The Laffer Gallery Artists

Robert Moylan works masterfully in gouache. His panoramic landscapes are brightly colored celebrations of the rural beauty of Rensselaer and Washington counties in New York. [Read more…]

Mikel Wintermantel is an artist schooled in tradition and raised in a modern world. He has been able to cross the advancement in modern materials and tools with his deep respect for old world methods. Through years of exploration his method and materials have become almost transparent in the creation process.

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William McCarthy works on wood board, paper and canvas using several layers of gesso before priming the surface with cadmium red base, a quick sketch using charcoal is used to lay out the design, then the paint is applied. He works in layers using thinned down oil color, building on these layers with glazing techniques the colors are adjusted and brought up to completion before final coats of varnish are applied.

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Operating out of her home in Saratoga Springs, NY, Nancy Magnell specializes in the art of reverse glass painting. Very few people in the country practice this form, and even fewer use it to paint landscapes. Working initially on canvas, landscape painting has been Magnell’s specialty since her 20s, when she replicated the works of Hudson River artists.

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Valerie Craig has drawn and painted nearly all her life. Her oil and watercolor paintings are suffused with soft light and convey a sensitive approach. Craig’s subject matter is varied and includes still-life, landscapes and street scenes. Valerie Craig has had more than twenty years in the field to date. [Read more…]

Drawing, painting and ceramics form the artistic base for Troy, NY native, Wendy Williams. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Ms Williams began exhibiting across the Northeast United States beginning at the Cutler-Stavaridis Gallery in Boston, MA and has been the recipient of several grants through the years, including the Elizabeth Foundation and Yaddo. [Read more…]

Allen Grindle received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham in 1973 and attended the  Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. After graduating college, he received his Master of Arts (studio art) from the State University of New York in Albany, New York in 1978. Over the years Allen Grindle has produced many works of art including sculptures,  black and white prints, and paintings. [Read more…]

Constance Kheel’s abstract paintings celebrate the interaction between drawing and color, juxtaposing the controlled discipline of geometrics with the spontaneity of poured colors. At the same time, the heavy texture of Kheel’swork focuses on the materiality of painting.  Primary shapes, such as circles and squares, emerge and retreat and expand and contract like astral objects in infinite.

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“In my teens, i met a sculptor who lived in my neighborhood on long island. john terken became my teacher and mentor for the next 10 years.
He taught me about the classical representation of the human form, how the body measured eight heads, how it was divided into hundreds of individual convex forms, how to use the measurements of those forms to create the total human figure. Contemplating these forms in isolation inspired the piece “NOSE”. It is a construction of familiar body parts in unfamiliar relationships that I hope inspires the viewer to contemplate them in new ways, just as I had.

A similar fascination inspired the piece “POPCORN”. I began studying each piece of popcorn before eating it, fascinated by how the simple kernels exploded into random shapes. For my sculpture, I selected a piece of popcorn that could stand on any side and thereby enable the viewer to see those shapes in multiple ways.

I created the piece “HEAR ME!” to get someone’s attention. I sent them a sculpture of my ear in a box in the hope they would call me, listen to my ideas, and hear what I had to say. The box was from a store my wife frequented and was the perfect size.

John Terken taught me how to see art and appreciate the innumerable ways of seeing. With my sculptures, I hope I can inspire that experience of seeing in others and honor John and the lessons he taught me.”

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David Eddy creates semi-abstract figurative paintings, full of raw energy and emotion, exhibiting a sophistication of color, marks, and composition. There is an obvious and seductive physicality in the process, with a complexity of texture and line. The artist’s interest in exploring the relationship between abstraction and figuration is evident in each of his paintings, offering a very unique, very personal vision.
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Tracy Helgeson attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, majoring in Graphic Design and then transferred to the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts) where she studied illustration. Philadelphia was a great influence on Tracy and it was there that her work began to take on a unique style as she learned the under painting skills and glazing techniques that distinguish her current work. [Read more…]

Harry Orlyk was born in Troy, New York in 1947. In 1971 after graduating college, he went on to graduate school at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Over the next nine years, he was influenced by several Nebraskan artists. “Still-life painter Robin Smith taught me how to use paint without turpentine – to paint from the tube.” He also admits the influence of photographer Lawrence McFarland who taught him what spiritual space was, and how to emphasize it. Lastly he credits well-known Lincoln painter Keith Jacobshagen with having impressed on hm the importance of routine. He currently resides with his family in Salem, New York, near the Vermont border. [Read more…]

Inspired by nature and digital communication, Deb Hall’s images reflect our highly caffeinated, constantly moving, technological culture and its impact on our perception and environment. Her work has been exhibited widely in national juried exhibitions, galleries and museums. [Read more…]

I am intrigued by light and shadow, shapes and spaces, insides and outsides, within and without. Sometimes insides become outsides like a flower bud that was once within but then emerges out. Inside joins outside and a new within becomes. [Read more…]

Emily Prosper is an abstract artist living and working in Albany, NY. She earned her BFA in Painting and Sculpture with a Minor in Art History from the College of Saint Rose in 2019. [Read more…]

John Van Alstine is an  American sculptor living and working in Wells, NY in the Adirondack region of New York State, best known for stone and metal abstract sculptures exhibiting exceptional balance and poise. The works are often multi level with references to the figure, classical, nautical, celestial and western mythological themes. [Read more…]

Teri Malo’s landscape paintings primarily explore the sense of place, whether in her series on the mill towns of the Blackstone Valley, or in her more recent coastal New England series. Time spent on Cape Ann and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and in Lubec, Maine on the edge of the Bay of Fundy has profoundly affected her choice of subject matter. Her paintings capture large open spaces and the changeable atmosphere and seas of the New England region, as well as the rocky details of this familiar place. [Read more…]

My abstract wood sculptures and unique furniture pieces are primarily derived from a creative intermixing of my art, design, and woodworking vocabularies. They express my unique view of the physical world of forms, color and patterns. I am forever inspired by the complicated yet random compositions that I see in nature. [Read more…]

Stylistically influenced by the great 19th century artists who first visually glorified this area, Jane Bloodgood-Abrams brings an updated view of the landscape with the color, composition and a sometimes iconographic imagery. Dramatic, transitory moments and a deep connection to Nature inspire her work. While experiencing these fleeting moments on site, the artist is infused by the mood and atmosphere. Later after some tempering and distillation, Bloodgood-Abrams creates works over time using layers of paint and glazes to evoke the emotional essence of the scene, through the veil of memory.

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My work explores the connections between the physical act of creating balance and its calming effect in our increasingly chaotic environment.
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A self taught potter, with a 12 year passion for clay. Veterinary Medicine is my profession but clay satisfies my creativity and provides a therapeutic life balance. The calmer, quieter aspects of life reflected in my clay pieces. [Read more…]

Ann Larsen paints from Maine to California.  She has been in over 80 gallery and museum exhibitions.

Among the many awards Larsen has received are Best Landscape, American Women Artists National Competition; two Awards of Excellence, Oil Painters of America, Eastern Regionals; Masters Signature Silver Medal, American Women Artists National Competition; Award of Excellence given by Quang Ho at the Paso Robles Invitational.

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David A Lussier is a nationally and internationally recognized American landscape painter, working in the tradition of the impressionists. His paintings have garnered more than 75 awards and are in numerous private and corporate collections throughout the United States and Europe. Mr. Lussier is also an official US Open artist for the United States Golf Association and four of his paintings hang in the permanent collection of the United States Golf Museum. Lussier’s technique is characterized by a masterful use of color harmonies and poetic brushwork that bring his paintings to life.

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Whether painting out in plein air, or in my home studio; whether painting birds, landscape, or views of nearby farms; in all of my paintings I hope to convey my reverence for the land, its wildlife, and our rural heritage. But while the subject matter may reflect my passions in life, the thread that ties all of my work together is more conceptual.

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George Van Hook’s paintings have been exhibited for over 35 years throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. Van Hook’s painterly style follows in the tradition of the impressionists. Inspired by both a love of nature fostered by long hours painting “en plein air,” Van Hook paints with gusto and passion, bringing a freshness and immediacy to the rural scenes where he lives in upstate New York. [Read more…]

Jill Fishon-Kovachick is a renowned local clay artist and owner/director of the Saratoga Clay Arts Center located in Schuylerville, NY. Fishon-Kovachick utilizes Raku, Sagger and High Fire techniques to create subtle yet resplendent tones of earth and sky in her work. In her own words, “[The] natural coloration, reflected in my work, brings everything together for me.”  [Read more…]

I went to a Polish catholic school and bumped into statues of saints at every corner. I went to college during the war in Viet Nam. Slogans and banners became part of my vocabulary. I often scratch and paint words, whole stories, or admonitions on the surface of my figures. [Read more…]

Susan Stuart was born in Worcester, Mass., and lives and works in Albany, N.Y. She earned an MA’76 from UAlbany and a BFA’69 from Syracuse University and studied with Rudolf Baranik at the Art Students League from 1991-1996.   [Read more…]

Jon Gernon is a painter, printmaker and independent curator living in the Eastside of Historic Troy, NY. His current works focus on creating modern day fables, allegories and lore. Jon is a former gallerist and gallery director with over 25 five years of curating and designing exhibitions. [Read more…]

David Miller is one of the most well-known and respected artists in the upstate New York area and is included in a wide range of both public and private collections, including Carnegie Museum of Art, School of The Art Institute, Key Bank Headquarters, Pepsico Corporation, Siena College, among many others. Miller’s work can best be described in the words of noted writer and poet John Yau: [Read more…]

Mary Pat Wager has been a sculptor for over thirty years. Her work is included in many public and private collections. Her sculpture employs the use of found objects, as well as, fabricated metal components. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has received numerous awards for her work in sculpture. These include a National Endowment for the Arts grant and representing the United States with her work at the Small Works International Exhibition in Budapest, Hungary. Mary Pat Wager lives and works in upstate New York. [Read more…]

Artist Charles Bremer has explored a wide breadth of creative medium in his career ranging from photography, drawing and sculpture, to theater stage sets and experimental sound. His work has been exhibited in art centers, galleries, and private collections both in the United States and internationally. [Read more…]

I am a realist. I paint what I see and depict places and objects with a simple understanding of light and shadow. My subjects are taken from daily life, things I see in passing, things I’m drawn to; they are commonly overlooked. [Read more…]

Robert Niedzwiecki (b.1954) was born and raised in central New York and grew to love the varied landscapes represented in this region. An artist in high school, Robert won an art scholarship from the National Scholastic Art Competition but instead chose to attend the Air Force Academy. [Read more…]

Pat Collins is a ceramic artist residing in Saratoga Springs, New York who specializes in raku and saggar fired pottery.  Pat studied ceramics at the University of West Chester in Pennsylvania where she graduated with a BFA.  Since graduating, her work has been in several exhibitions in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio.

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Julie Branch is a sculptor living outside of Rotterdam, New York.  Working primarily in ceramics and fiber she creates figures inspired by nature, dreams and mythology. Julie grew up in the Dakotas, Colorado, Hawaii and Montana.  She has lived in Minnesota, Montana and New York City.

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Leslie Peck, a New York native, was educated at the Fashion Institute of Technology where she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art. She then spent a year studying art in Italy at the Scuola di Lorenzo De Medici in Florence, before apprenticing in Rome with renowned illustrator Alessandro Biffignandi. Peck began a freelance career in romance book cover illustration in 1988. While still sucessful in the publishing field, her love for portraiture of people and animals has found its expression in her most recent oil paintings. [Read more…]

JoAnn Axford lives and maintains her studio in Glenmont, New York. She received her bachelor degree at the University of Bridgeport, Conn. and her masters from The College of Saint Rose. Her interest in botanical imagery led her to post-graduate study in Botanical Illustration at The New York Botanical Garden.

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Nick Patten is a native of Troy, NY and received his B.A. in Fine Arts of the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY. In addition to dozens of solo and group shows nationwide at a variety of venues, Patten’s work can be seen in many private and public collections throughout the world. [Read more…]

Environmental conservation, bio-diversity, global and ethnic uneasiness, mankind’s relationship to the planet earth, and even space explorations all come to mind as I began the new series, “Garden Stories.” Using the remnants of fall gardens as my stage, I set up narratives using miniature toys that include animals, fire engines, and astronauts. [Read more…]

T. Klacsmann captures the consciousness of animals as they exist independently from, but intermingled with humanity. Loving beauty more than efficiency, they meticulously carve each thing that appears in their work in linoleum or wood. Some of the resulting relief prints are further developed with paint, ink, and colored pencil; other prints are scanned and turned into polyester lithography plates, printed and combined with relief prints to create multi-layered works on paper featuring animals in naturalistic settings altered by humanity. [Read more…]

I am fascinated by identity, where we come from, and who we think we are. I draw inspiration from other people’s stories, contemporary and ancient, real and imaginary to create characters with interior lives of struggle and hope. [Read more…]

I belong to the tradition of vessel makers. I work in clay, on the wheel, forming containers for flowers, food, air. Clay is the skin to contain a volume, the line to draw a profile. I think of long tall vessels as forms that stand as a person, defining and incorporating space. I feel a kinship with Chinese ceramics and like to sketch vases to understand the success of their curves, the space they envelop and the space they exclude.

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Corey Pitkin’s work is an exploration of ephemeral beauty expressed simply and genuinely. Using old master-esque muted colors complimented with subtle edgework his pieces shift and glimmer yet maintain their precision. His subjects are memories that slip away when you try to hold onto them for more than a moment.

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Rita Dicaprio: “Painting is a way for me to quench an insatiable desire to create. I have always been captivated by the beauty of nature and the world around me. I feel so fortunate to live near the Adirondack Mountains where the beauty constantly astounds me. I find an endless number of subjects to paint in the ever changing colors of the landscape.”

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Chris has a studio-based practice, making objects that are hand built and mostly low-tech. His sculptures are constructed, assembled from parts, using paper, cardboard and other ephemeral materials. The forms start from the ground and lurch or twist up.

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Please allow us to introduce and congratulate the artists chosen for this exciting new exhibit: Abraham Ferraro, Andrea Hersh, Barry Lobdell, Carol Caruso, Channing Lefebvre, CherylHorning, Doretta Miller, Eden Compton Clay, Elisa Sheehan, Gary Glinski, Gene Greger, George Dirolf, Jeff Wigman, Jenny Hutchinson, JoAnn Axford, Joe Putrock, Laura Von Rosk, Linda Bacon, Mary EllenRiell, Niki Haynes, Pat Collins, Randi Kish, Rob Longley, Robert Gullie, Robert Coppola, RussellSerrianne, Steve Rein, Susan Hoffer, Klacsmann and Yeachin Tsai.

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Robyn Morgan Giddings’ work explores human emotion through the interplay of color, abstract interior space, pattern and pop art. She received extensive training in studio art and painting at the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY and worked for many years in marketing and public relations. After retirement, she resumed painting. Her work is held in numerous private collections.

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Audrie Sturman works full time in two studios. One in Albany and the other at The Saratoga, Clay Arts Center. Audrie’s works are represented in numerous collections in the United States, as well as private collections in Canada, Europe, Israel and Australia.

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The envelopes in Fern Apfel’s paintings are old and worn. Some have been repeatedly folded, others stashed out of sight for years. Some offer nostalgic reminders of things that no longer exist; others are from bygone friends. They represent relationships that were maintained across distances and referential dialogues extending through many years.

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Jacob Houston is an enthusiastic participant in the field of art, creating unique paintings as well as building a busy art business. Jake is known for the perspective that he takes in his paintings, frequently from a vantage point above the subject. His favorite medium being acrylic, his paintings are vivid and detailed, captivating the viewer’s eye. [Read more…]

Born in Saskatchewan, Canada James grew up in the Kensington Market neighborhood of Toronto, Ontario. Mr. Paterson received his BFA (hons.) from the University of Waterloo, and taught art at the elementary and high school level before leaving teaching to pursue art full time in 1989.

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Robert Gullie is a photographer, mixed media collagist and printmaker. His work has been widely exhibited in over 90 exhibitions since the early 1990’s, including twenty-five solo exhibitions. [Read more…]

My work is the epicenter of my human experience.  It is my witness to our current situation as a people at the precipice of self-destruction, on the verge of self-awareness, the eruption of emotion, an effusion of expression to convey my deepest fears and hopes.  My paintings are reverence for, and anticipation of our possibilities.

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Erik Laffer’s abstract personal narratives are logical and experimental explorations of place from the past into the present and future. His paintings re-describe the world with a language of symbols, reminiscent of map-making. Laffer’s symbols identifies his own inner struggle to understand self, family and society.  [Read more…]

Beverley Mastrianni is an artist who lives and works in Saratoga Springs, NY. She graduated from Skidmore College in 1976 and received her MA from the University of New York at Albany in 1979.

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Rachel Baxter is an artist living and working in Troy, NY. She received her BFA in printmaking from The College of Saint Rose (2011) and her MFA from Indiana University in 2014. She currently has a studio at The Church Troy and teaches printmaking The College of Saint Rose.  [Read more…]

Dan Greenfeld’s sculptures are abstract objects existing outside the restrictions of subject matter. They reference nothing in the world except themselves and art. The sculptures are made from commercially available white stoneware or porcelaneous clays and are fired in a wood burning kiln located on the edge of his daughter’s and son in law’s property in Charlton NY, not too far from Schenectady.

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Anne Sutherland is a professional artist, entrepreneur and teacher. She grew up in the rural community of Roxbury, NY, in the Catskill Mountains, influenced by the beauty of mountains and nature around her. A love of drawing, dance and music dominated her childhood. A broad educational career began in the public schools where she taught at the elementary level with a degree in Elementary Education and music. [Read more…]

I am a painter, printmaker, and graphic artist. My paintings range from plein-aire oils to larger scale studio work. Subjects are the landscape, snowplows, and trains. I often incorporate relief text or images into these paintings. I also work in large scale charcoal drawings on mylar.

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Anne Francey lives and works in Saratoga Springs, NY.  Her studio practice includes painting, drawing and ceramic. Born In Switzerland, she studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts (ECBA) in Lausanne, Switzerland, got an  MFA at Hunter College in New York., and  more recently studied ceramic painting techniques at the Tunis National Ceramic Center Sidi El Kacem in Tunisia.

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Liz Vigoda has a degree in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and studied ceramics at Sir John Cass College of Art, London. She has been teaching pottery and art for over 30 years including at Sage College and the Albany Institute of History and Art. Her work is represented by fine galleries and shops nationwide.

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Jim Rodgers was born in northern New Jersey. Mr. Rodgers studied at the Art Students League in New York City and also attended the Ridgewood Art Institute where he studied landscape painting. His paintings focus on the essential details emerging from a cohesive mass augmented with poetic highlights. This evolves into a hybrid fashioned from painterly and impressionistic inspirations in a contemporary sense.

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Connie Saddlemire first began “making art” while living in Taiwan, as a child, during the mid-1950’s.  She also visited Japan during that time and soon afterward moved to New Mexico.  The visual impressions from these locations were revealed in Saddlemire’s aesthetic sensibility as she became an artist, during the late 1960’s and 1970’s, while living in Upstate New York and  Massachusetts.  Frequent visits to the galleries and museums of New York City, throughout her adult years, have continued to be an influence on her work, as well.

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Bruno studied at the Art Students League from 1965 to 1967. He was a monk and resident artist at St. Martin’s Abbey in Washington State from 1955 to 1969. Bruno has taught at Skidmore College, Rochster Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, Ohio State University, New York University, Greenwhich House Pottery, Claremont Graduate Schools, and the University of Gorgia in Catona Italy, and is currently an Adjunct Instructor at SUNY Adirondack located in Queensbury, New York.

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Victoria Crowell is a porcelain artist. In 1975, she received her BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Her work is collected from upstate New York to Australia, throughout Europe and the Far East. Galleries, museums, and private collections house more than a quarter century of her art. [Read more…]

Jeri Eisenberg works primarily with non-traditional and alternative photo-based techniques. She represses or subverts traditional photography’s emphasis on the representational qualities of the medium, and emphasizes instead the medium’s expressive nature. She employs a strong sense of materiality and seductive surfaces in her work, to evoke sense memories and visceral connections. Her work steadfastly serves as an affirmation of beauty in the everyday natural world, but is tinged with the bittersweet – a reminder of the temporal condition, and an elegy for life.

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Leslie Parke is an artist from upstate New York. Her studio is the top floor of a 19th Century factory building in Cambridge, New York. She is a recipient of the Esther and Adolph Gottlieb Grant for Individual Support, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest grant as artist-in-residence at the Claude Monet Foundation in Giverny, France, and the George Sugarman Foundation Grant, among others.

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I am a ceramic artist working in up-state New York. After earning a degree in the Fine Arts I have spent the last 12 years studying and learning about pottery and ceramics, with the last 8 specific to wood-firing clay. In 2009 I built a community wood kiln I currently fire my work in. I have always been an object maker, and explored different materials with art and function in mind. For me the discovery of clay and its soul moved me to become a fuller person. [Read more…]

My nature-inspired paintings are more in the manner of a portrait, rather than a landscape. Looking at all different shapes and sizes of plants, mingled and tangled, yet keeping their own growing directions toward light, I find myself trying to identify simple truth and wisdom.  [Read more…]

After high school I attended the Boston University School of Fine Arts and I received a Bachelor of Fine Art in May of 1973. Among my more influential teachers at B.U. were Reed Kay, who taught both Materials and Techniques and Drawing, and Jack Kramer, who taught Anatomy. [Read more…]

Please allow us to introduce and congratulate the artists chosen for this exciting new exhibit: Anne Francey, Cheryl Horning, Compton Eden, Dan Greenfeld, Dana Matthews, Gail Nadeau, Gary Larsen, George Dirolf, Gina Occhiogrosso, Harry Wirtz, Jacob Houston, Jill Fishon Kovachick, Julie Branch, Kelsey Renko, Leslie Roy Heck, Linda Bacon, Linde Caughey, Mara Lefebvre, Mary Ellen Riell, Michael Valiquette, Michael Whitney, Paul Chapman,, Paul Mauren, Randi Kish , Renee Obrien, Rob Longley, Rob O’Neil, Robyn Morgan Giddings, Ruck Goldreyer and Wenda Habenicht.

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Andrea Hersh holds a BS in painting and drawing from Skidmore College and an MFA from the University at Albany. Her work has been widely exhibited, including the Flash Art Show in Milan, Italy, the Albany Institute of History and Art, Gallery Boreas, and the AAF Contemporary Art Fair.  She received a New York Foundation of Art in the category of Painting. She lives and works in Slingerlands, NY.

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Christopher Murray’s paintings are influenced by graphic images of the early 20th century. His work is known for a bold simplicity of line, color, and hand-painted text. [Read more…]

My methodology of making art is exploratory in nature. It deals with the direct manipulation of materials and processes. My vessel or sculptural forms are elegant and classical. The surface painting, drawing, and textural treatment on the other hand, is out of the Abstract Expressionist and Post Modernist Schools. [Read more…]

Born in Atlanta, Leslie Ferst studied ceramics at Boston University (MFA cum laude), Art History at Skidmore College (BA) and Syracuse University in Italy and Amsterdam. For artist residencies, she traveled to Montana (Archie Bray Foundation), Georgia (Ossabaw Island Foundation), and Maine (Watershed Center) where she was a founding Board Member.

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Born in New York City, Virginia McNeice attended Pratt Institute of Art and has studied at the Art Student’s League, SUNY Albany, Skidmore College and the Vermont Studio Center. McNeice’s work in pastel and oil is inspired by nature, and her primary focus is upon color relationships, contrast and the effect of light at various times of the day. She lives and works on an old farm in Cambridge, New York which is surrounded by her personal garden.

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Josh Smith graduated from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University with honors in 2014. He was first introduced to ceramics while at Alfred and felt an immediate connection with the material, and the pottery wheel. A few weeks before graduating from Alfred, Smith was recruited to help open the first US branch of Spin Ceramics in New York City. He completed a four month residency at Sculpture Space NYC during my time in the big apple.

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Elisa Sheehan lives with her 2 kids, 2 dogs, and lovely husband. Together they explore the world and place a premium on their time together. She prefers to do her exploring outdoors and almost all of her inspiration comes from nature. She and her husband home school their 2 children and seeing them learn in their own ways informs Elisa’s own process and artistic growth. The sky really is the limit and sometimes making a giant mess is the best way forward!

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Gary Zack has been involved with glass since 1978, as a successful commission stained-glass artist and, more recently, as a blown glass artist in Upstate New York. Zack has been involved with blown glass since 1990 and is mostly self-taught. His love of hot glass is founded on the immediacy and spontaneous nature of the material, as well as the interplay of color and light. [Read more…]

Russell Serrianne lives in Glens Falls, NY where he has maintained his studio at the Shirt Factory since 2006. Raised in Niagara Falls, Russell attended the New School of Art in Toronto, Ontario with a concentration in drawing and screen process printing. He then studied printmaking at the Center for Music Drama and Art in Lake Placid, and lithography at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh.

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Janice Medina is an artist, designer, and educator living and working in Albany, NY. Raised near Syracuse, she studied Building Conservation (MS, 2008) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute after attending Syracuse University (BFA, 2006). She is committed to design education and has taught interior design at the college level for over seven years. She has a passion for materials and the built environment. Her work is influenced by architecture, landscape, and the passage of time. Recently, she has been exploring the use of concrete as a sculptural medium.

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Karen Elem received her degree in art education from the State University of New York at New Paltz. After retiring from a 37 year career teaching ceramics, sculpture, drawing and painting at Saratoga Springs High, she is now a resident studio artist at the Saratoga Clay Arts Center in Schuylerville, NY.

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Celeste Susany is recognized as one of the nation’s premier equine artists.  Her formative years were spent among the pageantry of Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar. Celeste received her degree from Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. After graduation, she became an art director for Nehi, a large record distributing company.

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Born and raised in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, David Hill has had a relationship with nature that he translates through oil paintings. Being surrounded by water in St Thomas, David found water and waves to be the inspiration for the subject matter that he continues to focus on. David studied painting in many locations including Hawaii, Italy, and Boston. (BAF, Art Institute of Boston). In 2005, David opened his own gallery in St Thomas that he owned and operated for six years.

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John van Orsouw is completely self-taught which is not to say that he is not schooled. His schooling, however, has been the museums, the ideas, the movies and the streets of urban life both in the U.S. (New Orleans, New York City) and in Europe including his childhood home in Holland. Presently he is selling his work in New York City. His recent exhibitions include the 2011 New York Outsider Art Fair, The 6th annual Outsider Art Exhibition at Galerie Belage in West Hampton Beach, New York,  Musee de la Creation France and  Van der Plas Gallery in New York City.

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Gyula Varosy was born in Hungary and came to the US as a refugee in 1957. After receiving degrees in Architecture from Pratt Institute and Harvard University, he lived and worked in NYC, with housing design as the work focus. Setting up a sculpture studio was parallel to this. He and his wife, a toddler and a baby moved to Greenwich, NY in 1990. In the years that followed, apart from architecture, there was more time in this beautiful environment to make art. Finally sculpture became his main focus.

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Mark Tougias is a self-taught artist who has been busy painting since childhood. His earliest surviving drawings and paintings date back to when he was eight years old. From an early age he learned by studying the masters and at age sixteen he began exhibiting. At the University of Massachusetts he studied education and art history. He began painting full time in 1990.
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Jim Sankowski lives in Ballston Lake, New York where he has maintained his studio Ballston Lake Pottery since 1975. He attended Central College, Iowa (BA-Art ‘72) and Bowling Green State University, Ohio (MFA-Ceramic Art ‘74).

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Landscape and figurative artist Mary Ellen Riell received her art training at the Art Student’s League in New York City, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Brooklyn College, where she studied with painter Sam Gelber and sculptor Sylvia Stone, before receiving a Master’s degree in art education from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY.
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Chad Smith prefers a direct yet studied approach to plein air painting. It has been said of his work: “Not just ‘a scene’ but a real statement about something, yet not forced or melodramatic.” Smith has gallery representation in New York, Colorado, Florida, South Carolina and is collected internationally.
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Jenny Kemp received her Bachelors degree in studio art from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and her MFA in Painting from the University at Albany. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the country, most recently at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont, NY, a two-person show at Middle Tennessee State University and an invitational exhibition at The Painting Center in NYC. [Read more…]

Yuta Ishino creates paintings where tiny figures interact with animals among the natural world. What remains is a beautiful world in which we all share, bringing our own personal stories to the collective experience.  [Read more…]

Born in Lithuania, Paul Kant experienced the war and refugee camps first hand. He attended school in Germany as a refugee until 1953, when he immigrated to the United States. Paul attended high school in Albany, and graduated from Niskayuna High School in 1959. His teaching degree was earned at SUNY Buffalo. [Read more…]

Tracy Silva Barbosa’s paintings create delicate narratives that address issues of age, sensuality and transcendence. Whether it a spare flight of birds or twisted stalks of flora, there is a lyrical motion that reflects the passage of time. Often sequential moments of time are animated with asymmetrical compositions, creating rich psychic realms full of color, balance and harmony.  [Read more…]

I operate in the space between painting and photograph — object and print.  These works of horses represent a new starting point in the continuum of my process.  In each work, collage functions both to break the image down into component parts and to create a cohesive whole.  At the heart of my process is the desire to see things differently; to build an image literally in order to come to an understanding of the visceral nature of form. [Read more…]

For me, the “creation of unknown beings” requires the collaboration of my companion, CLAY. I do not approach CLAY with a preconceived notion of what will result from our encounter. The process of handling the clay stimulates and informs my creative process. Much depends on the plasticity of the clay, which can vary considerably. Much also depends on the tools which I use to shape the clay and create textures. [Read more…]

Despite the psycho-sexual suggestion of many of the pieces, Savett’s work emphasizes the paradoxical nature of his chosen material. Steel is both plastic and rigid, creating objects of a certain permanence. Most metals can be mass-produced but start out liquid; it seems natural to Savett to bring that liquid or plastic quality into fabricated sculpture. This isn’t a language spoken by many sculptors of steel.  [Read more…]

Laura Von Rosk received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from SUNY at Purchase. Her paintings have been exhibited nationally in both solo and group shows. [Read more…]

For the past 20 years I have been exploring the place where fine art and folk art intersect.  My subject matter draws from the local experience of community, family and immediate surroundings as well as an internal dream place. Although some of the imagery is very personal, I am always striving for the universal. The figures in the pictures are simultaneously ‘me’ and a sort of ‘Everyman’.  [Read more…]

Julia Zanes mixed media paintings read like fairy tales unfolding in intricate visual patterns. Rich interiors and lush, fertile landscapes are populated by ethereal figures, birds, and houses. [Read more…]

Randi Kish retired from a lifelong career as a public school art teacher in the Saratoga Springs City School District in June 2010. She has been working as a full-time ceramic artist in her studio at the Saratoga Clay Arts Center since. Her work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the region. [Read more…]

My work is an ongoing account, a product of negotiating stimuli from “everyday” happenings I refer to as “visual education.”  I respond to the varied visual phenomena with forms and ways of marking.  To be clear, it is the organization of the elements that I am interested in.  To arrange and record is to acknowledge and to reconcile. [Read more…]

“The creative process for me is varied and yet finite. I have my boards, my paint and my solitude, which stimulates me. Painting is a private, intimate and passionate obsession. I feel blessed to have this time to create a piece of art that someone else can enjoy.” [Read more…]

Elizabeth Coyne was born in Minnesota, raised in California, Canada and Indiana, before moving to New York in the early 1980’s. Ms. Coyne had numerous exhibitions in New York during the 80’s and 90’s.  She has been a working artist for more than 30 years. She has Masters of Fine Arts in painting from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, a B.A. in fine arts from Purdue University and  has studied and lectured at the Art Institute of Chicago. [Read more…]

Painter Robert Cartmell, who is also a renowned roller coaster enthusiast, works in a tradition that could be loosely connected to Philip Guston and other members of the so-called second generation New York School, who preferred a more lyrical variation on the blood-and-guts formula of abstract expressionism. [Read more…]