Have you met…Lisa Pressman?

An introduction can be a wonderful thing. You can meet interesting people, and make new friends. You can be introduced to your new favorite foods, books, music, or artist.

I’d like to introduce you to some of my favorite artists. Some of whom I’ve been familiar with for years, and others I’ve only recently been introduced to.

The person I’d like to introduce is the artist Lisa Pressman.

The Deep, 2013, 24″x24″, encaustic.

Statement

“I focus on fragments in my work, just as our culture is fragmented and disconnected but my worldview is one of interconnection. I try to reveal elements that many people have lost sight of, elements that communicate to a place deeper than words. My work is rooted in a sense of play and discovery, an intuitive dialogue between the random and the deliberate that allows a relationship between intent and accident to develop. I try to create in the place of “not knowing” and exploration. My paintings invite a deep, visceral response that evolves over time; they have a life of their own.” LP

Things That Matter, 1, 2013, 24″x 24″, encaustic.

BIO

Lisa Pressman began her studies in ceramics, sculpture and painting at Douglass College, NJ, where she received a Bachelor of Art. She continued her studies at Bard College and completed an MFA in painting. Her  paintings incorporates oils, collage, wax and other mixed media to create works that allude to a personalized time  and space. The work is the physical embodiment of the slow and gradual process of realization and transformation.

Lisa  has a solo show scheduled at The Rosenfeld Gallery, Philadelphia, PA in the fall of 2013 and the S.H.E Gallery in Boonton, NJ, spring of 2014. Her work also will be exhibited in several group shows including: Shape Shiting, Susan Eley Fine Art, New York, NY; Swept Away: Translucence, Transparence, Transcendence In Contemporary Encaustic, The Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, MA (curated by Michael Giaquinto); a Group Show at Western Carolina State University Museum, Cullowhee, NC. and also ed at the A GAllery in Provincetown,MA

Pressman’s recent 2012 group exhibitions included: Wax is Hot, Amy Simon Gallery, Westport, CT; EW’12 Invitational Exhibition, R&F Handmade Paints, Kingston, NY; From Where I Stand, Rye Art Center, Rye, NY; and Confluence: Medium Meets Message, Morean Arts Center, St. Petersburg, FL.  In 2011, Pressman’s work was exhibited in Kindred Spirits, Schiltkamp Gallery at Clark University, Wooster MA, Making the Mark at Susan Eley Fine Art and at the Affordable Art Fair with Anelle Gandelman Fine Art, both in New York City. Her paintings were also featured in The Balancing Act, a solo show at Rosenfeld Gallery in Philadelphia. Other recent exhibitions include: Reality and Artifice, the 2010 New Jersey Annual at the NJ State Museum, Trenton, NJ; Illusive Balance: Transcendental Pattern and Layered Surface at the Douglass Library gallery, New Brunswick, NJ; Little Gems at Butters Gallery, Portland, OR. She is represented by the Jack Meier Gallery, Houston TX, Anelle Gandelman Fine Art, Larchmont NY, and the Allyn Gallup Gallery in Sarasota, FL

She is currently an adjunct at the Art Institute of New York and teaches painting privately and around the country. You can find her teaching schedule at http://www.lisapressman.net/news/teaching/

Lisa Pressman lives and works in West Orange, NJ.

Things That matter, 3, 2013, 12×12, encaustic.

Other material relating to Lisa Pressman.

Artist Website: Lisa Pressman.

Lisa Pressman Art Blog: Lisa Pressman.

Youtube: Lisa Pressman.

Studio Critical: Lisa Pressman.

MoMa PS1 Studio Visit: Lisa Pressman.

ArtSlant: Lisa Pressman.

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Have you met…Krista Svalbonas?

An introduction can be a wonderful thing. You can meet interesting people, and make new friends. You can be introduced to your new favorite foods, books, music, or artist.

I’d like to introduce you to some of my favorite artists. Some of whom I’ve been familiar with for years, and others I’ve only recently been introduced to.

The artist I’d like to introduce is the painter Krista Svalbonas.

TRANSPARENCY 5 and 6 – Cooper Union Installation – wax and pastel on doorskin 36×36 – 2012

Krista Svalbonas lives and works in New Jersey.

Artist Statement.

“I make art that explores the urban landscape. The urban landscape could be described as hard and opaque with spaces that are ill-defined, neither deep nor wide, offering a psychological sense of control and homogeny. In my work, I explore these ill-defined spaces, the desert physiography, and the homogenous infrastructure of humanity. The architectural modernist aesthetic of straight edges and no trim are echoed in my paintings. Cracks in the pavement, patterns in windows and fractured views of buildings all manifest themselves in my work. I am fascinated with the architecture of the city landscape, it’s tiny spaces, it’s overlapping structure and it’s constant rebirth. By painting the infrastructure of humanity I find the areas where we become aware of our own space in the world. My work is built up in layers of thin colored paper, wax and pastel, one layer often obscuring or concealing another. Color, composition, and mark-making are the main organizational concerns of my work. Each piece begins in a very controlled fashion, meticulously combining layers of wax, paper and pastel, a process that could liken itself to the continual excavation and renovation of the urban landscape. I explore integrated displays, incorporating individual panels with their environment by finding an installation methodology that includes the architecture of the space that surrounds the work. I seek to incorporate the surrounding environment with the continual discourse of space and the urban landscape.” KS

ANIMA 5 – 30×30 – Wax, Graphite, Pastel On Panel – 2011

Other material relating to Krista Svalbonas.

Artist website: kristasvalbonas.com

Youtube: Gravy Sept FF Krista Svalbonas.

Lynette Haggard art Blog: Krista Svalbonas.

ArtSlant: Krista Svalbonas.

If you liked this introduction please check out the Previous and Next.

Artistic match up #4.

Have you ever played a game of comparisons where you match up persons or things and try to decide which you prefer? I know we can’t or won’t really say who is the better artist but it is fun to take two artists who are contemporaries and match them up.

I invite your comments on these two artists. I simply want to know who you prefer:

Robert Rauschenberg or Jasper Johns.

Robert Rauschenberg.

Robert Rauschenberg was born in 1925 and died in 2008 and is to many contemporary artists an infuriating figure. So many artists have been excited by some great breakthrough only to discover that Rauschenberg did it first. He was a painter, sculptor, photographer, printmaker, and performance artist. He is best known for his combines of the 1950s, and lesser known for many other works of art. He created so much and so many forms of art it is almost impossible to understand his achievements. It is sometimes said he stopped being an interesting artist after the early 1960s, yet his Cardboards and related pieces he created on Captiva Island in the early 1970s are an under known and exciting example of work by an artist who made use of everyday materials and junk that he found lying around on the street or in his studio.

Rauschenberg’s prolific output might have contributed to his later work being overlooked. Also the sheer brilliance of the combines overshadows the great work he created before and after. His use of silkscreen could be said to be derivative of Warhol though Rauschenberg’s subject matter and technique with silkscreen painting is very different from Warhol’s.

Jasper Johns.

Jasper Johns was born in 1930 and is a painter, printmaker, and sometimes sculptor. He is most famous for his encaustic paintings, a medium that he helped to resurrect from the dead. His use of images such as the American flag, coffee cans, maps, and numbers has led him to be called a Pop artist though he could be better described as a Neo-Dadaist. Johns’s appropriation of popular iconography in his work was to be highly influential to later artists, particularly pop artists of the 1960s.

He was the lover of Robert Rauschenberg, and for a while they influenced each other’s work. Leo Castelli discovered Johns while visiting Rauschenberg’s studio, and Castelli gave him his first solo show. In some ways it could be said that Johns began to have a greater success than Rauschenberg at this time, and this might have led to a breakdown in their relationship.

Both of these artists are among the finest and most influential of American artists. Both have had long productive careers, and they inspired each other to great lengths. Johns’s flag paintings are stunning achievements, and Rauschenberg’s combines are brilliant. Johns’s influence on the American pop artists of the 1960s cannot be understated, but Rauschenberg’s influence on the art world is still a force to this day. If you are a performance artist, conceptual artist, street artist, minimalist, photographer, experimental printmaker, if you do theater sets, etc, etc, chances are Rauschenberg did it first, and for these reason I give this match up to Rauschenberg.