BOTANICAL REVERIE: EXPLORING NATURE’S CANVAS

Sara Crisp

Sara Crisp is a Maine artist who works primarily in encaustic, which is an ancient method of painting using wax and pigment fused with heat. This process allows her to make many thin, translucent layers as well as embed natural objects in her pieces. Crisp embraces the sacred universality of the circle, Eastern spirituality, and the ability of a simple plant to symbolize life force. Crisp’s mixed-media and encaustic works incorporate delicate, meticulous patterning paired with botanical elements such as flower petals, stems, and seed pods.

Sara Crisp has had numerous exhibition at various venues such as Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; SOHO20, NYC; Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME; Silvermine Guild Arts Center, New Canaan, CT; eklektikos Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Chautauqua Center for the Visual Arts, Chautauqua, NY, among others. Her work was showcased at international art fairs such as Art Miami, Red Dot, and the Affordable Art Fair. Her numerous awards include the Best of Show prize at the Cambridge Art Association National Prize Show and an artist’s grant from the Maine Arts Commission. She has also received notices in The Boston Globe, Art New England, and The New York Times.

Ruth Epstein

Ruth Epstein is a New York artist that now lives and works in Florida. She is primarily a representational interpretive realist painter. She has established herself with her vibrant floral landscapes. Epstein has traveled extensively around the world, studying and experiencing various places, their culture, and their visual attributes such as textures and colors. Attuned to the marvelous world around her, the artist transfers her vision onto the canvas using vivid shapes of color and fluidity of paint.

Ruth Epstein studied at the Society of Arts and Crafts, Detroit, MI; the Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Her work was exhibited at Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC; Center for the Arts, Bonita Springs, FL; Naples Art Association, Naples, FL; Powers Gallery, Acton, MA; Brandon Michael Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM; Miller Gallery, Cincinnati, OH; Wally Findlay Galleries, Chicago, IL, among many others. Epstein’s work can be found in many private collections in New York City; Cincinnati, OH; Detroit, MI; Boca Raton, FL; Portland, ME; Lancashire, UK.

Laura Fantini

Laura Fantini is an Italian artist living in New York, known for her hyper-realistic minimalist colored pencil still life defined by strong contrast values, intense details, and highly theatrical compositions with dramatic lighting and a powerful environmental significance. Upon closer inspection, her work exhibits intricate fine details comprised out of precise pencil strokes. Her images are more than a representation of flora, they are an intimate interpretation of her own feelings, experiences and emotions.

Fantini graduated from the Liceo Artistico and Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy. Her work was show in Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC; Queen’s Botanical Gardens, NYC; Museo Della Permanente, Milan,  Italy; Galleria Forni, Bologna, Italy;  Staten Island Museum, Staten Island, NY; The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Boston, MA, among others. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA; Queens Botanical Garden, NYC; Denver Botanic Gardens in Denver, CO, and in numerous private collections in Italy, the UK, the US, and Japan.

Iona Fromboluti

Fromboluti is a New York artist, whose works are often composed of unresolved narratives. The artist captures the decisive moment, a snapshot of the cresting action. The result, though abstract and intangible, leaves behind the residual poetry of a story you feel you know even if you don’t fully understand how it ends or begins. The dramatic impact of her work is heightened by a long horizontal support, inferring a monumental landscape with a wide, uninterrupted line.

Iona Fromboluti is an alumnus of the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Besides exhibiting at Denise Bibro Fine Art, she has exhibited with The More Gallery and Gross McCleaf Galleries in Philadelphia, PA, and the Vose Gallery, Boston, MA. Her work has been included in several group exhibitions at Smith College, MA; Hofstra University, Long Island, NY; The National Academy of Design, NYC; the Southern Allegheny Museum, Loretto, PA; Marymount College, NYC; the Philadelphia Academy, Philadelphia, PA, among many others. Her public collections include the Butler Institute, Youngstown, OH; the Asheville Art Museum, NC; the Pew Charitable Trust Collection, Philadelphia, PA.

Holly Gordon

Holly Gordon is a noted Long Island photographer, who has pushed through the traditional boundaries of photography for more than two decades. Gordon is a pioneer of the process of achieving painterly quality in photography by adding and subtracting objects, manipulating colors, and layering images. After years of experimentation, Gordon started to define her creative process as “Photo-Liminalism”. Gordon has been working in this groundbreaking genre from its very beginnings prior to it becoming a trend.

Besides exhibiting extensively in Long Island and New York City, Gordon has had numerous shows and speaking engagements throughout the United States. Her work was exhibited at Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC; Molloy University, Rockville Centre, NY; Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, NY; fotofoto gallery, Huntington, NY; Audubon Gallery, Greenwich, CT; Le Croy Gallery, New York Hall of Science, NYC, among others. Her publications include Artists Magazine, The Long Islander, The New York Times, Shutterbug Magazine, Queens Times Ledger, Newsday, Galapagos.org Annual Report.

Ilyan Ivanov

Iliyan Ivanov is a Bulgarian abstract artist, living and working in New York. Ivanov employs his canvas as a conduit for capturing the intricate nuances of emotion and behavior. Through a symphony of visual analogies, Ivanov orchestrates a mesmerizing interplay of color and form, deftly navigating a multilayered approach to his palette. Bold and vivid hues dance across the canvas, each brushstroke a testament to the artist’s masterful command of his craft. With a dynamic energy that pulsates through his work, Ivanov infuses each piece with a palpable vitality, inviting viewers into a captivating exploration of the human experience.

Iliyan Ivanov received his artistic education at National Academy of Design, School of Fine Arts, New York, NY and George Yanakiev Art Studio, Burgas, Bulgaria. His work was exhibited in various galleries and museums such as Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC, Brooklyn Gallery, NYC; Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY;  Sideshow Gallery, NYC; Nina Torres Gallery, Miami, FL; Pierre Menard Gallery, Cambridge, MA; Thomas Jaeckel Gallery, NYC; 440 Gallery, NYC; Broadway Gallery, NYC; Albright-Knox Art Museum, Buffalo, NY;  Vagabond Gallery, Berlin, Germany, among many others. Ivanov’s works have been shown in such institutions as the US Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria; Consulate General of the Republic of Bulgaria, New York. Among the fairs his artworks were shown at are Biennial Art Fair, Fridge Art Fair, Cosmopolitan Art Fair, Clio Art Fair among others. His work was written about in such magazines as Artery, Circle Foundation for the Arts Quarterly Magazine, Contemporary Art Curator, Art & Beyond.

Roslyn Meyer

Roslyn Meyer is an artist living and working in New York City and Connecticut. Meyer is inspired by the play of wind and light on surfaces. With her camera she captures unique fleeting moments when the elements of a natural world align in perfect yet ephemeral compositions. Like Monet she often goes back to places at different times of day inspired and induced to further explore and create. Meyer likes to capture, explore, and depict the tensions between surface and depth, motion and stillness, realism and abstraction often layering images revealing as well as covering natural phenomena.

Meyer’s work was exhibited at various institutions such as Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC;  Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, VT; Healing Arts Gallery, New Haven, CT;  Keyes Gallery, Stony Creek, CT; Carriage Barn Arts Center, New Canaan, CT; A Leaf Gallery, New Haven, CT; Guilford Art Center, Guilford, CT, among others.

Nora Speyer

Nora Speyer primarily lived and worked in New York City and Maine. Throughout her practice she continued to explore plein air landscape painting and drawing. Her paintings were always rich in color. She built up her surfaces with oil paint, continually working back into the tacky paint, removing elements, and adding new ones. The result is an impression of a place that is meant to be exact but also generalized by the elapsing of time over the duration of each painting. Speyer’s works blend elements of expressionism and impressionism along with a tradition of American landscape painting.

Speyer has had numerous solo and group exhibitions. She has shown at Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC; Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris; Longpoint Gallery, Provincetown, MA; Concept Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA; Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, among others. Her work has been exhibited at the National Academy, where she is a member, Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, PA, and at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC. Her works are in prominent public collections such as the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., Fidelity Bank, Philadelphia, PA, to name a few.

Jan Wunderman

Jan Wunderman primarily lived and worked in New York City and New Hampshire. Wunderman is noted for richly painted, gestural abstract paintings exploring the formalities of form, space, and color. She embraces the challenge of organizing disorganization. Although the shapes in her paintings initially appear unrelated, they have a strong compositional structure and rhythm. Intermittently Jan was also inspired by the natural beauty that she saw in the special garden in Gramercy Park, not far from her home in that area and the natural beauty of her country retreat in the mountains of New Hampshire. This work featured in the show celebrates the refined shapes, forms, and color of Zinnias. At first glance it appears a simple depiction of flowers in within a still-life, but Wunderman continued to employ bold vibrant coloration and geometry that make the simple sublime.

Jan Wunderman studied at Otis Art Institute, now Pratt Institute, and at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, NY.  She has had several solo exhibitions throughout the United States and has won numerous awards including the Ohashi Award – Pan Pacific Exhibition in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan; the National Association of Women Artists; the American Society of Contemporary Artists; and the Grumbacher Gold Medal. Her works are in many corporate and museum collections including the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA; New York University Loeb Collection, Bank of America, NY; Warner Lambert, NJ; Wamsutta, NY.