Gallery 919 is an on line gallery of women artists who have either lived or done work in North Carolina.
Nancy Allred is a printmaker and painter who lives in Raleigh.
Sheila Blake is a painter who lived in Durham for thirty years.
Linda Huff is a painter who lives in Rougemont.
Judy Kitzman lives in New York and travels to the state to paint.
Mary Mendell is a printmaker and painter living in Chapel Hill.
Gallery 919 is an on line gallery of women artists who have either lived or done work in North Carolina.
Nancy Allred is a printmaker and painter who lives in Raleigh.
Sheila Blake is a painter who lived in Durham for thirty years.
Linda Huff is a painter who lives in Rougemont.
Judy Kitzman lives in New York and travels to the state to paint.
Mary Mendell is a printmaker and painter living in Chapel Hill.
My paintings are very influenced by the natural world. Many of my images come from careful observations, drawing upon familiar objects, people and places in my world whether at home or in my travels. I tend to concentrate on some particular detail or fragment of the subject in question.
I employ a variety of mediums, often mixing them to achieve a vision. Printmaking processes allow for incremental changes in an artwork and for the possibility to record or print a ‘snapshot’ as the work evolves.
I enjoy the immediacy of watercolor, the portability, the occurrence of serendipity, the flow of the water, the Zen quality of painting in watercolor –you don’t overwork a piece or you create mud (nothing against mud). I love the ‘help’ of the water in mixing my colors on the paper, and moving the image in ways that I may not have anticipated. The quality of light that watercolors allow is enchanting. My watercolors are small, intimate.
I want my images to hang in people’s houses, to be lived with. I want them to make people feel there is beauty in the world all around them. Rest and take it in. Slow down and look around. Nancy Allred
Taking
a subject that is ordinary and transforming it into something beautiful is
an all or nothing risk. There's something thrilling about depicting space out
of flatness. I love creating light and atmosphere out of color: not just any
light, but specific to the time of day, evocative of the season and place.
My purpose is not to document reality, but I use what's around me to create
a convincing world. In this way the viewer can be pulled into the painting
so that they can see that world within it, and everything comes alive; the
surface opens up and the effects multiply and you will see more and more.
Once I've started a piece, I will work it out in a process of many, many revisions.
I intend every single mark that's on the paper or canvas to count, so that
the viewer never gets tired of looking. Sheila Blake
I am often attracted by places whose story reflects some aspect of a broader social change such as reservoirs before they are inundated, buildings left vacant because of changing economic circumstance. The transformation can reveal an unexpected beauty as the place disengages from its past and assumes other meanings. Vistas may open up or trees and vegetation may intrude into spaces once empty of them. New visual forms arise out of odd juxtapositions. Humor, irony and awareness of loss can be evoked in this circumstance.
My work is also about light and the moment in which the landscape was done. I hope for viewers to feel as if they were there—to experience the heat, cold or glare of the day; the poetry of the place; the slant of light; the tilt of the geography and weight of the structures; the living presence of the animals.
It is the life of a place, not the documentation of it or the representation of certain imagery that intrigues me. I am inspired and cheered by how the sun shines equally gloriously on the field of wildflowers as it does the scuttled tanker. Linda Huff
In
the 1970’s I traveled through the Southwest and Wyoming. This led me
to a series of paintings of desert landscapes. These open spaces brought me
to a painting format which I still embrace - a strip of sky, a large forground
and activity on a distant horizon, a point of change and often mystery.My travels
in the South led to a series of paintings of country roads with strong shadows.
The shadowed air itself appeared to me to take on a volume, a cool region of
three dimensions, a desirable place to be to escape the heat of the sun.
I lived
for a while in Florida where I rediscovered the open spaces of beaches. Florida’s
land is flat; one is always aware of the sky and it became a more important
part of my format. The strip of sky and long foreground changed to a strip
of foreground and a large sky. The horizon remained the place of transistion
- now without the desert mountains, the color changes and the loss of the edge
from fog or reflections became of more interest. Many of my paintings are at
dusk when the atmosophere acts briefly as a prism and colors are most luminous.
It is always the feeling of the place that is important to me - the particular
atmosophere that results from the color and structure that makes for a unique
experience in time and place. Judy Kitzman
I began making etchings in the year 2000 in an almost accidental encounter with this printmaking technique. I felt an immediate affinity with its challenges and opportunities. Etching provides a way to create lines and textures of infinite variety. The possibilities for exploration and accident are endless.
I have shown prints in a number of exhibits with the North Carolina Printmakers Guild, at the Durham Arts Council, and at the Carrboro ArtsCenter. For the past three years I have been on the Orange County Artists Guild (OCAG) studio tour. Mary Mendell