequin
Factory series and a photo from the
Backstage at the Gold Dollar Show Bar
series in Detroit.
Andrea Kaspryk
Waiting to Leave the Workshop, 2023
Oil on canvas, 32” x 40”
$990.00
This painting is based on a photo of
Eleftheria Lialios, Getting fixed at The Detroit
Mannequin Factory, 1978,
from the series of photos of this factory.
Andrea Kaspryk
Makeup in Butch Femme Relations, 2023
Oil on canvas, 30” x 40”
$990.00
This painting is based on a photo of
Eleftheria Lialios, The Makeup Artist,
1976, from the Detroit Mannequin
Factory series.
Andrea Kaspryk
Trans American Gothic Idyll, 2022
Oil on canvas, 29” x 26”
$700.00
Andrea Kaspryk
Clean up Duty, 2022
Oil on canvas, 40” x 30”
$600.00
Andrea Kaspryk
What’s the Score?
Pass the Equality Act!, 2023
Oil on canvas, 30” x 40”
$500.00
George Lindmark
Artist Statement
I have been painting people for over thirty years. Whether it’s portraits, classic nudes, warriors or goddesses. I’ve always had a love for painting the figure. It can be one of the most challenging and rewarding pursuits an artist can attempt to create. I enjoy using the traditional paintbrush with oils and airbrush with acrylics on canvas.
Artist Bio:
Toy designer, inventor, digital animator, airbrush illustrator, graphic designer, storyboard artist and writer are just some of the hats George Lindmark has worn in his professional artistic career of over forty years.
A graduate of The American Academy of Art in Chicago, George’s work has appeared on retail toys and games, Dungeons & Dragons publications and pinball and video games and as Senior Creative Director for McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys, conceptualizing over one thousand ideas per year, for over three decades.
George’s true love, however, is oil painting. Acquiring various oil painting techniques and daily study and practice, has given him the knowledge and skill to create his own “representational style” of artwork.
His work has appeared in US and European galleries, and he is a member of The Oil Painters of America and The Portrait Society of America.
faso.com/artists/georgelindmark.html
[email protected]
George Lindmark
Duchess, 2019
Oil on canvas, 24” x 36”
$1,500.00
George Lindmark
The Mermaid’s Wish, 2018
Oil on canvas, 24” x 36”
$1,500.00
George Lindmark
Angel, 2020
Airbrushed acrylic on canvas, 24” x 36”
$1,500.00
George Lindmark
Deva, 2020
Airbrushed acrylic on canvas, 24” x 36”
$1,500.00
Jonathan McKay
Artist Statement
During the pandemic I spent three years isolated in a 500 square foot apartment in Chicago. Having a high-risk partner, we chose not to travel home, and we saw friends only a handful of times. My artwork was my outlet. What emerged first in my sketchbook and later in my paintings were cartoon characters living on small isolated planets. The work felt sweet, intimate and personal, while reflecting my lived experience. Soon I was imagining the possibility of a gallery filled with these paintings; transporting the viewer to a new universe, where my love for figurative painting was combined with fastidious illustration, against the backdrop of a starry gestural abstraction. This work has developed into a strange mix of Little Prince-esque illustration, figurative painting, and extraterrestrial fantasy, titled the “Space Between the Stars.”
Last summer was the beginning of a new chapter for my partner and me. We moved from our cramped Lakeview apartment to a more spacious apartment across from Winnemac park in Ravenswood. During the summer, the park has areas where thick wild grass grows past eye-level. It becomes a beautiful, insulated world, full of life—birds, insects, and most importantly, blooming wild flowers. I began imagining what an entire planet covered in tall grass and wildflowers would look like. This led me to my imagined universe’s first large 4’ x 4’ painting, a sun made from flowers. The acrylic painting functions at two levels: on an individual basis every flower is meticulously painted, with illustrative smiley faces and little creatures living inside of the grass. As a whole, each illustration rhythmically culminates in form and color into the glowing orb that is the “Sunflower.” This painting is infused with the optimism I felt that summer. It is full of light, color, life; it is the warmth that is coming from the center of the universe.
In sharp contrast and maybe a little melodramatically, “The Inseparable Little Life and Death Star” is about the cycle of life, survival, and death. The Death Star is an orbiting skull covered in a cemetery, where the creatures living on it live rough little lives. “Little Life” is a purple alien girl. She is held down by the planet, gravity bending her upside down, unable to escape; she survives by eating creatures and wearing pugs. The painting is covered in texture, fastidiously painted stars flow into the carefully layered texture of Little Life’s fur, who in turn rhythmically pushes the eye through the grass of the cemetery. Despite the bleakness, subtly, there is a feeling of hope in the painting. An oversized zipper reveals the inside of Little Life’s body. Where, among viruses and swallowed creatures, we see a radiant neon-pink heart, projecting a feeling of hope onto the painting.
Artist Bio
Jonathon McKay is a twenty-four year old figurative painter from Denver, Colorado and currently lives in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood. He has his BFA from the School of the Art Institute with a focus in painting and drawing. Diagnosed with ADHD and Dyslexia, Jonathon struggled in school. His mom noticed his aptitude for drawing and began giving him art lessons. She hoped having a creative outlet would improve his schoolwork, and while his grades never really improved, he learned he could channel his imagination into his art. In 2015 he received a gold medal from the Denver Art Museum and Colorado Watercolor Society, and his paintings were shown in the Colorado History Museum. Jonathon also received a travel grant to study the Old Masters in Florence and Sienna at the Sienna Art Institute (SART). In 2016 his portfolio received a Presidential Scholarship to SAIC, where he specialized in observational figurative artwork and developed his own personal voice in Advanced Painting. Jonathon’s work has been shown professionally in and around Chicago including Agitator Gallery’s “Personal History in Narrative Figure Paintings” (2019), Happy Gallery’s “Valentines Show” (2023), and the Oak Park Art League’s “Figurative Art” (2023). He was also commissioned by the Chicago History Museum for a 4’ x 6’ commission which was included “City on Fire: Chicago 1871” (2021) which is on semi-permanent display at the museum. He is currently a teacher at StudioUs in Chicago and is working on his latest body work: “The Space Between the Stars.”
www.jonathonmckay.com www.instagram.com/jonathonpaintssomtimes
Jonathan McKay
Portrait of Little Life, 2023
Acrylic and oil on canvas, 24” x 20”
$750.00
Jonathan McKay
Sweet Tea, 2023
Acrylic on canvas, 30” x 30”
$600.00
Jonathan McKay
The Inseparable Little Life and Death Star, 2023
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 42¼” x 52½”
$3,000.00
Adrienne Elyse Meyers
Artist Statement
We look away, keep our hands outstretched and our eyes turned in on themselves. Sinking into soft light, encircling blankets, the same t-shirt. Our hands plunge into work, into our pockets, into the warmth of each other.
These images offer glimpses into quiet moments of daily life. Scenes of Chicago in the faded hours between dusk and day, in a sapphic couple’s apartment, and on the lakefront reveal soft moments in the city. The paintings reflect intimate views of a lover sleeping in, stretching out in morning light, and leading us down glowing streets. Intimate, human-scale paintings with soft tones, brushy layers, and deliberately unfinished figures invite viewers into scenes in soft focus, when the eyes flutter, the sun fades, and the curtains are drawn. Underpaintings in reds, pinks, purples, and oranges peek through thin washes of oil paint, establishing a sense of warmth, thinness, and closeness.
Artist Bio
Adrienne Elyse Meyers (she/they) was born and raised in East Texas and currently lives and works in Chicago. Meyers earned an MFA from the University of Chicago and has exhibited at Belong Gallery (Chicago, IL), Terrain Biennial (Oak Park, IL), Torstraße 111 (Berlin, Germany), Lawndale Art Center (Houston, TX), Greenville Museum of Art (Greenville, NC), Alabama Song (Houston, TX), and Gallery 263 (Cambridge, MA), among others, and has participated in multidisciplinary projects with Harvard Medical School, Lost Ward Gallery, and the Arts, Science & Culture Initiative at the University of Chicago.
www.adrienneelyse.com www.instagram.com/adrienneelyse
[email protected]
Adrienne Elyse Meyers
Big stretch, 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 28” x 24”
$800.00
Adrienne Elyse Meyers
Getting dressed, 2022
Oil and house paint on canvas, 24” x 20”
$750.00
Adrienne Elyse Meyers
Sleeping at the breakfast table, 2022
Oil and house paint on canvas, 28” x 24”
$800.00
Adrienne Elyse Meyers
Light up my life, 2023
Oil and house paint on canvas, 28” x 24”
$800.00
David E. Morris
Artist Statement
I make paintings that are about human beings. I am interested in representing people from multiple perspectives: form, function, structure, and psyche. Each encounter with a model is a unique situation; with each I search for some element that I will work to develop visually. A piece is successful when I have been able to convey a sense of what I experience when being present with that other person. In multifigure pieces, I work to suggest a story, hoping that the viewer will be drawn to questioning, unfolding, finishing, or even imagining themself a part of.
Artist Bio
David Morris was born in Springfield, Ohio and then received undergraduate and graduate education at Washington University in St. Louis and Northwestern University respectively.
His figurative realism stems from an intense and persistent interest in human anatomy from multiple perspectives: beauty in form, function, and structure. While continuing to teach anatomy at the medical school level, he uses charcoal, graphite, and oil paint in his artwork to convey something beyond the scientific aspect of the body. Morris has a deep affection for working from life. He strives to share something about what he experienced in the presence of the person represented. In this process of portraying people he explores concepts of psyche, intimacy, and gaze as it relates to gender.
David lives and works in Chicago. His work has appeared in multiple museum shows including the Freeport Art Museum, Illinois, and the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin, and is included in important collections such as the Lunar Codex.
davidmorrispaintings.com www.instagram.com/davidmorrispaintings
David E. Morris
Les Bois: Nocturne, 2021
Oil on canvas, 36” x 48”
$1,500.00
Brooke Raven
Artist Statement
Brooke Raven (she/her) is a Chicago-based painter and illustrator currently exploring small town social dynamics in the context of young womanhood, and the ways in which satire, caricature, and irony can be utilized as a critique of the issues and harmful philosophies that are often present in these communities. Raven is interested in the perpetual reinforcement of traditionality–in politics, in relationships, and in religion–that is unique to small town, midwestern America.
Artist Bio
Raven is currently studying art at the University of Illinois Chicago and previously studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
www.instagram.com/r4444ven
[email protected]
Brooke Raven
Home Grown Country Girl (Nico), 2023
Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 60”
$2,500.00
Brooke Raven
Lying In Your Loving Arms, 2023
Acrylic on canvas, 36” x 48”
$1,200.00
Brooke Raven
A Fool On Every Corner, 2023
Acrylic on canvas, 36” x 36”
$1,200.00
Brooke Raven
Gone Fishing, 2022
Acrylic on canvas, each painting, 15” x 30”
$800.00 (for the pair)
Rachel Ahava Rosenfeld-Dlatt
Artist Statement
My paintings are based on found objects—primarily snapshot photographs discarded by the original owners (in concert with bits of aging wrapping paper, and assorted scraps of ads and construction paper). Each photograph fascinates me; they are full of eye-catching glimmers and cloudy corners, and lively subjects who stare out at me. Handling them is like turning over a fossil. Unspeaking relics whose habitats I can only imagine. Like an archaeologist, I use my brushes to touch the past, caressing the faces, the furniture, the fabric that drapes and stretches. I spend way too many hours exploring the peculiar hues, and building them up until the tiny snapshot faces materialize. I care about these people, the stories that I imagine for them. In Judaism, the highest mitzvah (good act) is to bury the dead because it is a favor they can never repay. My practice feels similar to me, because I devote myself to these strangers, pouring hours of effort into creating likenesses only to eclipse them with thick-painted shapes and patterns. I am fascinated not only by familiarizing myself with the photo, but with the emotions that interrupted compositions cause. Artifacts hide behind damage and dust; we must use our imaginations to make them whole. Snapshots bear little fidelity to the moments preserved within them, and I am enchanted by the simultaneous potential and aggravation of getting up-close-and-personal with mystery.
My practice is all about devoting attention, effort, and focus to remnants left by people who cannot speak for themselves. Growing up Jewish, my family had very few souvenirs of their new American life. Even fewer survive from the “old country.” The few photographs we have are precious, but deceptive. They show a lower middle class, white, American family making a home in the shadow of the St. Louis Arch (which was incomplete at the time). Every midwestern home has a shoebox full of pictures just like them. The truth, that the husband and wife were born to newly-arrived refugees, who feared America nearly as much as they feared the goyim that chased them out of Europe. They wore their discount clothing and Missouri accents like armor. Assimilation and anonymity protected them from neighbors not eager to have foreigners next door. They left photos and documents and heirlooms behind. I hope that whoever found them sensed their importance and kept them safe. I wonder what assumptions they made about my family based on their jettisoned valuables. I wonder how much more I might learn if these objects were suddenly returned by some kind stranger from Siberia or Western Poland. Collecting, keeping, and studying the photographs of nameless families allows me to imagine minutiae of an America that terrified and thrilled my grandparents, full of material wealth and suburban serenity. The hours that I spend in the dark corners of snapshot-homes are like a balm for all of the stories, lighthearted or tragic, that I was never told lived by people who I do not know well enough to miss. So I direct my curiosity and energy towards people right in front of me, and dedicate myself to bringing them back into the living world. I am ignorant to their life stories, but I feel strongly that absent people deserve to be missed. By reinventing them as works of art, these nameless people will be seen and wondered about by visitors. Embedded in countless fabricated tales, they are no longer anonymous.
Bio
Every day I spend hours mixing colors on my giant glass palette, facing off with new canvases, and conducting research. My studio houses countless unresolved paintings as well as my shoebox-archive of found snapshot photographs and the treasure-trove of art books that bring my artistic practice to life.
Since moving to Chicago in the summer of 2016, I have shown work in museums, pop-up galleries, and group exhibitions from Chicago to San Diego, New York, and beyond. I recently completed the first Connect International Artist Residency, which culminated in an exhibition. I continue to be involved with Connect as their first Fellow. Away from my easel, I spend every Sunday teaching Kindergarten in my role on the faculty of the Joseph and Belle Braun Anshe Emet Religious School.
I am a native of Kansas City, Kansas, where I found my enthusiasm for painting while getting myself hopelessly lost at my mother’s office. Her job in the African Art Department at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gave me access to miles of maze-like galleries to explore in wonder.
I started painting during my first semester of college, where I was notorious for refusing to leave my corner of our shared studio. I graduated in 2014 from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia with a B.A. in Studio Art. In 2016, I completed my MFA in Visual Art at Washington University in St. Louis. I also studied with the Jerusalem Studio School’s master class in Civita Castellana, Italy, and have since taken classes at the University of Chicago and Hyde Park Art Center. Before moving to Chicago, I had opportunities to make and research art in several cities in Europe and the Middle East, spending the lion’s share of my time in Todi, Italy and Berlin, Germany.
www.rachelahavarosenfeld.com www.instagram.com/rachel_ahava
[email protected]
Rachel Rosenfeld-Dlatt
These eyes are windows (air-raid curtains)
Oil and marble dust on Belgian linen, 24” x 18”
$1,200.00
Rachel Rosenfeld-Dlatt
[Work in Progress]
Oil, marble dust, Prismacolor on canvas, 40” x 30”
For price contact artist
Rachel Rosenfeld-Dlatt
That which you cannot see is thriving
Oil, marble dust, and Prismacolor on canvas panel
24” x 18”
$2,600.00
Rachel Rosenfeld-Dlatt
They are waiting to be recognized
Oil, marble dust, Prismacolor, and
wax on Belgian linen, 24” x 30”
$3,500.00
Sara Thobe
Artist Statement
My work is both realist and expressionist, for I feel that the representational gives the artist the best opportunity to convey a story, mood or a state of mind. The expressionistic qualities give the work its voice.
My technique includes a deliberate and thoughtful layering of hues while gradually adding black and white where appropriate. Both color and the brushstroke motion give the work depth and a greater ability to communicate subtleties of emotion. I have a great need for meaning in my work, and indeed each piece that I do has a force of passion and love behind it.
My finest work happens when I let the process take over and instinct and spirit guide the work – I do not overthink, I just paint. Then painting begins to feel like dancing. Perhaps the best thing about a great painting is the feeling that the visual experience gives you that cannot be put into words.
The art movement that I first identified with and continue to do so is German Expressionism — the work that was deemed “degenerate art” in the 1930s. It is evocative and charged with emotion; it is honest, raw and powerful. I also adore the Weimar era, Dadaism and many others.
Favorite artists include: Egon Schiele, Hannah Hoch, Jeanne Mammen, Edvard Munch and Felix Nussbaum. specialize in portraits and am available for commissions.
Artist Bio
I am a lifelong artist and painter and have a BFA and post-baccalaureate degree from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, an AAS, from Parsons, The New School of Design, New York city.
[email protected] www.instagram.com/everythingmusthavemeaning
www.sarathobe.com
Sara Thobe
Reclining Nude, 2023
Oil on canvas, 24” x 48”
$725.00
For price of painting
contact artist
Kateryna Tkachenko
Artist Statement
I offer paintings that are a celebration of life manifested in our bodies.
I see the human body in the same way as we usually see beauty in nature, flowers or trees. The human body is a perfect masterpiece of life. My paintings celebrate life, health and nature and an openness to make new discoveries about the human body.
Artist Bio
Kateryna Tkachenko was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine and studied at the Kharkiv Art College, receiving a baccalaureate in painting and teaching in 2002 and became a member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine. She also studied at the Kharkiv Academy of Design and Arts, with a specialization in monumental painting; the V.M. Hontariva studio of historical painting in 2008; the Cherniy kvadrat (Black cube) theatre studio in 2011; and the Seredoveshche buttya (Habitat) theatre studio in 2013.
Her notable public art includes painting a portion of murals in the Museum of Literature, Kharkiv, for the exhibit she curated, Hryhoriy Skovoroda—journey of happiness, in 2010. She created and designed the exhibition Shestdesyatnyky (The Sixties Generation) in the Smoloskyp Publications Museum, Kyiv.
She curated and designed an exhibition in the Bogdan Gallery—the first art brut museum in Ukraine in 2012 where she also created murals, Letyache (Flying). In 2014, she was a curator of the project and exhibition, Maidan: Creativity Freedom, in the Ivan Honchar Museum, Kyiv.
She was an art director in the movie Tumbleweed, directed by Ivan Sergienko, in 2012, and she has worked as an actress in a few TV shows and movies. She was the director and lead actress of the movie The Way, which is based on Taras Shevchenko’s narrative poem “Kateryna” set in the present day.
She has been teaching painting in different art studios, Nu namaluy (Well, paint it), Art-Plaza, Artos and the Interregional Academy of Business and Law, named after N. Kruchinina in Kharkiv. She has been an art teacher in the St Nicholas Art School in Chicago since 2018.
She has participated as an artist and curator in more than fifty art exhibits since 2006.
www.instagram.com/strange.beautiful.bloomy.world
[email protected]
Kateryna Tkachenko
Night, 2021
Oil on canvas, 30” x 24”
$1,200.00
Kateryna Tkachenko
Summer Dreams, 2021
Oil on canvas, 22” x 28”
$1,100.00
Kateryna Tkachenko
Connection, 2021
Oil on canvas, 22” x 28”
$1,200.00
Alex Wilson
Artist Statement
My paintings in the show are two panels from a set of thirteen that all take their imagery from Christian scripture and religious writing. The series examined several themes found in Christian teachings with the aim of broadening and questioning their meaning.
On the Adam panel a quote from Paradise Lost by John Milton is written:
She gave him of that fair enticing Fruit
With liberal hand: he scrupl’d not to eat
Against his better knowledge, not deceav’d,
But fondly overcome with Femal charm.
Earth trembl’d from her entrails, as again
In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan,
Skie lowr’d, and muttering Thunder, som sad drops
Wept at compleating of the mortal Sin Original.
The Eve panel also has a quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost:
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck’d, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost. Back to the Thicket slunk
The guiltie Serpent, and well might, for Eve
Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else
Regarded, such delight till then, as seemd,
In Fruit she never tasted.
Artist Bio
Alex Wilson is a Chicago artist/designer/producer and member of Agitator Artist Collective. He studied painting and printmaking with a focus on artists’ books at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the Founder and Executive Director of West Town Bikes, a non-profit community bike shop that offers youth programs, adult classes and community events.
www.instagram.com/bikefreeek
[email protected]
Alex Wilson
Adam and Eve, 1990
Mixed media on masonite panel, each 30” x 20”
For price contact artist (for pair)
