BIO:

Robin Adler is a contemporary artist based in the Hudson Valley. Adler transcribes emotional experience into visual form. Expressing boundless enthusiasm for abstraction, she works intuitively, pushing past limitations toward freedom and possibility.

Adler is represented by Bau Gallery, in Beacon, NY, where she had her first solo exhibition in June 2024. She has been featured in group exhibitions throughout the East Coast. Adler is a member of two art collectives, Spliced Connector and The Drawing Galaxy. Her work can be seen online at artsy.net and in Issue #41 of Create! Magazine. 

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I create art to connect to my own spirit and to transcribe experience in a way that can not only be understood, but felt, by others. My work articulates movement, kinetic growth, conversations between shapes. A thriving metamorphosis that continually changes with layer upon layer of paint or ink.

I work intuitively. My brush strokes are rapid and gestural. I scratch into paint, employ squiggles and energetic lines to encourage tempo and rhythm. Vibrant color excites me, I combine hues that sing together or possibly provide an interesting contrast. The canvas is a living, breathing form for me that is emerging, changing, always growing. 

BIO:

Barbour holds a BA and an MA in Fine Art from Buffalo State University, including the study of fresco painting in Siena, Italy. Her career segued into Graphic Design, which required additional study at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. She founded Barbour Design Inc. Over 30 years the firm grew to have multiple studios, an international clientele and won many awards. In addition, she taught Design at Parsons School of Design and Design for Marketing Communication at NYU. After selling her Design firm, Ava continues creating drawings and sculptural jewelry. Her work can be seen in numerous exhibitions.

STATEMENT:

Drawing gives me a deep spiritual connection to the mutability of nature. My color, shapes, and movement are informed by the natural world from tornados and clouds to coral reefs and stone. While peaceful on the surface, my drawings tend to have an inner turmoil or danger that lies just beneath the surface. Beauty and violence live intertwined as an allegory to human nature. While I enjoy experimenting with media, I primarily use a combination of pastel, watercolor/gouache and collage. I scratch and abrade the substrate to add texture and tension.

My latest work is an imaginative exploration of line, shape, color and texture while drawing to music that soothes psyche and soul. I often record the natural world around me through photography for future reference. As I walk and observe, I begin to see things differently looking for compositions from which I can abstract and draw. There is immense pleasure in seeing the interaction of elements that wrap around, intersect, blend, float, stand out, or disappear.  My inspiration is found in looking at the work of artists such as Gillian Ayers, William Baziotes, Paul Klee, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and Jacqueline Barnett.

Mary Lynne taught art at Pleasantville High School in Westchester County for 21 years and 6 years previously at Villa Maria Academy in NYC. She is proficient in darkroom and digital photography, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, painting, collage, and fiber arts. She holds a BS degree in Art Education and a Masters Degree in Studio Art both from the College of New Rochelle. She studied at the International Center of Photography in NYC, the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY, and currently at The Woodstock School of Art, NY. Her work is frequently exhibited and resides in numerous collections.

Bio:
Dominique de Cock studied at various Brussels academies while working as a set designer in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.

She taught life drawing classes and began her career as an artist in Brussels exhibiting giant pastel drawings of dogs and elephants, juxtaposing the domesticated with the wisdom of the wild. 

Sent to the US by Arte, a wallpaper and fabric company, as a product designer, Dominique continued her career in stage and costume design on the East End of Long Island and worked with a collective of artists engaged in Land Art: Ninbark International which received a NYSCA “Jump Start the Arts” grant.

She created ocean-themed installations with paper sculptures and works focused on forests threatened by drought and wildfire.

She has exhibited in Belcham NY, Westhampton Fall Art, at Pine Street Creative Lab in Philadelphia, Art Forms Us events in Harlem NY.

She was the recipient of a research grant from TAMAT – Brussels, and LMCC - NY for public art projects.

www.dominiquedecock.com
dominiquedece@gmail.com
IG: ddecock20

Artist Statement:
Nature is my guide. I’m moved by its ephemeral and fragile qualities; they are the antinomy of our materialistic world, and they bring us closer to our truth. 

Using materials like dust, air and shadows, wax and tissue paper, my drawings and watercolors are reminiscent of the mineral world, of ancient languages: traces left on the shore by a spilling wave, shadows and wind.​

Quoting French artist Odilon Redon, I would hope that “my drawings inspire and do not define themselves. They determine nothing. They place us just as music does in the ambiguous world of the indeterminate.”

STATEMENT

My work concerns the passage and containment of information inside and outside of drawn margins. I investigate map like shapes and divisions imbued with collective history and complex differences. Surrounding the interior shapes and exterior shape is the distinctive use of line. Coarsely, well-defined or partially drawn lines measure distance and direction over elapsed time. The movement of lines separating open color fields defines edges and borders with natural limitations and formal restrictions. The arrangement of shapes coalesces to clarify the structure of the drawings while marks add vibrancy and variety to my abstracted subject matter.

BIO

With an undergraduate degree from Penn State, Frank D’Astolfo began a rewarding graphic design career. Later, he earned a graduate degree from University of Pittsburgh. While maintaining an award winning design practice, he exhibited art and taught part time in Pittsburgh. When he moved to NYC, accepted a teaching position at Tyler School of Art and established a design office, his art making stalled. Following Tyler, he started a design program at Rutgers University eventually becoming Professor Emeritus. During a sabbatical, he and his wife lived in Morocco where art making began again. He exhibits widely and lives in Woodstock, NY.

STATEMENT

My purpose is to abstract the soul essence from a word, a feeling, an object.  Personal meaning evolves which is translated through line, shape, color, or movement into a full expression. My hand and heart journey together across the page with navigational input from my head. Unlikely colors are juxtaposed to achieve interesting effects. Gestures react to one another bringing the composition to fruition. Many times I will add a texture to enhance the work. It is exciting to explore the qualities particular to pastels combining them with other materials to produce surprising results.

BIO

Renée S. Englander has been an artist for over four decades. She started as a painter of realistic subjects with much success. After seven years she found that she could not express herself fully and entered the world of abstract art where her love of color, pattern, and texture came together. She exhibits in juried shows and continues to have solo exhibitions. Her studies at the Art Students League in Manhattan and The Woodstock School of Art have had the most profound influence on her work.  A highlight of her career was to exhibit in the Biennale Internazionale Dell’Arte Contemporanea in Florence, Italy. 

STATEMENT

Marks and designs on paper, born of my thoughts, feelings, and experiences, engage me on a valuable interior journey. Studying abstraction is important to me and enhances my appreciation of the work of other artists. Currently, I find the concepts of tonality, color, shape, and interval increasingly fascinating.

BIO

Born in 1932, Doris spent many hours absorbed in drawing, painting, printing, jewelry making, and trying to make sense of the world around her. After college, she studied and worked in medicine. She joined a Sumi-e society and exhibited at The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, took classes at The Art Students League, and showed her work in student exhibits. Upon retirement in 1992, she became a student at The Woodstock School of Art and joined The Woodstock Art Association and Museum where she remains an active member. She exhibits regularly in these and other local venues.

Artist Statement 

Inspired by the Color Field & Abstract artists of the late 1940’s & 50’s, Ms. Hoersting seeks simplicity, elegance and color in her work. Her continued questioning of marks, color & esthetics is a studio must.  Often exhaustion precedes the final outcome of CALM & DELIGHT from her exploration of repeated markings.



Judith Hoersting gleaned the USA from New Haven to Alaska to secure her credentialed MFA in Studio Art in 2005.  In the 1990’s she studied & expanded her artistic vocabulary in color, drawing & painting at Yale.  Summers were spent rapidly scrapping her pallet & finding endless color relationships at the Cape Cod School of Art. Ms. Hoersting exhibits in Alaska, the US Northwest & Internationally. You will find her busy creating new works in her Alaska & Oregon studios.

STATEMENT

My artistic journey has evolved from representational drawings in ink and graphite to non-objective drawings in pastel. I aim to communicate my feelings through the interaction of color and form. The tactile sense of hand to pastel allows me to form impressions of mood. In my current series, I started with a grid format, creating visual variety and balancing color, light, and texture and using a combination of intuition and intention. I find it liberating to start a drawing with no predetermined outcome, inventing forms not yet imagined as I strive to develop drawings that express my emotions and sensibilities.

BIO

With a background in drawing, painting, and graphic design, Michael Hopkins' current passion is abstract drawing in pastel. He has studied Drawing at Parsons, the Art Students League, and the School of Visual Arts. In 2006, he began classes in Landscape Drawing and Painting and, in 2010, he began Abstract Pastel Drawing with Instructor Meredith Rosier and the Drawing Galaxy at The Woodstock School of Art. With his electrifying sense of color, Hopkins' work has been exhibited in numerous galleries including Wired Gallery, Stone Ridge, NY, The Rep Gallery in Albany, NY and The Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, NY.

STATEMENT
I love this language of drawing, painting and collage! As my point of refuge, my safe harbor, each responsive mark embodies what I question, what I long for. Prompted by a cognitive and intuitive process, my work begins with no fixed result in mind. This origin invites abandon and discovery, unveiling and celebrating the uncertainty and ambiguity in life. Line, form and space converge and intertwine, folding and unfolding, revealing my fascination with ‘the open and unencumbered’. Translucency transforms the illusion of linear time. Complexity and subtlety intrigue me, allowing for limitless associations driven by my mind’s impulse and desire.

BIO
Roxie is a Hudson Valley based artist and poet. She resides in Hyde Park, NY, where her studio is open to visitors by appointment. Awarded an MFA in Illustration from Syracuse University, NY, she has worked as fine artist and visual arts educator for over four decades. Career highlights include summer fellowship at Skidmore college; study in Florence, Italy; NAWA induction; recognition by the Smithsonian Institute Archives of American Art; and recent enrollment at the Woodstock School of Art. Roxie frequently exhibits nationally and in galleries of the Mid-Hudson/Metropolitan area. Visit roxiejohnson.com to learn of the artist’s work, viewpoints and accomplishments.

Artist Statement

This body of work is an expression of mood, a series of vignettes that evoke atmosphere and endlessness. The work is layered with printed paper and photocopy collage, image transfer, and mark making. I’m able to work on both sides of the vellum sheets, enhancing depth and playing with chance, an important part of my process. My work has been described as "some otherworldly mash-up of quilts and paintings and sculpture and something else altogether" and that "something else" is what I aim to discover through my practice. The play of materials and process is what most excites me. This work can be hung unframed.

Bio

I first exhibited work in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the nascent fiber arts movement. Following careers in the not-for-profit sector and landscape architecture, I now focus on my art practice from my studio in Germantown, New York. My current focus is on mixed media collages on paper and vellum. My award-winning work has been included in more than 70 exhibits, most recently at The Lockwood Gallery, Kingston, and as featured artist at Window on Hudson, Hudson, New York. My collage, “New Alphabet,” was featured on the 2020 issue of the French literature journal, l’esprit createur. My studio was selected as one of the artist studio participants for Upstate Art Weekend’s 2022 season.

STATEMENT

I joined the Drawing Galaxy in 2009 and continue to appreciate the challenges that it offers. My work goes off in directions I would not have considered on my own. Looking back over seven years of drawings, I am stunned by the range of expression I have explored. My techniques have evolved but my goal remains steady: to create images that please me to contemplate.

BIO

Born in Pittsburgh in 1942, John was surrounded by art from infancy as his mother was a professional Portrait Painter and Art Teacher. A lifelong photographer, he studied painting, drawing, and printmaking since moving to Woodstock in 1982. At The Woodstock School of Art, instructors Robert Angeloch and Meredith Rosier have been most influential. John has long served on the Board of Directors of the WSA and served several terms as Chairman of The Woodstock Artists Association and Museum. John was a Psychology Professor for 12 years (Rutgers, Manhattanville College) and a Researcher and Product Designer at Woodstock Percussion Inc., for 20 years.

STATEMENT

I wonder what it means to make art at a time when it seems we humans are not up to maintaining the health of our beautiful planet and its creatures. What I know is that for me, making art is like being a Therapist, and is like living life. Everything has a way of falling apart and then gathering together, making form out of the unformulated, continually layering and digging beneath the layers. The complexities of abstraction, color, line, and texture are the tools I employ in my passionate reach for exploration of the not yet imagined.

BIO

Jennifer Leighton's creative life as a Psychotherapist is closely related to her artistic endeavors. Deeply engaging with another person is a new experience every time just like a new canvas. Originally a self-taught artist, Jennifer began drawing in 1979 and completed several commissions. In 2002, she began working with Lynn Preston, an Abstract Painter. Acrylic paint, medium, and collage on large surfaces grew wild and colorful. In 2009, with Meredith Rosier at the Woodstock School of Art, she rediscovered her first love: drawing. This time color, abstraction, pastel, ink, and pencil speak to both the love of drawing and painting.

STATEMENT

Kandinsky states, “Color is a power which directly influences the soul.” I concur as color elicits an emotional response in me. From electric fluorescent pop colors to subdued earth colors to tonal expanses, I note my perception transmits different moods according to color variation. Abstraction in drawing allows me to interlace color, form, line, and pattern. It is a mysterious language in tune with exemplifying the qualities of color and light. I appreciate combining watercolor, pastel, and pencil on paper to regard color and light in its variety of reflective, absorbed, diffuse, or opaque faculties.

BIO

Mary Licause began her artistic inquiry in her 20’s alongside an artist friend. She studied botanical drawing in New York City at the Botanical Gardens. Her interest in watercolor developed further and with it her encounters with color as idea and emotion became woven together. Her studies continue with Meredith Rosier and Staats Fasholdt at The Woodstock School of Art, N.Y. She frequently exhibits her work and has recently shown at Wired Gallery, Stone Ridge, N.Y., Jacaruso Gallery in Rhinebeck, N.Y., The Rep Gallery in Albany, N.Y., The Doghouse Gallery, Saugerties, N.Y. and The Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, N.Y.

STATEMENT

My work is all about line, color, and form, from snarly mark making to definition of solid shapes, often overlapping and transparent, and the influence they have on the space around them. They are my tools for exploration of air, density, and depth, and means for expressing the tangible and the intangible, feeling and raw energy. My explorations go from pencil to pastels to ink, using various papers and treatments, combining color and line toward the goal of expressive abstract composition. 

BIO

Harriet was born in Texas, and lives and works in Kingston, NY. She received her MA in Painting and Printmaking from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, studied at The Art Students League, NYC, and The Woodstock School of Art. Harriet was juried into membership of The National Association of Women Artists. She has had solo and group shows in Greece, Texas, and New York, and has several works included in the collection of the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece. In 2014, Harriet was awarded a solo show at The Woodstock Artists Association and Museum. She received the Sally Jacobs/Phoebe Towbin Award for Outstanding Artist of 2013, and NAWA Works on Paper Award for 2015. Visit www.harrietlivathinos.com for further information. 

STATEMENT

Dancing hands rhythmically apply color, line, and texture to paper either within grid-like structures or letting loose among curvaceous shapes. Shapes and lines of luscious pastel are challenged to assert themselves, or retreat, explode with color, hide in corners, reside on petite papers, or spread out on larger formats.

BIO

After a career as one of the first women Art Directors in American advertising, Linda Miller was able to create art of her own purpose and vision. As an art student, she studied with wonderful artists among them Philip Pearlstein, Esteban Vicente, and Ad Reinhardt, receiving a BA and MA in art education at NYU. In recent years, Linda has concentrated on abstract drawing with virtually pure pigments: intensely colored, soft, and metallic pastels introduced to her by the Artist/Teacher Meredith Rosier at the Woodstock School of Art. Exhibitions include Zella Nine Gallery, London; The Doghouse Gallery, Saugerties, NY; Atlantic Gallery, NYC; The Wired Gallery, Stone Ridge, NY; The Woodstock Artist Association/Museum (Doris Lee/Elfriede Borkmann Award, Best in Show).

STATEMENT

With space and rhythm as a starting place, I then investigate expansion, contraction, the finite, and the infinite. I discover a rhythm while I work, as color and shape, light and dark balance to create movement or stillness. Rather than describe a place or location, I try to convey a sensation of space. What it feels like to be in space or to be in a place or a body moving among spaces large and small. I choose paper for its texture and color depending on the effects I want to convey with pastel, pencil, erasers, ink, and paint in my drawings.

BIO

I grew up in New York City and studied Drawing at the San Francisco Art Institute. I hold a BA from Bennington College with a major in Painting and Dance. Since moving to the Hudson Valley, I have continued my studies in dance and abstract drawing.  I am a gardener, a hiker, and a practitioner of Buddhist meditation. I have shown my work locally at KMOCA in Kingston, New York as well as The Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, the Doghouse Gallery, BSP Gallery, Woodstock School of Art and other venues in the area.

BIO:
Peggy Morse is a painter investigating the fluid restlessness of abstraction. Free association is a touchstone as her images are compounded in her imagination. Morse pushes the painterliness of her surfaces, effecting a complex synthesis between color and line, gesture and movement.

Morse has studied with established contemporary artists, including Robert Szot, of Los Angeles; Meredith Rosier and Jenny Nelson, of the Woodstock School of Art, New York; and Nicholas Wilton, of the Art2Life Academy. Morse resides and paints in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. She exhibits nationally. Her most recent work can be seen on her Instagram account: @peggymorse.art

Artist Statement:
Painting is my means of inquiry, invention and lush discovery. The construction of each piece occurs directly on a canvas with no preconception. It may be an urgent or a tentative start of hand and tool to surface, then a wisp of line or flood of color. I savor the inconsistent journeys painting has to offer.

Abstract painting convinces me I can connect and identify with this historically mythic language. Each painting records an evolution of evidence as my intuition navigates the cycle, moving back and forth between who I am and how the painting will articulate my presence. I feel close to my intentions when I am able to translate what is within me into paint.

Statement

My impulse with abstraction is to explore organic forms. I want the forms to have the transformative quality of light and movement of a living entity. By overlapping colors for their illuminative and transparent effect, I can integrate illusionistic space. Highlighting and shadowing creates volume and depth whereby forms can float or remain grounded. I am interested in perceptual psychology and thus I set after the visceral experience of finger painting with pastels, oil and water media. I try to suggest a psychological space or setting where the forms appear active, responding to the here and now through movement.  

Bio

Kerry Moskowitz devoted years to performance in classical and modern dance, improvisational theater, architecture and a career in graphic arts. She studied art and architecture at the University of Texas in Arlington and graphic design at Texas Christian University. She continued at the Abracheff School of Art and the Art Student’s League, both in NYC.  Classes commenced at the Woodstock School of Art in Woodstock, New York in 2013. Her recent immersion in abstract drawing at WSA has instigated her desire to devote more time to investigating gestural organic forms.

Artist’s Statement
My purpose in making art is to touch the ineffable, to go beyond words into the deep belly of creativity. It is to meet myself in the wellspring and have a conversation with the viewer, to communicate in a deep and intimate way at first sight, in an instant. I strive only to be in harmony with each line, each splash of color and splatter of ink as it strikes the painting surface, to reveal what is already there. My life is my greatest work of art and the small canvases I draw on are part of my vocabulary.

Bio
Nancy O’Hara’s largest canvas and finest artistic expression – her own life – continue to be a work in progress. Moving to the Hudson Valley from New York City in 2015 has added a thrilling new dimension to her artistic adventure: a playground filled with beauty and the opportunity to express with pencils, ink, pastels, crayons and paint on various surfaces what cannot be expressed with words. Along with being an artist, Nancy is a meditation teacher, a life-coach, and an author.

STATEMENT

Drawing is an exploratory, meditative process of “tapping in” and dialogue with the emerging image. The physicality of this process extends to the manner in which marks made with pastel, graphite, and charcoal co-habitate surfaces that are scratched, cut, perforated, incised, and stitched using tools and abrasives. Ensuing errors, chance effects, revisions, and pentimenti are key to the journey and completion of each work. While abstraction refers to a product without reference to the material world, it can also describe a state of mind wherein one is deep in thought, or pleasurably preoccupied. My drawings are an embodiment of both interpretations.  See 2017 review at http://www.spotlightnews.com/thespot/2017/06/28/art-review-artist-invites-people-of-the-digital-world-to-slow-down-and-look-deeply/

BIO

Artist Joan Oliver currently maintains a studio in Glenmont, NY while juggling a multi-faceted career. She regularly studies at Woodstock School of Art, New York and in Massachusetts at Provincetown Art Association and Truro Arts Center. Since 2000, she has participated in over 25 group and regional/national juried exhibitions. Most recently, Joan has undertaken solo residencies at Provincetown’s historic C-Scape Dune Shack; Polli Talu Arts Center, Estonia, and Platte Cove Catskill Artist Center – all contributing a collective reference for a body of work that includes drawing, painting, encaustic, collage, assemblage, textiles, ceramics and photography.  A member of the National Association of Women Artist since June 2017, see interview at http://www.thenawa.org/joan-oliver/

STATEMENT

I like to create dream-inspired worlds which draw the viewer in. I create them primarily by manipulating color, augmented by small marks, to produce a visually ambiguous space. My hope is that the viewer will experience a sense of mystery and surprise.

BIO

Carol Pepper-Cooper holds a MFA from Pratt Institute. In 1971, she established an art program for St. Ann’s Lower School in Brooklyn. She relocated to the Hudson Valley in 1974 and began exhibiting regularly. In 2004, Carol was commissioned to design three seven-foot stained glass windows that were installed in Kingston’s Temple Emanuel. Her work received the 2014 Distinguished Artist Award from the Arts Society of Kingston and the 2015 Sally Jacobs/Phoebe Towbin Award from the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum. Her work is in private homes on the east and west coasts and in the permanent collections of the University of Illinois, Pratt Institute, and Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Carol Pepper-Cooper is a member of the N.A.W.A.

BIO

Susan Piperato grew up wanting to be an artist and/or writer, but words won out over images and she pursued a career in publishing instead. She has worked as a journalist, magazine and book editor, and writing teacher in New York City, Australia, and the Hudson Valley, where she raised two sons and still lives. She holds a dual BA in journalism and English from Syracuse University and an MA in English literature from SUNY New Paltz. She began studying drawing with Meredith Rosier in 2018, and illustrated the book Animal Sutras by Stephen Levine (Monkfish Book Publishing Company, 2019).

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Having doodled obsessively since leaving art behind as a teenager, I began studying abstract drawing with Meredith Rosier in August 2018 to allow myself a respite from working with words as a professional writer and editor. Now I find that drawing and writing often flow from and nurture each other. Drawings trigger storytelling and vice versa.

From my very earliest years I loved art - color, pattern, and imagery. I was always drawing. In grade school I looked forward to art class where we could illustrate ideas that our teacher gave us every week, using pastel and colored pencil.  Later on I took art lessons, learning how to paint in oils, pastels, and watercolors. I also loved fashion - experimenting with fabric and texture. I realized a childhood .dream of going to the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, and majored in Apparel Design.

I went on to a career in the garment industry in New York City - designing women's dresses, from day to evening wear, at every price point.. The computer age came into the fashion industry and I jumped on all of the opportunities that it afforded, utilizing graphic and image applications, web design, and even learning to write code.

In tandem with my fashion career, I do watercolor landscapes and portraits of people, pets, and houses. Most recently I started painting and drawing abstract art, studying under Meredith Rosier at the Woodstock School of Art.

As an artist and designer what most informs my work is the concept of taking something flat and making it into something round. With clothing I sculpt fabric into three-dimensional shapes that conform to the body. With drawing and painting I try to create a three-dimensional space on a flat surface with the use of tonality, proximity, scale, balance, contrast, and juxtaposition. My love of color is a continual inspiration for creating various moods, whether vibrant or subtle, always seeking to make the flat surface achieve depth. My goal is to bring beauty and thoughtfulness to the world.

Bio

Monique received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Apparel Design and an MFA in Web Design New Media from the Academy of Art University. In tandem with her design career she also works as an artist, creatinglandscapes, and portraits of people, animals, and homes in watercolor. Most recently Monique has studied under Meredith Rosier at the Woodstock School of Art, expanding her repertoire to include abstract drawing and painting in mixed media. Her work hangs in many homes and was featured in a solo exhibition at the Manor Club, Pelham Manor, NY and at Art Effects Gallery in Pelham, NY.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have been studying and making art for several decades: as a watercolorist, collage maker, sculptor and, most recently, student of abstract drawing. For me, the joy of art is in creating something out of nothing. My most exciting moment is taking a blank sheet of paper and making the first mark. All else flows from that. I enjoy exploring the interplay between the concepts in my mind and the movements of my hand. My work is defined by color. And finally, I do not consider any piece complete until it is seen by you, the viewer.

ARTIST BIO

Natalee Rosenstein began her explorations of art at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art in the 1980s where she studied watercolor. She continues studying watercolor, sculptng and collage at the School of visual Arts and the Woodstock School of Art. In recent years she began studying stone carving, working in alabaster and soap stone. Since her retirement from a thirty-five year career in book publishing, she has concentrated on studying abstract drawing under the capable tutelage of Meredith Rosier at the Woodstock School of Art.

STATEMENT

I investigate the visual effects of motion on form due to my overt fascination with movement. Utilizing divergent scale shifts from up close to vast distance, I attempt to capture the essence of a certain movement in a stop motion act of drawing. Words such as Hover or Budge enact a drama of passage in my hands. The drawings become events in themselves with links to spatial phenomena where identity is amorphous. Deliberately working within a restrained palette, I aim for an intimation of phosphorescence from my pigments and a dialogue between the indeterminate and the exactitude of my forms.

BIO

Meredith Rosier studied drawing at Yale University and earned an MFA from The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Her encounters with drawing have seen her work collected by museums nationally and internationally. In 2016, her work won The Genius Award from the National Association of Women Artists. She teaches Abstraction and Drawing, Large Scale Abstract Drawing, Abstract Comics and Transparency at The Woodstock School of Art, NY. To further her championship of abstract drawing, Rosier founded The Drawing Galaxy in 2009. Comprised of over 40 artists, this endeavor is dedicated to those who delve into abstraction as a primary language.

STATEMENT 

After spending many years in the corporate world, it is a joy to wake up knowing I have a full day of art-making ahead of me. I work in a variety of media, including both acrylic and oil paint, pastels, pencils, electronic pen and iPad, even gold leaf. Whatever speaks to me in the moment, I am always exploring new techniques and finding new patterns and ways of being. There is never a plan, just a delight in the process itself.  

BIO

Anne Sanger is an abstract artist and fashion illustrator as well as the owner of Pinkwater Gallery in uptown Kingston. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati School of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) and went on to work in New York City's fashion industry for over 25 years. She is passionate about promoting the work of her fellow Upstate artists, pursuing her own explorations as an abstract artist, and underlining her belief that art is for everyone.

https://www.studioparapluie.com

Statement

Since retiring from a gratifying career in manufacturing and design, I have had the privilege to explore my personal love of art. It has been a beautiful journey into realistic expressionism and self-discovery. When I joined the Drawing Galaxy, I found new freedom and spontaneity through abstraction. I now perceive marks in a new way—mood, mystery, amusement, the unknown. I wander through my love of color with no particular destination where even the beauty of struggle becomes a dance to me. The excitement and joy that I discover through this process, continues to surprise and energize my work.

Bio

Susan received her degree in Fine Arts & Arts Education from University of Miami and studied at the Arts Students League, The Edan Center and the Woodstock School of Art. Solo exhibitions in the Hudson Valley include Rhinebeck Bank, Dog House Gallery, Duck Pond Gallery, and Taste Budds Café. Her work has also appeared in group exhibitions at Angeloch Gallery, Art Society of Kingston, Red Hook Community Arts Network, Dog House Gallery, Wired Gallery, the Morton Memorial Library among others. In 2016, she received an honorable mention at Woodstock Artist Association and Museum. She currently reside in the Hudson Valley.

STATEMENT

Abstract drawing is an endless adventure of invention and discovery. I engage line, mark, shape, space, and color to convene on paper. They fraternize and present me with surprise, whimsy, and delight. An assembly of marks triggers my imagination with robust encouragement. I am captivated by the rhythm of color. I endeavor to ascertain its capabilities for transparency, saturation, volume and with it, light, shadow, and contrast. I use all manner of materials including watercolor, markers, crayons, pastels, ink, and colored pencil. I merge multiple colors to inspire movement as they grant me a rousing and infinite voyage in abstraction.

BIO

Edward Welch has been exploring artistic expression since his childhood years in the United States. As an adult, Edward had an opportunity to live, work, and study in Mexico and Brazil. Their people and cultures continue to provide inspiration for his artistic explorations. Edward has studied with artists on the East, West Coasts, and South of the United States, Mexico, and Brazil. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures have been exhibited in both group and solo shows in the United States and Latin America. Recently, his work has been exhibited in Albany, NY with a solo show forthcoming in Woodstock, NY.