Stonecrop 03

Art Gallery

Contributors' Notes

2020 Cover Art Contest Winner

brian d. cohen

new hampshire

briandcohen.com

The etchings of animals (a bestiary) from a book in collaboration with poet Chard deNiord, Poet Laureate of Vermont). Animals (and Chard’s poems in particular) remind us of what we know about ourselves from looking at the animal world. I find the adaptive variety and character of form of living creatures prompts a corresponding variety of emotional responses and technical approaches in my work. The following quote from Galway Kinnell, which opens the book, neatly encompasses the aims of the project: “We have to feel our own evolutionary roots and to know that we belong to life in the same way that other animals do and the plants and the stones…The real nature poem will not exclude man and deal only with animals and plants and stones, but it will reach the connection deeper than personality, a connection that resembles the attachment one animal has for another.”

—Brian D. Cohen

Jan Price

australia

If you are a rose, I will smell you and run my fingertips over your silken skin. If you are yellow I will use you sparingly because I really love frost blue and sad emotions. If you are human I will stand back and wait until you let me capture you, even though you will look back at me from the canvas knowing you have not given your essence. I will run away into my pine forest and tell the blue wren and rushing water in the creek how selfish you are. They will tweet and babble, Don’t go back! Don’t go back! But I do! And you know I will don’t you! Over and over I will paint you.

— Jan Price

karl zuehlke

washington dc

karlzuehlke.com

These paintings meet photos at a perpendicular angle. The colors were inspired by photographic black and whites, though the paintings are not actually black and white. I am blending primary colors, and painting in the washes. They focus on artifacts of human activity, though there are no people in them. Only traces.

— Karl Zuehlke

david rubenstein

america

When the light and the warmth and the color have retreated from the land, comfort, contentment, and introspection become possible like nowhere else.

— David Rubenstein

Kateryna Bortsova

Barcelona

@katerynabortsova

Regarding the definition of art modernity I do not divide art works into mainstream, underground and classics. It is important for me that art masterpiece should have a response in the audience’s soul. The portrait painting plays a very significant role in my works. The model may be not always people whom I know well. I may see a view of human face or bright display of its features which I would like and to use in portrait painting. But indeed the human character may not be similar to the image painted on my canvas. I create a new character. Sometimes people depicted in my works have collective features or even invented by me.

No doubt, works of any artists are totally autobiographic. It is felt in perception of life too, either in inspiration by certain landscapes, impressions from journeys or inimitable memories. Often people depicted in paintings have features similar to their author’s ones, so in mine do of the portraits acquire my features. It often occurs at the subconscious level. But I do not feel it. Only third persons can see it.

—Kateryna Bortsova

gabriel embha

berlin

gabrielembha.com

*Leader of the Gnome Revolution |* mixed media

The image is an assemblage of different persons, places and things in my work overall, all having to do with a grand narrative I am calling The Eisenhower Setup. This grand narrative is an ongoing series containing hundreds of mixed media and performance pieces coming together with a novel-length story—a building mystery involving global intrigue, disappearance, secrets of mass human sacrifice, and the personal toll of conscience.

— Gabriel Embeha

jodie filan

saskatoon

@jodiefilanart

Jodie Filan is an artist here in Saskatoon, born and raised. She has been published in RAR, Dark Ink press, Buddy Lit Zone, *82 Review, Aesthetica (Europe, Pithead Chapel, Nunum, Riza Press, Penultimate Peanut, The Raw Art Review (Spring 2019), High Shelf Press, Please See Me, among others. Recently Ms. Filan also placed 6th in Fusion arts 4th annual B+W competition (May 2019) and a painting of hers was accepted at Art Lark in Albany, New York (Garibaldi Maritime Museum); and another at Greenway Art Festival (Murfreesboro).

jane zich

san fransisco

www.zichpaintings.com

*River Mother* | acrylic on mulberry paper

*Gaia Fatigued and Forlorn* | acrylic on mulberry paper

I am interested in the interplay of Nature with imagination as a means of activating the “spiritual” dimension of the natural world. My paintings are created with acrylic applied to printed mulberry paper affixed to canvas or panel.
The bits of organic matter embedded in mulberry paper give it a texture that interacts with the application of paint, creating ridges, shadows, and sometimes unpredictable but serendipitous emphases and counterpoints.
Thus mulberry paper operates as a stand-in for Nature throughout the painting dialogue that occurs between the canvas and imagery arising from my imagination. That dialogue and relationship is essential to the exploration of the imaginative spirit sparked by Nature.

— Jane Zich

nam das

baguio, philippines

hnamdas.wixsite.com

*Astral Ancestral Experience* | oil on canvas

Filipino visual artist Nam Das is fascinated with open-ended themes that revolves around the collective unconscious and mythologems. He paints scenes inhabited by obscure figures and enigmatic objects that exudes a very stirring and mysterious aura. Intertwining a personal mythos and symbolism in a dreamlike state emerging from the darkness, illustrating a deeply personal world that is also universal at the same time. Nam practices with a Zorn palette in his paintings consisting of a limited four colors. He currently lives and works in Baguio, Philippines.

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