Download PDF - ARTisSpectrum

Micheline RaymondSarabande JazzéeAcrylic & Mixed Media on Canvas 30” x 30”balance in color, line, texture and one artist’s creative impulses.www.michelineraymond.comwww.Agora-Gallery.com/ArtistPage/Micheline_Raymond.aspxMicheline Raymond creates her riotous, multi-tiered images bymaking the physicality of the artwork the predominant element.In the finished product, this manifests itself in a constant interplaybetween shadow, pigment, and light. Raymond’s canvases layeracrylic paint, sand, gold leaf, and sheets of transparent, treatedpaper on top of each other to create nooks of dense darknessand impossibly slender ridges that reflect light. When Raymondmanipulates texture and light in service of her colors, the hues aremagnificently rich. The subject matter ranges from figurative scenes,sometimes inspired by classical mythology, to abstracted seascapesand views of the land. In her exuberant, inclusive way, the artist willoften incorporate text and natural objects into her landscapes.More subtly, Raymond takes care to focus on the physical act ofart-making. Her guiding principle is rhythm in creation, a processshe describes as a “visceral” need to allow the gesture of her handto guide her to a resonant visual outcome. “For me,” Raymondsays, “painting or sculpting is elaborating a form of dance in spaceand color.” On the canvas, Raymond combines uninhibited andcontrolled movements to create work that finds harmony andSandra Mueller-DickSandra Mueller-Dick’s sharply focused paintingsmarry surreally saturated colors and a stronggraphic sensibility of light and dark, creating a visuallanguage of purity and intensity that speaks moreloudly than a screaming headline comprised of meretext. Born in Pennsylvania and currently working outof Massachusetts, Mueller-Dick switches betweenoils, watercolor and complicated mixed media todepict her many subjects, which include abstractedpatterns, modernized still lifes, architectural closestudies and unearthly landscapes. Some are inspiredby specific events in the artist’s life which havetouched her or acted as milestones in her experience.Others begin as floating ideas.Mueller-Dick approaches even her most realistic,Energy Within Acrylic 19” x 29”recognizably representational images as intellectual concepts first and foremost. As a piece progresses, she explains, it “evolvesand becomes more abstract,” and eventually “encompasses more emotion and allows the viewer to make their own interpretation.”Through her distinctive color treatment and the ingenious use she sometimes makes of perspective, she transforms each workinto a message of emotion and atmosphere. “By using strong color contrasts and shapes, my goal is to create rhythmic patternsthroughout the painting,” Mueller-Dick says. For her, an individual emotional response in every new viewer is the sign that awork is successful.www.mueller-dick.comwww.Agora-Gallery.com/ArtistPage/Sandra_Mueller__Dick.aspx54 ARTisSpectrum