Dear Friends,

I am working on a project about safety and would like to hear from you on this issue. You can write as much or as little as you like. If English is not your native language, please feel free to write in your native language. I will translate.

QUESTIONS

What is your age,

Cultural identity?

Race?

Religious affiliation if any?



Where do you live ie. city, small town/village, suburb, farm etc.. Is the population homogenous or diverse? Please describe.




What constitutes being safe? Ie. qualities, elements in your life.



Was there ever a time in your life where your life was physically threatened? If so describe and include your reaction?





Is there a distinction for you between physical and psychological safety?
If so what needs to be in place for either/both to occur?



In general on a 1-10 scale how safe do you feel on a daily basis?


ALL ANSWERS WILL BE KEPT CONFIDENTIAL,I will keep you posted on the status of this project. Please respond to me at cyd@connienoyes.com. Thank you for your time.

Connie Noyes



connie noyes
noyes studio
1200 w. 35th street
chicago, il 60609
ph. +1 415 299 1754
http://www.connienoyes.com
cyd@connienoyes.com

It’s a rare thing.  The synergy.  The enabled dialog.  Think about it.  Here we have 11 artists drawn together by shared priorities affectively moving their careers forward through cooperation.

This is the 21st century. In an age of instant communication an artist may have more in common with someone on another continent than with a studio-mate.  Exhibitions need not be the sole purview of the curator.  When artists work together art can seek a dialog with kindred art.

Too often curators force themes on art and artists that can be so far off the mark as to be antithetical to the artists’ intent. 

Not here.  Pintura Fresca is the sharp edge of the wedge.  Art movements have been about the new aesthetic as opposed to the new business model.  It is important and timely that artists take responsibility for their careers and how their art gets seen.  Too many discussions are about money; not enough dialogs are about connoisseurship.  Pintura Fresca is at the forefront of a broad movement of artists communicating directly on the internet, with each other, with institutions, with collectors.  Better feedback, more immediacy, more personal growth, better sales, better art.

Ultimately it’s about the art.

Look at all the overlaying dialogues at play here: Eleven Artists.  All abstract.  Some have big broad swatches of paint.  Some prefer scratchy lines.  Some want singular, expressive, purposeful marks.  Others prefer mixing, matching and blending colors.  Some are dirty. Some are crisp.  Some look inward. Some look out.  Some seek a quiet place.  Others are louder.  But on the whole these artists are considered.  They’ve thought about what they are doing, how they are doing it and its clear from looking at the art that they’ve lived and are experienced.

Take a look at the work of Paul Lorenz.  Look at the relationship between accident and intent.  Look at what the artist controls and what just happens.  But see how Lorenz has controlled the event, set the parameters in which the art can play.  See the confidence.  And the risk-taking. Occasional whimsy.  Nice balance between bold and subtle.  Thoughtful.

Compare Antonio Puri.  More process. Exploration of how materials interact.  Diaphanous.  Ethereal.  Balance.  Simultaneously quiet and loud.   Ambitious.  A consideration of the cosmos. Questions of scale.  And the relationship of individual to the bigger whole.

See Puri and Lorenz’s dialog:  scale, how the paint sits on the surface, light, the size of the gesture, the size of the art. Shape.

Segue over to Eva Ryn Johannissen’s work. See how differently the surface is worked.  A moodier disposition.  An inclination of thoughts considered instead of Lorenz’s arena for ideas or Puri’s resolve. Softer, more intuitive. Balance.

Now look at the exuberance of Petronilla Hohnewarter.  Decisive.  Bold.  Colorful. Direct.  Observe how people’s surfaces are different but how their forms interact is frequently similar.

See how the art is allowed to unfold and establish its own relationships with other sympathetic art.  This is not likely how a museum curator would group artists.

Kathleen Waterloo’s paintings are cityscapes, ever-so-slightly more literal than Mondrian she transcribes Hopper’s hues; the colors of the day melded into the architecture of the neighborhood.  Grids, boxes, beginnings, endings. More beginnings.

Speaking of boxes consider Roland Orépük’s boxes, rectangles, geometric progressions all in a restrained palette of bright yellow and black. Similar motif to Waterloo; even related content, but an entirely different approach and a solid part of an engaging dialog. The sense of motion.

Turbulence and moody motion dominate the paintings or Miran Kres.  Somber, religious colors permeate his view; oranges, reds and purples.  Metaphysical like Puri.  The yearning for meaning.  Questions.  Looking for truth.  Large.

Mark Bennion’s work is slow the way Hohenwarter’s is fast.  Painstaking, meditative, both in making and in reading.  Secretive, trusting.  This work takes time to unravel and time to grow on you, but it’s persistent.  Ancient surfaces, timeless marks, old techniques, subtle compositions.  Seductive.

Thierry Le Baill’s art has a sympathetic relationship to Bennion’s.  It too is sparse, but more directly so, with confident, heroic gestures offset by the charged, concentrated application of dense, deep color.  A balanced Zen-like koan offset by the neutrality of stark canvas.  Sheer, controlled, yet free.

Vulnerable, personal and personable, Gabriela Proksch lets us into her world, her pain and her strength.  Her relationship to her surface emotes the struggle the paint can’t conceal.  A lot of honesty here. This work talks to that of Paul Lorenz, both revealing and obfuscating as they go.

Lush, seductive and slippery, Connie Noyes has been painting about detritus with detritus and the art transcends its materials. Mundane materials.  Elegant surfaces. Dynamic relationships. Bigger issues than art for art sake Noyes’ art ties everyone together, the effort to be a part of something larger than oneself, to reach out and use art as a tool, a vehicle for communication and innovation, a statement for augmenting one’s consciousness.

This exhibition works on so many levels, some of it determined, some of it accidental.  This is what results from artists working together.  Great parts and an outstanding whole.   These artists are not confined to the geopolitical constraints that exist around them.  Their art touches universal issues.  The artworld is changed. 

Pintura Fresca is visionary for establishing a virtual gallery of diverse, yet sympathetic, painters, and brilliant for making it real.  It is my pleasure to contribute to the history they are writing.

Paul Klein


check us out at www.pinturafresca.net