A duo of abstract and expressionism, movement and energy.
Kay Cassill, IWS, NWWS, MWCS
While Kay Cassill received a B.A. from University of Iowa with Honors in English in the `Writer’s Workshop’, her focus quickly changed to the visual arts when she found herself in Greenwich Village among the avant-garde painters of the era. From there she moved to Paris taking postgraduate work at the Academe de la Grande Chaumiere. She continued traveling and moved on to Bandol on the Riviera. Eventually she traveled to Carrara, Florence and Rome – for the art – and marriage to artist and writer R.V. Cassill. Returning to New York, Cassill continued postgraduate work at the New School with artist Julian Levi. Moving back to Iowa she took up postgraduate work with famed print maker Mauricio Lasansky and painter James Lechay. While there she became a member of the Iowa Print Group. She has also taken workshops with Karen Blackwood, Donna Zagotta and Mel Stabin. Eventually she settled in Providence, RI and Cape Cod. Cassill currently winters in Michigan but maintains a home and studio in Truro, MA. where she spends some months each year. She continues today creating paintings in oil and watermedia.
Style
Over her long career Kay has approached her subject matter with intensity whether it was while carving into copper plates, painting in water media or oil on various substrates or drawing with pen and ink. Her most recent concentration has been painting with water media on Yupo and oils on canvas and linen. As for her approach to painting she feels closest to the Figurative Expressionists. Her favorite subjects include figures interpreting her story-telling ideas but she sometimes side-steps when taken by a particular land or seascape.
Rachael Van Dyke
Rachael Van Dyke is a mid-career artist creating abstract landscape work inspired by living off the grid in the Blue Ridge mountains. Van Dyke is an avid traveler as an artist-in-residence and has participated in numerous national and international residencies. These residencies, particularly ones abroad, create boundaries that she is forced to work with and cause her to alter her technique. Most of these obstacles are related to traveling abroad; adjusting to new studio space constraints, change of temperature, lack or loss of art materials, poor foreign language skills, and shipping limitations. These boundaries also create stimulation for Rachael as an artist as she is forced to understand and come to terms with her limitations to see what can be created. Being open to a new color palette or a new visual language to express the land is necessary. She chooses to explore the region through walking or bicycling, visiting museums and historic sites, and trying her hand at engaging with local residents. Each body of work is influenced by place and tells a story of the people and land that she’s encountered.
Hope Olson is a painter and mixed-media artist based in Holland, Michigan. Her art celebrates home, community, and slow, old-fashioned living. The compositions and colors of Hope’s abstracted still life and landscape paintings are inspired by her long-held affection for interior decorating, historic architecture, old country villages, and early 20th century art. Hope particularly borrows from the sensibilities of the Fauvist art movement, which emphasizes strong marks and colors that magnify mood and compel curiosity. She earned a B.S. in Interior Design from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois, and also focused her college coursework in studio art and marketing.
Our March exhibit features 5 pastel artists known throughout the region and on a national level. Artists Anne Kindl, Ed Kennedy, Jill Wagner, Vianna Szabo and local artist, Deb Buchanan are exhibiting. Our first all pastel exhibit, Fuller Art House is honored to bring this talented group together. Many in this group have been recognized and awarded high honors throughout the country. Most notably, the International Association of Pastel Societies and Pastel Society of America. Join us in welcoming them all together from 5:30pm to 8pm at the art house on Friday, March 6th. This show will extended through June 3rd. Click on any artist to see their current work at fuller art house.
with Helen Gotlib, Jill Wagner, and Dylan Stryzinski
Our February exhibit features a mix of modern, traditional and fun. Join us this Friday during the Red Bird Art Walk from 5-8p. While covid has us still taking good care of ourselves, we are still rotating in our amazing artists and bringing you new works.
Helen Gotlib
My primary visual concern has always been to document nature by focusing on its strengths rather beauty. Simultaneously subtle and overwhelming, it confounds us with its infinite system of outwardly chaotic patterns within patterns and uncannily expressive forms.
Biology produces striking color combinations. Recently I have been moved by the dazzling flowers of ice plants on the rugged shores of the Pacific Northwest. The waxy pink blossoms of these plants are electric against the blanket of succulent dark green leaves spread over ancient rocks and dunes heaving up against the ocean. My large scale mixed media print pieces are an attempt to evoke the intensity of this breathtaking encounter with the seaside.
Patterns of nature yield compelling results when filtered through subjective experience. Concurrent to my expansive beach scapes I have shifted and narrowed my focus to the abstract possibilities of wood grain. By changing the context of the interior of a tree, the connection to the original object nearly disappears. What remains evokes the movement of water and reveals a hidden but familiar aquatic landscape like the pond near my home in the Michigan woods. Some beaches are public and some beaches are secret.
Jill Wagner
As a contemporary impressionist painter, I’m obsessed with capturing light. Plein air painting is my passion, but during the colder months I work on larger pieces in my studio. I paint in both pastel and oil, two mediums which complement each other nicely.
My subjects are varied, ranging from country landscapes to inner city architecture, from portraits to casual nudes, from seascapes to interiors. I love to travel and sometimes work from photos I’ve taken on the road, but when weather permits, my first choice is always to paint outdoors (en plein air), especially in my beloved Italy.
The consistent theme that attracts me is light and shadow. I aim for realism with a painterly twist, but sometimes I allow the rich hues and textures of a scene to dominate. Oil and pastel are exhilarating mediums that lead to endless adventures… and sometimes I’m just happy to follow their lead.
Dylan Stryzinski
Producing artwork, image making in particular is a continuum. Ideas reoccur; images repeat, transform, take on new meaning and develop in unexpected ways. Sometimes older ideas wait for the next discovery that points to a new project.
I tend to see myself as more a drawer than a painter and therefore, even when working in tightly rendered modes, as a sort of cartoon expressionist. Matching media and content is important. Energy is the ultimate concern and I try to work in ways that encourage spontaneity and deliberate mark making. Many of my pieces take on the raw appearance of the outsider. Yet my themes are not entirely clear. My pieces are filled with self-referential meta-subjects whose meaning lies somewhere near the edge of direct understanding. This complexity places my work squarely in the realm of highbrow, so called “fine art.” Yet surface and material suggest a visionary spirit. As a result I have come to occupy an odd space that is neither entirely reserved for academics nor primitives.
Ultimately I am a postindustrial cave painter gathering the tribe together in the warm stinking glow of the scrap lumber fire to recount the exploits of the pre apocalyptic man.
Share the night with Dave Wisniewski and his solo Exhibit starting February 1st thru March 15th. Wisniewski will have a fully body of new work depicting his love for the west and the unique characters that come to his crazy creative mind.
Wild West Characters painted by Western Artist Dave Wisniewski You will love these wild west cowboys, gunfighters, outlaws and lawmen oil paintings. The large canvases straddle the fence in both contemporary and rustic settings. The subjects are demanding of attention and pull you into their world. What are their names, where did they come from, and what have they done? Each painting is a one of a kind original piece of art straight from the mind of the artist. The stories team up behind the images and they become real. Look at the paintings and they will look back. The wild west is alive and well.
