Hiroyuki Saito   •   齋藤洋由起

Artist Statement

When I am easy and ride paint, irregular form is born. Some kind of form appears and disappears when they stare at the irregular form. Innumerable form born from there becomes the beasts, and it is a meteor, and it is a corona.

Blazing flame, divine light from the sky, very large space…

Thing… in the end that the intense feelings that welled up from the body embodied.

I grope for it, and I continue drawing it from now on.

In Japanese:

絵の具を無造作に載せると不規則な形が生まれる。
その不規則な形を見つめていると、何らかの形が見え隠れする。
そこから生まれた無数の形が、獣類となり、流星となり、コロナとなる。

燃えさかる炎、天からの神々しい光、広大な宇宙・・・

体内から沸き起こってくる激しい感情が具現化したその果てにあるもの・・・

私はこれからも、模索し描き続ける。

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since June 20, 2011
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Medium: oil on canvas

Ladi Fricova

About the Artist

My creative practice is a mix of merging disciplines, spanning across fine art, graphic design and illustration. I entered university with a fine art background and went on to study Graphic Design at BA and MA level. Asian culture and visual style have soaked into my work subconsciously as a result of growing up in South-East Asia (India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal and Thailand). The incredible experiences I carry from all these places have become the canvas upon which I create my works. It is what accounts for my particular style of work as well as my general outlook on life.

“Her painting is comprised of an in-between style born of the dialogue of two – or more – cultures… Expressions, which on one hand work with fragments of the visual arts from these respective countries, but on the other hand the way these fragments are transformed, the way they are subjected to the laws of composition reveals the position the artist is coming from… it is her position of distance, of stepping back, which enables her to process the stimuli coming from different visual cultures in a new way.”

– Prof. Peter Michalovic, PhD, Department of Aesthetics, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

My inspirations include Alfons Mucha, Andy Warhol and Jan Saudek, all of whom share my Czech-Slovak roots. But foremost in my artistic development, is the influence of my guru Prof. Om Prakash Sharma, a famous contemporary Indian artist. Colours radiate from his paintings with a life of their own, every brush stroke is infused with a harmonious energy, and decorative detailing like on some ancient temple mingles with clean lines of abstracted geometry. His work has been like nothing I have ever seen before, or since.

“What is common for philosophies of the Far East… is spontaneity and naturalness. The artist [Ladi] feels that the intellect acts as an obstacle to this insight and, therefore, she converts the motifs into symbolic forms… Reincarnation of souls is evident in this art. The highest intensity of symbols is presented in paintings inspired immediately by natural motifs.

She has thoroughly studied the history of mandalas, so she knows very well that mandalas and jantras are ritual diagrams used in Tantrism and Tibetan Dharma… LADI understands the mandala as a sacred abode in which divinities dwell… However, LADI has created a completely special symbolic world which does not copy the standard mandala principles mechanically from a historical point of view… In this context, LADI’s mandalas represent a microcosmos… In short, the mandalas of a human being and of Nature dominate. In my opinion, LADI the artist creates mainly “the inner mandalas”… What dominates is the representation of energy, we can concentrate on the inner energy in the painting, the energies of the human body and the soul.

Ladi has created a cultural bridge between European and Asian cultures.”

– Prof. Miroslav Klivar, PhD, European Union of Art, Prague, Czech Republic

I consider myself an international citizen of the world and this mentality has transferred to my art. Art, that embodies the cultural influence of both the East and West, and speaks of coexistence and great tolerance. My work is a symbiosis of my Czech and Slovak heritage, international education, and the influence of the Asian cultures that colour my memories.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since May 11, 2008
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Medium: mixed media – oils, acrylics, pastels, and digital art

John Vega

 

 

 

Artist Statement

My quest is to find ways of seeing differently from the normal way, which I define as one that expects or demands specific outcomes. The pivotal idea is that our minds produce very dense filters of thought which, if completely eliminated, would allow us to see everything as it actually is: infinite.

I attempt to remove preconditioned thought from the creative act in two ways: one, by harnessing the complexity and randomness inherent in digital scripts (which, by nature, transcend the limits of human expectation) and two, by interacting with the output of such scripts in a spontaneous, synchronistic way – similar to the way one might toss coins for the I-Ching or snap a photo of a particular instant in time and space. The historical roots of the processes in art lie in DuChamp’s “ready-mades,” the Dadaists’ “exquisite corpse,” and Pollack’s “action-painting.”

I am drawn to processes and works that allow for the bending and breaking of space. Instead of physical objects, words, or canvas and paint, I use digital code and human interaction as a new milieu for art. I collaborate with the computer to extend the realm of what can be rendered into a perceivable form. I am particularly struck by the notion of infinity and how we might represent it visually. Virtual 3-D tools are designed to generate photo-realistic visualizations of form. Can these same tools be tweaked and agitated to allow for glimpses of the absence of form, or what I would consider infinity?

Essentially I am exploring art as a catalyst for awareness of the Zen-like state of no-mind (complete emptiness and one-ness with infinity). The nature of split-second digital interaction offers us an instant of pre-conscious, subliminal apprehension that breaks through the normal continuum and connects us with infinity.

Digital Art and the interconnected Digital World is my realm of the new technology and when through my work I am offered these periodic glimpses of the infinite, I do my best as an artist to capture it.

Biography

John Vega is a digital artist and designer living in Boulder, Colorado. A 20-year veteran of commercial new media, Vega is an award-winning interactive art director and motion graphics designer. His career clients comprise Fortune 500 companies such as Apple, IBM, Motorola and Sony Online Entertainment. In the early 1990s, while working as director of multimedia for Boulder, Colorado-based Leopard Communications, Vega produced multimedia for live events that traveled from Beijing, China, to Basel, Switzerland.

Vega has been a senior instructor of digital arts in the CU-Boulder Fine Arts Dept., and later became a senior instructor of CU’s ATLAS program to teach generative art and motion design. He has also collaborated with net artists Keith and Mendi Obadike to create the interactive libretto for the net opera, “The Sour Thunder,” and he has produced video art for several live events including concert visuals for electronic music pioneer Steve Roach and a theatrical collaborative piece with Philip Glass.

In addition to showings at major electronic art festivals including SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica and Transmediale, Vega’s digital art has be seen in museum and gallery exhibitions including showings at the American Museum of the Moving Image and the Austin Museum of Digital Art. He is currently teaching Digital Media and Art at the University of Colorado ATLAS program. Vega continues to create commercial new media with select agencies and clients through his “virtual” agency, John Vega & Associates.

Member Data

Membership: senior member since Dec. 3, 2009
Energy Art style: energetic abstractionism
Medium: algorithmic digital art

Christina Williams

About the Artist

Christina is an animator, fine artist, and musician. As well as her personal art projects, she has done portraiture, tattoo design and illustration in a variety of media.

Commissions, freelance and volunteer work include theatre set painting and construction, storyboards, comic panels, logos, caricatures, album covers and paintings. Her exhibition in Covent Garden led to painting in the Lyceum Theatre’s Puppetry Department for “The Lion King”, and to the commission, “Celtic Deities”. Her work has also been exhibited at H.R. Giger’s castle in Gruyeres, Switzerland, The Mall Galleries, and the Brick Lane Gallery in London. She was the Visualisation Artist for the Telectroscope at Southbank, London.

Christina believes that most people have creative ability but fail to realise it. Some people may dress beautifully, decorate their surroundings with unerring good taste, possess a gift for design or photography. Some were told by unhelpful individuals that they “couldn’t draw” or had “no artistic ability” – beliefs which may persist throughout a lifetime and stifle any creative expression.

The challenge is in overcoming negative beliefs in order to express personal vision and fulfill potential.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Nov. 19, 2008
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Medium: acrylic on canvas, pencils

Peggy Mintun

Artist Statement

I am a visual artist / designer from Columbus, Ohio. My art is a communication to you the viewer about my life, but it is open to your interpretation. Most of my artworks are abstract, emotional canvases, where I let non-representational shape and intense color tell a story to evoke emotions. My work is provocative: you may see it, or maybe not, but you have to really look at it. It is like something is almost there, almost on the tip of your tongue or the brink of your thoughts, and then sometimes you just know. It is chaos. I use a chaotic process to create these little narratives about my life. All or many of these works may evoke some memories or feelings within the viewer, which is a goal of my work. Each piece has a story to tell, a feeling to convey. Abstract (expressionism), at its most effective, should feel like poetry in contrast to the prose of realism and the surreal. Whether directly or indirectly, energy acts as more of a muse in the creation of each work.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Feb. 7, 2010
Energy Art style: energetic expressionism
Medium: acrylic and mixed media

Stefania Marchionni

About the Artist

Ms. Marchionni has managed to create a personal style, true beyond any academic sterile formalism. Her ongoing research on painting the figure of a human being, expresses it in its embryonic form of stylized faces, as a metaphor of the soul and spirit they are to become.

The artist portrays humanity immersed in the passions, clinging to the Earth’s freedom in the natural elements, with knotted ties of blood and chains of emotions, whether negative or positive, while the disturbances of the human soul are a perfect match with the colors used alternatively between light and shade; meanwhile what remains hidden and what they spontaneously represent, are expressed in sinusoidal lines.

Purifying and cathartic pictorial reflections are seen in the emergence of faces that are lost in a symbiotic old-fashioned stream of natural elements, showing her love for life in a whirlwind of energy, swept away by the automatism over instinctual eclectic panels that guide the hand of the artist. Stefania Marchionni listens to her heart perceiving the soul’s movements, and translates them to her canvas.

She observes the world and extracts every – simultaneously surreal and objective – nuance of the human condition: the inability to communicate, loneliness, ignorance, hypocrisy, but also the possibility of redemption and salvation in a metaphysical light, with careful dissolution of the nodes of spiritual ascent. This is an uplifting transcendence that pervades her later work, in which the artist uses gold and silver leaves, enriching her paintings in an expressive spell of their figures. Between angelic faces and the occasionally obscure, between good and evil, between the birth, the deadly defeat, and the victory again (the circle as a sacred symbol of life), Stefania Marchionni’s art of painting resides primarily in the sense of a life that is not restricted to fear, but goes in search of connections with the spirit of the Universe.

In her latest paintings, there are dissolutions of fluid nodes: the lines are lighter and rarefied, as if they were on the point of going out in a hypothetical maze to find a new light, a way of getting out of the dualistic impasse of combining and melting. No words could be more suitable than those of the great French poet Paul Eluard: ‘Open your wings, pretty face; / require the world to be wise / because together we become real for the effort / for the will to dispose the shadows / during lightning in search of a new light’. As art critic Maria Teresa Palitta says regarding Marchionni: ‘The answer is in the vortex from which the faces emerge enchanted. The strong line of art in this era becomes a sweetening element, in a conceptual phase, with stylish exchange. It is the opening of a brilliant garrison that gives a sentence to infinite ways of being.’

– Vincenza Fava, journalist /translated from Italian/

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Oct. 29, 2009
Energy Art style: energetic expressionism
Medium: oil on canvas

Jeroen Van Valkenburg

Biography

Jeroen van Valkenburg (Leiden, The Netherlands, 1973) is inspired by ancient myths and sagas that he encountered during his study of Archaeology at the University in Leiden. Especially the stories from the Viking era (9th to 11th Century A.D.) play an important role in his works. His interest mainly lies in the religious and mystical side of the Viking culture. He tries to capture their magical and mythical atmosphere in his creations. His oil paintings can sometimes be regarded as icons of gods and goddesses long forgotten. To give his work a real ancient feel, he sometimes uses original oil-paint dating from the 17th to the 19th century. Also his own dreams are a great source of inspiration.

He never had any formal painting or art education, but studied the 17th century Dutch master painters techniques himself for many years. He now passes on his knowledge on traditional oil-painting to over 20 students. His work is mostly monochrome with a large contrast between light and dark. He uses only organic forms and shapes.

His work has been exhibited in many galleries in Holland and abroad, and is also well-known from all the book/cd/lp covers he has designed.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Sep. 8, 2008
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Medium: oil on canvas

Greg Pettit

Artist Statement

“Sometimes people ask me where I come up with my imagery, trying to figure out what my muse is as an artist. All I can say is that the subjects of my paintings are indicative of another layer of mental experience that has been a part of who I am, for as long as I can remember. I have always been able to tap into the visionary realm. The rudiments of my painting style stretch back into childhood, and I am not ashamed to admit that the body of work I have been developing post-art school has more to do with the hyper-detailed doodles I made in my younger years than with anything I picked up in my formal training. As a child, I used to lie in bed all the time and stare at the ceiling, eyes wide open, until the textured ceiling above would begin to morph into patterns and shapes, eventually becoming a living cartoon that would slowly turn into a sort of conscious dream. This ability is such a natural part of my life that I’m sometimes astonished that others don’t share it.

Looking back over a decade’s worth of drawings and three years of paintings, I see clearly that art has always had a single fundamental purpose for me. It is the only reliable tool I have, to organize, examine, and expunge the great overload of imagery that passes through my mind when I enter into this alpha wave state. Without this outlet, these things would cause too much friction with my waking life. Painting allows me to channel it and tame it. When I stop painting, it is only a matter of time before my mind becomes uncomfortably engorged with this stuff.

Only in the last few years have I begun to critically dissect this strange astral world, and I feel that ideally, I am meant in time to climb beyond it into the more abstract planes. I know that I won’t forever be satisfied with my current interpretation of what this inner-space actually signifies. Perpetually evolving robo-ghosts, insectoid beings riding within transparent machinery, the neon feathered and jeweled angelic beings that dance in geometric legions to the sound of rushing waters, it’s all a little crazy I know. I take it with a grain of salt, how real can it be? – and yet it seems to precede this world rather than to be a product of it, and oh so vivid compared to this one! Five minutes of intense visionary imagery seems to provide enough material for a 1000 paintings. My path ahead is long indeed. I have begun to move closer in my work to what I see within, but know that I have still got a long way to go towards developing a technique and approach in painting that will do justice to my inner eye.”

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Jan. 7, 2010
Energy Art style: energetic abstractionist
Medium: acrylic / pencil on board / paper

Even Oldridge

About the Artist

I consider my approach to art to be unconventional. My paintings are informed by a lifelong exploration and love of fluid dynamics, from the swirl of ink in water to the movement of cream in a cup of coffee. This aesthetic is recreated through a complex layering of paint, and captured at micro levels by means of digital photography.

Patterns emerge continuously from within the flowing paint. Through years of trial and error I have developed techniques to manipulate the chaotic systems at play, learning the importance of colour theory, paint temperature, humidity, and viscosity. Each year new techniques open this artistic process further, deepening my relationship with this unique medium and creating the excitement and awe that I feel each and every time I paint.

My love of art came relatively late in life with the innocent purchase of a camera. Fascinated with capturing the details of the world around me, photography grew from a hobby into a passion, and expanded my horizons well beyond my engineering background. With these artistic thoughts taking root, I returned to school and began to explore the convergence between art and engineering. The art expanded from photography to the work you see here.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Aug. 22, 2008
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Medium: traditional painting, digital art
Interview: Giorgio Vaselli on December 29, 2008

Adam Scott Miller

Artist Statement

“My images are artifacts derived from exploring the relationships between personal experience and concepts that I consider to be significant. Making images is my tool for discovery, and a by-product of the experience of my consciousness. This creative work is how I process and integrate my perceptions of the world into new ways of seeing and insights into living.

I attempt to point to the “numinous”, which is characterized by the quintessential qualities of the sacred: mystery, awe, fascination, satisfaction, and inspiration. In my view, art serves as a reflection of our context, and achieves its maximum potential when it acts deliberately to improve and benefit the whole. This is the intent I create with and I hope that my work, in some way, benefits you.”

Biography

Adam Scott Miller was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania during a blizzard at 3 am in 1984. Since childhood, his path as an artist was clear as he spent great spans of time in concentration rendering his imagination into existence, on paper. This road less traveled has become a lifelong adventure of limitless growth and dilating creativity.

He has procured a BFA in Illustration from the Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore) and an MFA in Painting from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design (Boston) and the Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown).

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Jul. 3, 2008
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Medium: mixed media – oil and pastel on board
Interview: with Miguel Tió on August 3, 2008