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Artist Spotlight: Lisa Krannichfeld

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Lisa Krannichfeld first caught my eye on instagram.  I’m not sure how I stumbled across her work but I was captivated from the moment I saw one of her paintings.  The boldness of color, the prints, patterns, and the electricity I felt coming off the subjects.  I simply fell in love with each piece.   Lisa’s recent bodies of work: Undomesticated Interiors and Girls and Guise are rebelling against the traditional portrayal of women of the 17th – 19th centuries as demure, decorative objects, belonging to their husbands or fathers and seeks to retell the female narrative.

Lisa’s website states “Girls and Guise references a play on words. In this context guise references both the facade created by men of the female gender, and the heavy emphasis of the patterned clothing in the pieces. Their clothes, or guises, are infused with feral and aggressive animals, a symbolic rebellion against the historical domesticated depiction of women.  The jarring, faceless compositions represent any and all women who desire to define their own perspective and create their own narratives. Intentional hand gestures hint at conviction.”

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I had the opportunity to ask Lisa a few questions and share her answers below.

1.  I understand you grew up in the south, in Little Rock, AK. At what age did you first discover you loved to create art and paint? 

Honestly, there never was a time that I remember where I wasn’t obsessed with art and creating. I remember in elementary school art class being the most magical, fun place (until our state cut out art classes from the curriculum, sadly). It was always a part of my life, however, I didn’t really commit to it being part of my professional life until my senior year in college.
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2.  Your current body of work is focused on women with deep meaning and purpose behind your intent, refuting historical portraiture of women.  Can you share a bit about this?  How did this body of work evolve?

The work first started with portraits of women done in a headshot style. I found painting honest facial expressions more interesting than just pretty faces, so I would paint anxious faces, angry faces, confused faces, defiant faces. This led to painting women in general in a more honest way, void of just physical beauty and sexual appeal.  I started expanding my compositions to the entire figure and the figure within interior spaces.
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3.  You describe your work as loose expressive portraiture and use lush colors with many patterns and prints in the mix.  What drew you to including prints in your paintings and is there meaning behind them?

There are a few reasons why I include prints and patterns in my work. I love how the order of the patterns and prints juxtapositions itself with the chaotic style of the painted areas. I like to think of it as a metaphor for all the states a woman can be in.  Women have to juggle so many roles and be mindful of so much at any one moment that it makes sense to compose them of so many different materials in my paintings. I also use a lot of patterns that have flora and fauna as a part of the prints so there’s a bit of hidden wildness to the overall experience of the painting which I think is also a metaphor for women.

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4.  What is something fun you can share about yourself that no one knows?

I love a good creaturey sci-fi thriller. I am obsessed with french pastries. I can’t whistle. I tie my shoes bunny-ears style, which apparently no one else does.

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Lisa’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications nationally and internationally including shows across the United States, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Most recently her work was chosen as the grand award winner in the 2018 60th Annual Delta Exhibition. In 2017 she won the grand award at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center Juried Exhibition, and Best in Show at the 2017 Magic City Art Connection Art Fair in Birmingham, AL.

She has had work featured in numerous worldwide publications, was the face of Saatchi Art’s Spring 2019 “Refuse to be the Muse” campaign, and has had work featured in Anthropologie. Her work is included in several private and corporate collections throughout her home state of Arkansas as well as in collections around the world.

She is currently represented by M2 Gallery in Little Rock, AR, Fort Works Art in Fort Worth, TX, and Saatchi Art with shipping worldwide.

 

 

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Artist spotlight: In the studio with Donna Dodson

Many of you know that among all things tabletop, entertaining, gardening and baking, I am incredibly passionate about art and artists.  This blog is about sharing passions to inspire others and bring more joy, more love and more laughter.

It’s been a while since I have shared anything about art or artists, so I decided to turn that around and have an exciting lineup of fabulous artist spotlights for you, which will unfold over the next few weeks.

The first artist spotlight is on Donna Dodson, who I met years ago in Boston.  I reached out to Donna and asked her what she’s been working on during the pandemic and in quarantine.  I am delighted to share Alpha Female, the first sculpture in her series about the Amazons.  Donna shares her thoughts below.

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This sculpture is the first one in my new series about the Amazons. I call her the Alpha Female. She has an eagle head, because the nomadic women of the ancient steppes used female golden eagles to hunt. Also, this sculpture is dedicated to my great aunt Alice, who was one of the first 40 women to join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Corps during WW2 from Illinois. The eagle is also  a patriotic symbol honoring her military service. When I was researching the Women’s Auxiliary Air Corps, I learned that eventually it became the US Air Force, but it started out as a branch of the army, and they used Athena’s helmet as their emblem on their uniforms. Since ancient amazons had tattoos, I decided to give this sculpture a tattoo of Athena’s helmet on her calf. Athena is always portrayed with breast shield, so that I made metallic breast shields on my sculpture celebrating the lineage of amazing women warriors from ancient times to the modern era. This sculpture has shoes similar to the ones I found in historic photographs of women in uniform during WW2. And the women are always dressed in skirts, never pants.

Here is a video of Donna in the studio that was created for International Sculpture Day, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI-tbncf_WQ

 

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Donna Dodson is an American sculptor who has been honored with solo shows nationwide for her artwork. In addition her monumental works have been exhibited internationally in sculpture parks and museums. In 2015, Donna participated in a residency in Cusco Peru at the Escuela de Bellas Artes and international exchange exhibition at Museo Convento de Santo Domingo Qorikancha. In 2016 she had her first solo museum show of “Mermaids” at the New Bedford Art Museum. In 2017, Donna was invited to the International Wood Sculpture Symposium in Ringkoebing Denmark. In 2018, her life size chess set, Match of the Matriarchs premiered at the Boston Sculptors Gallery. From 2017-2019, Dodson’s solo show Zodiac was on a national museum tour.

Dodson has won grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New Hampshire Guild of Woodworkers and the George Sugarman Foundation. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Provincetown Art Museum, the Art Complex Museum and the Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts and the Davistown Museum in Maine. Donna’s work has been reviewed in the Boston Globe, Sculpture Magazine and Artnet.

Dodson is a graduate of Wellesley College. Dodson enjoys public speaking, and has been a guest speaker at conferences and panels in museums and universities throughout North America. Donna regularly contributes articles to newspapers, magazines and blogs that demonstrate the economic impact and global reach of the arts sector. She recently contributed an Introduction to the monograph “The Contemporary Art of Nature: Mammals.”

 

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Stefan Barton – Notebook

At one point, when there were too many things to keep track of, I started to carry a notebook with me at all times: A kind of external, analog and, as I first thought, static second brain.

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Barton, Stefan. Observations of the three-eyed. Drawing.

In there (I am at least at book # 10 now) is an unruly mixture of dates, appointments, locations, lists, contacts, errants, links, random thoughts, acute ideas, etc.

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Barton, Stefan.  I should not have said anything. Drawing

This mess of words, numbers and other symbols experiences a treatment of crossing-outs, underlinings, grouping, linking (with arrows of a multitude of shapes) alterations, additions, subtractions, disintegration, annihilations (with wild force or with nice-looking spirals).

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Barton, Stefan.  Untitled. Drawing.

A current page is alive and morphing. It may become a rudimentary picture, with balance (or imbalance), impromptu composition, with it’s own energy and surprises out of nowhere, unintentional, emerging, self-organizing.

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Barton, Stefan. Garbler. Drawing.

In these erratic arrangements I may find new forms and connections I can work into the chaos.  Letters, words, scribbles and scrawls, lines and arrows become parts of figures, faces – literally embodiments. Eyes form spontaneously, placing themselves, looking back at me in concert with a variety of lively facial expressions, with pleas or disdain, with personality and maybe fate.

Prototypes

Barton, Stefan. Prototypes. Drawing.

In the book my personal notes become a chaos-generator. And the resulting disorder I can turn into an aesthetic problem, and, if inspired, a solution in the process. Some of the images (and note, the book is not a sketch-book) are silly, some seem profound, some I turn extern into full-grown paintings.

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Barton, Stefan. Glint. Drawing.

The unplanned images cannot possibly be completely coincidental. They are based on meaningful thoughts, information, and the processing thereof manifesting through pen and pencil. It appears that they are more than the sum of their parts, even if they might in fact be less, depending on the value of the initial momentary notes, any resulting revelations, and finally on the quality of the emerging picture, on which I might have spent a good amount of time.

Barton, Stefan. Nicht Nichts (Not Nothing – as you can see these two word are almost identical in German, unfortunately not in English, but not a drama… ;-)).

The unwitting and somewhat automatic (when on the phone for example) playing with letters and numeration make me realize which lines and forms and circumstances I am drawn to.

Barton, Stefan. Random Number Service. Drawings.

Recently these preferences find their way into other, ‘higher’ forms of artistic expression like intentional drawings and, as mentioned, paintings. In fact, words have found their way into my newer paintings precisely because of the action that takes place in the note-book. The words are not there to be read, they are just part of the artistic language. A layer of intrigue, mysterious and uncomplete messages perhaps.

Barton, Stefan. At the very End of Infinity. Drawings.

For me an empty page or canvas is not an inspiration for artistic work – chaos is.

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Stefan Barton resides in a village near Hamburg, Germany, but he spent 20 Years in the US (San Francisco and Boston Area). He works on paintings, drawings and printmaking. To see more of his images contact Stefan (stefan.bartongmail.com ) visit  http://clex-werk.blogspot.de/  or look at a book:

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Comfort

Holly Soffee Bohannon – Art love

Art has been in my life for as long as I can remember. I loved everything about it.

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In grade school, I would look forward to art class more than any of the other classes.  In high school I was like a kid in a candy shop trying to decide which art class to take.  I wanted to take them all!

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I got married and started a family quite early. I continued to keep it close to me whenever I could, usually through my kids. My husband would always nag me ” You need to paint.” He knew deep down how important it was to me. It wasn’t until my late thirties that I finally realized, there was no ignoring that voice in my head any longer.

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I started taking painting classes, and automatically it all came rushing back. My first love, my true love, my art.

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I have  worked in different mediums, but my favorite these days is graphite and charcoal.

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I love being able to control the pencil and detail that you can achieve, especially when working on a portrait. I will usually save the eyes for last, because I believe that in the eyes there is a connection to the source- something that goes beyond what we know.

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Over the years, my art has lead me to become more connected with my spirituality.  It is almost meditative.                                                                                                                           

IMG_2582The world around me can be beautiful or grim, and it doesn’t matter. When I have my canvas or paper in front of me, life pauses and I can just “Be” even if for a moment.

 

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Holly lives in Richmond, Va. with her husband and two teenage sons. She has been drawing and painting her whole life, and started selling her work in 2010. She is always willing to start a new project if anyone is interested in a commission.
Contact Information:
Email: Jidmoski@yahoo.com

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Steven J. Duede – Restive compositions of life

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During my years in art I was always interested in painting and photography as a way to convey ideas that were maybe not so obvious to a viewer within what might appear to be obvious imagery. Through texture and colors and patterns more ideas regarding the meaning of the subjects might avail themselves to those of us in the audience, depending on a person’s point of view.

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My images should be chaotic yet rhythmic. Organic, should be so packed with texture and physical substance that they can be viewed on different levels. Comforting, discomforting, beautiful, and transitory. These recent photographs reflect my continued interest in images that can be beautiful; images that are turbulent, from natural elements and that also evoke something less obviously marvelous.

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Flowers and natural things are marvels of beauty and flora is a big subject in my work abutting elements of the unseemly, the degraded. These elements provoke thoughts regarding the contrast of the graceful and the less than beautiful. Themes in relation to mortality and vitality can arise from participating in these sorts of subjects and that thoughtful imagery abounds for me in my own creative process.

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Within these images from composted organic materials I’m witnessing the decomposition of natural compositions.  In this body of work, as in many, I’m exploring the mechanics of transition through time, neglect and natural decomposition. I hope to establish images that can be beautiful and chaotic. Subjects that in their own specific way function as part of a beautiful transient process.

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Steven Duede is a fine art photographer, artist, designer and arts administrator living in Belmont, MA.

These and other works can be found at http://www.stevenduede.com

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