Below are the artist biographies and/or artist statements for the winners of the Abstracts Art Exhibition.
To contact any of these 10 winning artists directly or for purchase inquiries, please contact Julianna Poldi at the at Golden Pine Gallery.
Congratulations again to all the winners and thank you for sharing your talent with us.
Hilary Saner
Hilary was born in South Africa and currently resides in California. She works with oils, water colors and torn tissue papers to create heavily layered collages in a series of flowing and intuitive actions – look, add, respond, make the mark, repeat – before coming the resolution on the final surface offered to another participant in the conversation – the viewer. Her work poses questions into an unfolding reality, where the future has already arrived, sparking connections in a quest for transformative engagement.
Hannelore Fischer
Hannelore Fischer, German born, currently lives and paints in Mariposa, California. Her bold, gestural and colorful abstract paintings are inspired by nature. In her neo-impressionistic approach reminiscent of pointillism she fuses dots, circles and marks into a symphony of colors and shapes, in her own authentic style. She began making and exhibiting her art in Munich, Germany as a member of “Gruppe J’73” with the late Fritz Baumgartner as mentor.
In 1978, she emigrated to the USA, continuing her career in graphic design, as an illustrator and fine artist. In 1998 she earned her BFA in the Fine Art Program at UC Davis. In 2000, she began graduate studies in Transformative Arts/Department of Arts & Consciousness at John F. Kennedy University, Berkeley and completed her MFA in Studio Arts in 2004. She taught Art & Design classes at the Napa Community College (2005-2006) as well as her own series of “Art & Soul Journeys” until 2007. Her video “Walks in Nature” (2006) documents a large painting in stages, reveals her transformative process and her intuitive, visionary and explorative way of working.
Hannelore has exhibited in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Texas and Montana and has won numerous awards. She creates her art in a new octagonal studio and is active in local and national art scenes. She is represented by Williams Gallery West in Oakhurst, California, by Riverstone Gallery in Ennis, Montana and is a member of the Sierra Artists Co-op Gallery in Mariposa.
Sky Allen
“I’m not a pun. I’m a (pain)ter; pun intended” -SKY
I like to let the varnish gloss unveil the gesture. Composition structure is loose, and from a bird’s eye viewing. Who knows where and what angle I dive into at first. Surely, the work unveils before me and then divvy’s itself out as abstract figure faces immerse and multiply in ritualistic, geometric organizations. The solution or consolidation arrives once involuntary involvement parleurs by whittling the figures down to the slenderest proportions or increasing the outlier perimeter of figures until the humanness is formed, and contrasting this duality. Weight versus weightless concepts. Objectively a phantom evolves and a new way of seeing immerses.
Sky’s work captures the “essence” of creativity. Twenty-five year, Skyler, claims her “au natural” stroke of genius, and excuses her French! Artistry is expanded exponentially into this exposé of works, which led to the spilling of creativity featured on the site. Under this realm of Sky and her strokes, she’s in the position of the perspective shift of art as relinquishment embedded further as a form of healing for herself and perspective viewer, audience. That being said she continues her growth as a visionary, incrementally ascends and transforms spiritually it congruently reflects intellectually into her alter ego artist ego eradicator. One in which color and form serve as analogues for psychological and emotional states. My Visions rest in the Realm of Abstract Surrealist Spiritualist Existentialism. Interests lie in perception, alienation and misconstrued liminal-space fillers vignette through echo chambers.
Michelle Katz
“I turn to painting these days, because I am overwhelmed by a loss for words for everything I see and feel happening around me. Working with certain colors gives me the sense that I can disappear into a field of divine healing while I make a mess. If a piece of that healing can float into the world, I am happy.” Michelle found herself painting abstracts after a long career as a documentary TV producer in Los Angeles. Michelle is self-taught and has used painting as a healing modality, discovering that using certain colors while listening to music puts her into the theta healing state. She also uses art as a technique to make sense of an increasingly confusing world. In each piece, she attempts to distill the most complex questions and emotions through color and texture. In July 2020 Michelle relocated to Idyllwild, and fell in love with the mountain landscapes, and the desert air. These facets of nature became her inspiration, and before she knew it she was spending her days outside painting and healing until the sun set over the San Jacinto Mountains.
Gina Herrera
I have always felt a strong affinity for nature. Growing up in Chicago, I found the most beauty in the trees, the singing birds, the sky above. As a visual learner with a multicultural heritage, I have been influenced by my father’s Tesuque culture and my mother’s Costa Rican heritage.
While serving in Iraq, amid the devastation of combat, I was moved by seeing miles of mountainous trash heaps. I viscerally experienced the global extent of the systematic destruction of the planet, exploitative, unsustainable, and perhaps worst, careless, unconscious, accidental. This led me to question my own practices, hoping to lessen my environmental impact. I began to build three-dimensional forms out of discarded and natural objects. I am engaged in an aesthetic and spiritual ritual to channel and honor Mother Earth, to seek connection and communion with a power greater than myself.
Everywhere I go, I gather materials, finding inspiration in my surroundings. Like a scavenger, I play an interventional role in removing garbage from the landscape, preventing it from doing further damage. My process is meditative and intuitive – each step revealing a new aspect. Figures emerge, in gravity defying postures on the brink of movement, alive with possibility. Their haunting spiritual presence reminds us they have not gone back to the earth, but asks us to question our connection with our world and our daily unconscious choices. My greatest objective is to awaken individual and societal consciousness; to examine and heal our relationship with Mother Earth.
Corisa Moreno
Corisa Moreno is an interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her practice contrasts the beauty of abstraction with the issues of environmental degradation, social inequality and the injustice of the patriarchy. Corisa’s vivid color schemes are an influence of growing up in Hawaii and her use of texture comes from her background as a costume designer and working with fabrics. Corisa owned Green Light Restoration, a retail store that sold artisan made home goods from repurposed materials, where she designed & built lighting from discarded automotive parts. Corisa hosts the How We Create podcast, empowering artists across disciplines through interviews about the obstacles, fears, and triumphs of living a creative life. Corisa studied art at Parson’s and the Art Students League in NYC. She has an MFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
This series of paintings and mixed media allude to the tension, exhaustion and fight of living through a pandemic and how we are moving forward as a society. While painting in her living room during lockdown, Corisa switched from using oil colors to acrylics. Acrylics allowed her to work almost continuously without having to wait long for paint to dry. In this work, Corisa individually places pieces of thread across her color fields. She is not weaving and not stitching but rather scarring and binding color to create a new visual language reflecting our delicate lives.
Lisa Van Herik
Having started out many years ago as a painter, I’m finding myself coming back fill circle to painting. I have both extensive backgrounds in terms of education and experience. I have worked as an interior designer, a commercial artist with many marketing publications, a metalsmith, fiber artist and teacher at UCSD. I am currently found in two tabletop fiber art books: Artistry in Fiber, Wall Art and Wearablele Art. I’ve moved fluidly through many mediums but painting is my greatest challenge and consequently, my greatest thrill as an artist. During a recent exhibition, I had the luxury of watching the faces of potential clients change as they looked at my paintings. For the good, as many of them told me. As an artist, it just doesn’t get better than that.
Brian Mark
Like humanity, all stones are unique and tell their own story: each has its own color and its own hidden beauty. Each stone has its own language and I strive to understand that language. These conversations continue until nature’s stone and my imagination marry and together say, “Stop – our work is done.” I do not strive to make statements with my art, but rather bring beauty into the world, and at the same time soothe my soul by fulfilling the creative process. Born in Schenectady, New York, raised in Washington, D.C., I have been intrigued by art of all kinds for most of my life. By the time I entered college, I knew that literature appealed to me and ultimately, I earned a PhD in English and taught English literature at university. While I was doing scholarly work on English literature, I began to feel a tug toward doing, not just intellectualizing about art. I started stone sculpting 20 years ago and I continue to be awed by what nature brings to me in the form of raw stone.
Andrea Raft
Andrea is a native of California, having moved from Los Angeles to the Coachella Valley. She is juried member of the National Association of Women Artists, Women Painters West, Jewish Artist Initiative and a member of the Artist Council of Coachella Valley. With an emphasis on process, Andreas abstract works of art are developed through multiple textured layers and acrylic paint, giving her canvas’s a brooding organic density that can easily rivet the viewer. This current series of Red Works represent a Passion for art making, and an indomitable spirit. For Andrea the act of painting is a spiritual journey, one of meditation and introspection.
Sharye Marx Cressler
Sharye Marx was born in Palm Springs but now lives in San Jacinto, CA. She is passionate about intuitive imagination. She seeks to get as close to abstract as possible with images from nature. Occasionally, the shapes themselves do get abandoned into simply being abstracts. Many of her themes are floral, aquatic, and nebulous. Her mediums are primarily acrylic with pouring or airbrush mediums and touches of oil pastel when the work says it needs it. Sharye has shown and sold works in Washington State at places like the Annex in Auburn and other small venues starting in 2000. In 2013 she worked with the KaleidaKulture events hosted at the Diamond Valley Arts Association in Hemet, CA. She has had works at Harvard Street Music in Hemet, CA, since 2018. In 2019 she was a part of the Spellbound show at the Middle Ridge Winery in Idyllwild, CA.
