2024 Membership Exhibition at Gallery 21
Live at Gallery 21, Spanish Village, Balboa Park, San Diego, CA
November 19 – December 2, 2024
Online through December 2024: www.sdmaag.org
Juror Alex DeCosta
Director, Hyde Art Gallery at Grossmont College
Co-Founder & President, Front Row Center
Congratulations to our
First Place Award of Excellence Winner
WILL GIBSON
Vincent Munch (2013)
Unique Platinum/Palladium
Print - $800.
About Will:
After spending seven years in medical research, Will Gibson turned his photographic hobby into a vocation in 1979. He opened his own studio a year later. By 1999, the business was a full-service commercial studio with a full wet lab and one-stop desktop publishing. What followed next was a three-year sojourn based in Columbus, Ohio, where he concentrated on his personal photography, traveling the art fair circuit all over the American east.
Returning to Escondido, California, Gibson began teaching photography at Palomar College, and later also at UCSD Extension. During the next fifteen years he taught fifteen separate class titles, including Alternative Processes, Portraiture and Commercial Photography. He continued to exhibit his work in group and one-man shows, was a founding member of the PhotoArts Group in Escondido, co-produced six Best of Nature shows at the San Diego Natural History Museum and has been a speaker and juror in photo clubs in the greater San Diego area.
Gibson is currently showing his varied work in his Escondido studio and exploring wet-plate collodion and digital infrared photography.
About Vincent Munch: Vincent Munch is a close-up image of the exposed bark of a Ponderosa Pine Gibson calls the Survivor in Rocky Mountain National Park. This tree has been hit by lightning, burned and otherwise contorted by the elements over at least a hundred years. The image was captured digitally with the technique of focus stacking where multiple images at different focal distnces are used to create a composite of uniform sharpness and focus. The resulting image was inverted in values and printed on a clear material to create a suitable negative for a unique print in platinum and palladium on rag paper. The photographer sees elements of the paintings Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh and The Scream by Edvard Münch, hence the title.
Website: www.willgibsonphoto.com
Congratulations to our
Second Place Award of Excellence
JOHN OLEINIK
MAINTENANCE (2020)
Oil on Linen - $2,800
About John:
I have been an architect with a private practice since 1983 specializing in the design of custom single-family homes. Starting in 2014, I have been making the professional transition into Fine Art. I am able to bring some of the unique skills acquired as an architect, into my oil paintings. My most recent work is an investigation into the human-condition. I have been exploring the aspects of man that distinguish humanity from machine as the line becomes increasingly blurred in the digital age. Stylistically best described as Abstract- Surrealism or Abstract-Realism.
General:
I paint with oil on linen. I used Fredrix acrylic primed linen that I stretch myself on 1 ¼” stretcher bars from Stretcher Bar Warehouse (you can buy online from central California factory). I use Princeton “Dakota’ 6300B paintbrushes (synthetic bristles. I mostly use Old Holland Paint or Windsor Newton. I use Utrecht alkyd glazing medium. The glazing medium allows me to build up many layers of paint over time. It also acts as an accelerator, so I can paint the next day. This painting is the product of about 20 sessions or layers. Each session is about 4 or 5 hours, not including painting the edges. The time between painting sessions gives me time to look at the work and plan the next move. I will work on a painting until I feel that I have little chance of making an improvement.
Starting with the blank canvas I will transfer the images using various means. Some freehand or carbon paper, plus I will use photographs that I have taken. From that point I will paint in the classic style. Light to dark. Front to back. Thin to thick. Which I learned from my only true painting teacher, Ardith Melzer. On my palette I will usually use two yellows, two reds, two blues and white. I always start a painting with black that I mix from the primaries. The darkest black I have found is using Prussian Blue and Cadmium Red Dark. After several painting sessions with different blacks, I will go straight to white tints to establish the highlights. I learned this from Norm Daniels, who is a plein air artist. He taught me that it is important to establish your lights right away, especially in plein air when the light is changing all the time. I know that I do not have the same time consideration, but it still helps to establish the composition early on. At this point I may start to see figures emerge from the canvas and I will need to draw over the canvas to bring them out. This will add more painting sessions in order to merge the added figures into the existing compositions. Once I have covered the whole canvas with paint, I will start all over and repaint it again several times. Each time sharpening the image and detailing as I go.
About MAINTENANCE: This painting entitled MAINTENANCE is part of a series that I have been working on for the last seven years and now totals over fifty paintings. I start the creative process by taking a number of photographs and superimposing them over each other. I spend a lot of time carefully moving the images around on my computer till I get the correct composition. I then transfer the image onto the primed linen canvas. During the painting process, I continue to distort and pixelate the image giving the impression of a technological interference. I invented this process and it is unique to this series.
MAINTENANCE was created during the holiday season. This time of year elicits mixed emotions. It can be both a fun and magical time of the year and also be very stressful and emotionally draining. And for some it is a period of religious introspection and devotion. I leave it up to the viewer to connect with this painting according to their personal experience.
Congratulations to our
Third Place Award of Excellence Winner
MARCY STINTON
Amber & Unber (2023)
Kiln Formed/Fused Glass - $400.
About Marcy:
I have worked with fused glass for over thirty years and have been a member of The San Diego Museum of Art Artist Guild for more than eighteen years. I draw |my inspiration from the vibrant colors of nature. Amber and Umber are two hues that are not commonly used in glass sculptures, and I wanted to create a piece that reflects their unique beauty together.
Exhibitions:
Glass Art Association of Southern California
There Ain’t Nothing Like a Dame
Encinitas Art Night
Small Image Show at Spanish Village Art Center
La Jolla Art Association
San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild Show
HONORABLE MENTION:
MAIDY MORHOUS
Cache (2024)
Bronze - $3,300.
JULIANNE RICKSECKER
Cascade Creek Falls (2008)
White Ground EtchinG - $350.
VIKTORIA ROMANOVA
Breakfast Joy! (2024)
Oil on Canvas - $4,000.
