Rise Above the Clouds .....

Emma Goodman O'Rourke

Emma Goodman O'Rourke opens my eyes to the width of nature.  O’Rourke’s personal use of imagery makes for her vision.  In a poem you take words and through placement and juxtaposition you create art.  In O’Rourke it’s done through putting lotus petals with peonies in a landscape that perhaps has nothing to do with either, but in throwing off the context she comes up with something totally fresh.

Words themselves play a role in O'Rourke's painting.  She dares to write into her work what we all wish: "Love me forever."  And it renews the eye and the heart and the spirit.  O'Rourke's use of the paint itself retains the freshness of its making.

Sometimes she will put the nude into her painting or a skull.  It can dare us to look differently.  We will always be challenged and thrilled by the art of Emma Goodman O'Rourke.

Marsha Ralls

We Could All Use a Super Hero

Nicole Charbonnet

I feel when I look at the work of Nicole Charbonnet that it is like peering into memories from the past.  Charbonnet’s paintings are built up through many layers over long periods of time.  In this way time is actually an element in her work.  Her work is familiar to me because it portrays bits of rural America I grew up in.

Charbonnet is a native of New Orleans where there is much layering of culture and identity as well as history.  She went on to study in Boston as well as the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  Studying in France in Paris and Lacoste completed her education.

In her most recent series of paintings Charbonnet is working with images from popular culture.  There is a cowboy, and a desert highway, or a gangster.  Sometimes there is a couple embracing, or you see a rabbit running across the road.  Her color is always evocative and poetic.  Nicole Charbonnet’s use of paint and texture make for a lyrical vision that embraces and holds a rich and diverse subject matter.     Blogger:   Marsha Ralls

Maryanne Pollock

Exuberance and delight feed the work of Maryanne Pollock.  Her spontaneous whirl-of-the-dervish gestures open a kind of synesthesia.  I can feel in her painting the measures of dance and the intervals of music. They put me in mind of jazz or hip hop. Pollock’s paintings are always magical whether they are pure gesture or infused with geometry or plein air Washington landscapes.  It’s a magic that is open and marvelous.

Significant to Pollock’s work is the fact that she spent 1997-2003 in Zamalek and Cairo in Egypt.  Earlier she had studied at the Tyler School of Art as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia, and then she came to Washington and studied further at the Corcoran and American University. 

Maryanne Pollock’s latest paintings are some of her strongest work. In “Black Sand” there is a painterliness that resonates with the dash of line and color.  It makes me feel like I’m running my fastest or dancing my hardest!                                                            By Marsha Ralls

Rachelle Krieger Poetic Paintings

The work of Rachelle Krieger transports nature indoors.  She has a way with skies and trees, often portraying their roots and bark weaving through in different tones and color.  Branches always curve in her paintings.  She occasionally paints outdoors.  When I walk out into nature I feel the same poetry of movement I see in Krieger’s pictures.

Krieger’s poetic trees bend and sway. There is a kind of calligraphic dance in her line quality.  Often there is the use of beautiful greys, with other sometimes-muted colors all rendered with a lyric, painterly intensity. Sometimes in her work there is a storm brewing, and sometimes spring is breaking through.

Krieger questions the nature of perception and reality.  It’s landscape, nature, and the outdoors but she is also after something more.  She thinks about time, as well as positive and negative space.  She states that something that can seem the most insignificant can have something beautifully hidden and then be revealed in the act of painting.  That sounds like life itself!            Blogger:  Marsha Ralls

Rauschenberg - Forever in my heart!

When I first met Robert Rauschenberg I did not have any idea about how much influence he would have on my life or that I would represent him in my gallery in Washington, DC.  While visiting Madrid in the eighties I saw an exhibition of his work that included “Monogram” and “Canyon.”  Those two combines that Rauschenberg created in the 1950’s informed my eye and stay with me whenever I look at other art.  There is something about the incredible juxtaposition of collage and paint, image and magic that haunts me.

Later on when I became a friend and colleague of Bob’s the fact that we both came from Texas and had started out in humble backgrounds made us feel like family.  I remember Bob getting a great kick out of the fact that I had been in the “Miss U.S.A.” contest!  At the same time he looked at me for my potential and helped me become the person I am today.

It was the largeness of Bob’s personal vision and his concern for the world and people that changed me as much as he had changed my eye in “Monogram.”  I was moved and instructed by his incredible R.O.C.I. tour (here’s a link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIT328mjd7o) where he created art in each country, working with artist in the twenty-two countries he visited.  When I recently traveled to Cuba, the woman who guided me around recalled Bob fondly for his contribution to the local art school. My own outreach in helping young people as well as in leadership training is directly traceable to my mentor and friend, Robert Rauschenberg.  His legacy lives on and continues to inspire! 

http://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org