Eva Kmento

About the Artist

I live near Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic in Central Europe. I started my artistic career as a textile artist. The base of my activity in that time were modern tapestries, textile sculptures, and fashion design.

Then about 15 years ago, I learned about computers and their possibilities, and I totally became an addict to digital creation. I began to work in interior design and digital art, in various forms.

Today I put my mind to 3D models for animations, in cooperation with my daughter’s animation and postproduction studio Bitmachine, which produces TV advertising films and special effects for movies. I spend much of my time on free creation, photomanipulations, abstract art, and fractal art. I love fractals for their unlimited possibilities. I also like to combine miscellaneous fractals with digital painting. I like surrealism, cubism, and dark art.

In the near future, I would like to indulge in my own creative activities exclusively. That’s my dream.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since May 20, 2008
Energy Art style: energetic surrealist
Medium: fractal art, photomanipulation

Helene Kippert

Artist Statement

“We are all embedded in a sea of energy invisible to the human eye that holds together our physical world and all that surrounds it. This energy matrix is what some call goddess/god, the divine or all that is. Energy art makes the matrix visible, increasing our sense of connection with each other and the natural world around us.

I am a fractal artist, working primarily with digital media to explore the interplay of form, energy and light. I use texture, colour and pattern as a way of breaking down our sense of identity with intellect and form, and reconnecting us to the sacred whole to which we all belong. Sometimes I begin with a drawing and add a number of digital layers until I feel I have reached a point of completion, or alternatively I work with fractal images, layering them into complex composite designs.

We are in the midst of a global energy shift that will change the way we live and relate to each other in ways we can’t even begin to imagine yet. Some people call it ascension, but that is just another label for a process which is really beyond words. When words fail us, images can sometimes speak more clearly to our imagination and deep self. I see my path as documenting the impact of the shift as it affects my own personal journey, which is really the journey of us all.”

Biography

Born in Sydney Australia in 1958, I was inspired to create from an early age by nature in all of its various forms.

I graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts (English Literature major), and from Curtin University in 1983 with a Graduate Diploma in Library Studies. Since then I have worked in a variety of positions as a public servant, librarian and market research interviewer.

Although I have had some training as a traditional artist at the Claremont School of Art from 1993-95, I have always been drawn to digital art, and once I discovered fractal art in 2007 I felt I had come home. My work is a visual record of my inner journey through the layers of awareness, and I continue to explore the boundaries of consciousness and creativity.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Nov. 24, 2009
Energy Art style: energetic abstractionism
Medium: digital collage of fractal flames and other elements

Simon Haiduk

About the Artist

Growing up in Kimberley, BC, Simon developed strong foundations in drawing, painting, and music. After spending some years traveling abroad and touring in art shows, Simon decided to further his skills in Digital Design, graduating from Vancouver Film School in 2007. He currently works out of his studio as a freelance designer, while continuing to explore an ever-expanding palette of creative endeavors.

During these years music became more of my focus than art, and in addition to guitar, I learned to play bass and drums. Meanwhile I had been reading more books on intuition, meditation and mysticism, which inspired me towards a more experimental approach to life. In the winter of 2004 I underwent a deeply spiritual transformation, which re-connected me to the path of visionary art.

Currently my art has taken on a more grounded aspect of nature, merging the beauty of our Earthly landscapes with the lucid layering of subtle energy systems. I continue to explore oil, acrylic, and digital painting mediums, while also continuing freelance work in the field of digital design. My art can be seen in various gallery exhibits, festivals, events, and other venues.

Empowering my creative force is the love, respect, and understanding that all life comes from the same source, and can be shared in many ways. In my dedication to the creative process, I also strive to find sustainable ways of producing work and living life, that maintain balance and harmony between the Earth and her shared inhabitants. Each creation reflects an aspect of this journey, thinning the veil between physical and non-physical realities in an unfolding awareness of that which connects us all.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Mar. 7, 2009
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Medium: oil / acrylic / digital painting

Bernard Dumaine

Biography

Bernard Dumaine (born in 1953, in Angoulême, France) is a French artist, most well-known for his artwork in the surrealism and photorealism styles, and for his background designs for television cartoons. He works in a variety of media, including oil paints, acrylic paints, graphite pencil, digital painting, digital collage, and video.

He got his National Fine Arts diploma in sculpture with a mention for drawing in 1977. Many single and group exhibitions followed, both locally and internationally. His early work included drawings in the style of photorealism and surrealist oil paintings. His surrealist work was influenced by Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, and Gérard Titus-Carmel.

He is currently working mostly in digital media, oil paints, and pencil. He is also doing Exquiste Corpse works in collaboration with many artists internationally, and these collaborative works have recently been exhibited in galleries across France.

From Bernard Dumaine’s feature in Future Art Magazine:

“Imagination and chance have a large place in the creation of my pictures, which are also works of experimentation and research. My favorite part of creating art is the ‘stream of consciousness’ process, and the discovery of each image as I am working – I do not know exactly what would appear until I have finished it.”

Member Data

Membership: senior member since Dec. 4, 2009
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Medium: oil / digital painting, pencils

Patricia Ariel

Biography

Artist of surrealist, mystic and visionary themes, Patricia was born in 1970 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she lived and worked until moving to the United States. Since she was a little child, she has been enjoying to give life to her private world through her drawings and writings. She has been drawing since the age of three, never remembering a single time of her life when she was not exploring some type of creative language. She has been also a performing artist, acting, dancing, and singing since her late teens. Although in part self-taught, she has had some formal training in visual arts that included academic drawing classes and a background in Fashion Design. Her love for teaching took her to a bachelors degree in Art Education with a specialization in History of Art from the Rio de Janeiro State University. But it was just after leaving her homeland that she considered the possibility of becoming a fine artist more seriously. Currently she has been consistently building a body of work based on her passion for the figurative art combined with ornamental abstracts. Her inspiration and aesthetic references come from several sources, from the theater and ballet to Eastern Art, from the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil to contemporary Pop Art, including occult symbolism, Tarot, Astrology and metaphysics.

Artist Statement

“Whenever I wanted answers or inspiration for life and art, it was not in the mundane or in the ordinary life that I looked for them, but in the unlimited world of my inner reality. This world, inhabited by mysterious places and people, has its own stories, its own rules, its own wisdom. I am only the storyteller.

I think of my work as a ‘heart talk’, a bridge of colors and energy, a mirror where other souls can see themselves reflected, understood, and sheltered. With the universal, transcendental language of beauty, symbols, and the primeval connections of men with their cosmic origins as sparks of the Divine and children of the Earth, I build my path through my inner soul to others. I have composed my own visual language in a very peculiar way, with a blend of graphite drawing and a colorful, abstract rendering, to reflect the point of contact between the physical/material and the reality of dreams, spirituality, and abstract perceptions. When depicting the human world the enhancement of the graphite drawing plays a key role. In general, graphite is used only in preliminary drawings that remain almost totally covered by other materials during the painting process; I chose to keep and enhance its primeval strength and freshness to symbolize the energy of the human body and its ties to the raw forces of life. My love for the performing arts and the body language, is present in the expressive and theatrical poses and certain elements like the made-up faces and masks. And since my work celebrates life and the human body as a vessel for the Divine, female characters are often the center of the pieces for the universal symbolism of the woman as generator of life. Although they have an intrinsic erotic power, my women are not ‘femme fatales’, but goddesses, creators and sorceresses. They are there to fulfill a function of female empowerment and help to pave the way to a new consciousness, where the masculine and feminine polarities will finally coexist in harmony in the human psyche.”

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Dec. 11, 2009
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Medium: mixed media – acrylics, pastel, pencils and graphite on illustration board

Kati Astraeir

Biography

Kati Astraeir from a very early age was using her art for exploring and expanding her inner worlds. Learning from life experiences, and following her intuition, she transformed her creativity into a powerful journey of healing, and transcendence. Art became her path, the language of her spirit and a great magical tool for creation of her reality. From music she started to learn about flow, creating in surrender, and modulating frequencies.

Nature became another great and very important teacher. Through her continued healing and explorations of darkness she was able to discover a great light within her, and to connect to her divine self. Transforming energies, dying and being reborn many times, she continues her path, the journey to primordial spirit, opening her heart deeper into her full divine and infinite potential.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Sep. 06, 2008
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Medium: traditional drawing/painting, digital art, photography

Niall J. Ward

Artist Statement

My work at present consists of a rendering of abstract expressionist applications of paint and brushstrokes to create veristic surrealist landscapes that ooze from the canvas with aesthetic organic form and a flowing energy, saturated in exuberant colour. Sometimes showing automatist qualities in larger pieces, I have experimented with various techniques to create paintings that capture the viewer’s eye, to provide them with a window into my interior self, away from this world of mutual destruction.

My aim is to study as many areas of nature as possible to influence my portrayal of this chaotic yet beautiful planet and beyond. By bringing aesthetic beauty back into irrational and frenzied brush strokes and by the unusual organic-meets-mineral aspect found in my work I express and emphasize my feelings towards a link between the illogical formations of our natural world and the inevitable demise of the human race due to nuclear fallout or global warming. Nature harnesses the gift of life and can just as easily take it away.

These paintings, although sometimes different in method and appearance, share the same fundamental purpose. By providing a spiritual or aesthetically beautiful experience, I wish to bring unique images of our fragile natural world and beyond to life but also to remind us that we will not be here forever and that we must cherish what we have got.

Biography

Born in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh in 1981, I spent a lot of time visiting the west coast of Ireland and painting some of the amazing scenery it has to offer. I moved to Belfast in 2000 to study for a Foundation Certificate of Art and Design and later a Degree in Fine and Applied Arts in the University of Ulster. My work consisted of detailed traditional landscapes such as those of the west coast and of some darker imagery influenced by artists such as Giger, Bosch and Beksinski. During my time in college, I developed a style of painting that refrained from my usual methods but maintained an attention to detail.

Influenced by automatisic qualities of surrealist and psychedelic artists such as Max Ernst, early works of Tom Blackwell and Bernard Saby and by applying paint to canvas through techniques such as decalcomania, bulletism, eclaboussure and soufflage. I brought detail, depth and organic line back into my paintings by rendering or manipulating some areas of paint with a fine brush.

I began to create large canvases (chance configurations), each named simply with the first word that was invoked when viewing the finished painting, that contain organic forms, thrusting energies, electric, vibrant colours and a use of line that attracts the viewer to gaze at the image. These unfiltered scenes of my subconscious invite the viewer to interpret the work as he or she wishes.

I now live in Carlow, in the south of Ireland with my own family, where the work I am currently involved with combines this method of painting, with my interest in landscapes to again create art that is noticed for its aesthetics instantly. Sharing veristic surrealist qualities these paintings depict many typical Irish and British countryside or coastal scene. The places that I have visited have left a lasting impression on me. Trees savaged by the elements, vast open fields, valleys and dramatic skies. Again these works, filled with intricate pictorial spaces, allow the viewer their own interpretation but leave a subtle message in their title relating to a journey I have experienced.

I anticipate painting different parts of the world. Places where the landscape is completely alien, the earth a different colour and vegetation unfamiliar. It’s a big world out there and I look forward to every new encounter, to provide the viewer with another window into my interior self.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since May 18, 2008
Energy Art style: energetic abstractionism
Medium: oil on canvas

Giorgio Vaselli

Artist Statement

“Most of all values, I believe in that of the great Old Masters, who have never failed to strive for technical expertise, whether in color, form, or composition.

Yet I consider the achievements of modernists equally significant, in their trials of broadening the fields of abstract invention and expression.

With a respect for the giants of the Fine Arts, I am determined to incorporate their teachings into my way of painting, through an energetic and dynamic view of reality, enriched by the expressivity of abstraction.”

– January of 2009

Biography

As a boy growing up in the countryside, Giorgio admired the exuberant beauty of nature. While becoming more mature however, his desire for envisioning and expressing ideas unseen in nature, has led him to realize the necessity of abstraction, which if handled properly, can open doors to a myriad of amazing worlds, richer in many ways than our own. Proper handling for him, means setting his standards high in both self-expression and technique.

Born in 1980 in Hungary, his childhood interest in art was instinctive, much like his development in his youth. His desire to learn, evolve and mature, led him to explore thoroughly the course of art history, acquiring knowledge of the different styles and techniques of both the Old and Modern Masters on his travels, while allowing his personal style to develop on its own.

His arrival to Canada in September of 2007, marks a milestone in both his life and his career, as he plans to exhibit and sell his work to a broader community of connoisseurs. In May of 2008, he has founded the Energy Art Movement with a few young artists who shared his vision of creating conceptual high-quality energetic artwork.

In December of 2008, he chose digital painting as his primary medium, after painting in oils for several years. His new works are thus available as high-quality limited-edition prints.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since May 1, 2008
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Medium: oil on canvas, digital art
Interview: with Peggy Mintun on Jul. 4, 2010

Joe MacGown

About the Artist

I am originally from Maine where I lived until I was about ten years old. My family then moved to Starkville, Mississippi, where I still live with my wife Julie and our son Joseph. I have been employed for the last twenty years at the Mississippi Entomological Museum at Mississippi State University as a research technician/scientific illustrator. I am a self-taught artist and I began drawing and painting at a very young age. By the time I was five years old, I had already begun a style of art that was to become a life long pursuit – surreal art. Even with my first drawings and paintings I remember trying to do my best to twist reality. Throughout the last 25 years, I have continued to develop my surrealistic drawing style, which I refer to as “Neogothic Surrealism” or “Subconscious Meandering.” I usually work with black India ink, using fine-tipped Koh-i-noor Rapidograph pens, but also do mixed media color works. I do highly detailed drawings, building layers by crosshatching, stippling, and other methods. Some of these drawings take up to 300 hours to finish. I draw whenever I have free time, which usually means nights and weekends. The structure of my artwork is based on the drawing of random shapes, after which I then draw shapes in the negative spaces created by the first shapes, and so forth. Although I find subject matter everywhere, much of my inspiration comes from my love of science fiction and from my studies of nature. For example, it should be obvious that I work in entomology, as my art is often intermixed with various insectoid body parts. All of my observations are thrown into my mind where they are intermixed with memories and other thoughts. They are later expressed in random ways in my drawings. When I begin a drawing, I usually have no preconceived idea of what I am going to draw, other than at most a minimal idea or a basic shape. I do not do underlying pencil sketches, but instead start working directly with the pen. This allows for more spontaneity and subconscious flow, which is the basis for all of my surreal art. Does my art mean anything? Possibly, however because I typically put minimal to no thought into what I am doing, any meaning has more to do with who I am as an individual and where I am in life at any given time.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Jun. 2, 2008
Energy Art style: energetic surrealism
Personal style: neogothic surrealism
Medium: acrylic / watercolor / rapidograph pen / ink on paper / board

Rollin Kocsis

Artist Statement

The process of making art is central to my life; it is my passion. It seems I have always had a desire to paint, draw, or create some other type of visual art. I love the process and the product of art. Creating art provides me with challenges that involve the skills I have learned over the years.

Before you can understand how I make art, I would like to share a quote by Canadian painter Lawren Harris. He said, “Paintings come out of themselves.” I truly believe this and it is how I approach my work. Most of my paintings are spontaneous and they simply evolve from the process of painting. I like to work in layers. Usually, the first thing I do is select a color scheme for the work I am about to complete (complimentary, analogous, split-compliment, triads, etc.). Then I start smearing paint around. I like to begin with a palette knife; I feel it is very freeing because it’s difficult to control the paint with a knife. As I push paint around, if I don’t have a subject in mind, I’m thinking of one. Many times the paint spread on the canvas gives me ideas. It is like when you see images in the clouds. Sometimes I use tape to mask out areas or certain colors as I layer on other colors. As I apply the tape, I am aware of the composition I am designing. I like the surprises that come up when the tape is peeled away. Layer after layer, the painting almost begins to create itself. As the painting develops, I get more detailed in my work, using smaller brushes and more precise strokes.

My goal as a painter is two-fold: to enjoy what I am doing, and to make something that someone else will enjoy. What is art without an audience? Art is to be shared. I hope my work brings something of value to those who view it.

Biography

Rollin Kocsis was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana. He attended Indiana University in Bloomington where he graduated with honors in 1970 with a B. S. in art education. That same year he moved to Memphis, Tennessee.

Rollin Kocsis began his teaching career with the Memphis City Schools in 1971, and he currently teaches at Westwood High School. He has taught for 37 years.

Rollin holds two advanced degrees in the arts. He earned a Masters of Teaching in Art Education and a Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis).

In his long artistic career, Rollin Kocsis has exhibited in juried exhibitions, group and solo shows throughout the United States. He has won a number of local, regional, and national awards. Rollin is an independent artist who is also represented by the Maison Rouge Galerie in Chicago, Illinois.

Member Data

Membership: exclusive member since Jul. 17, 2008
Energy Art style: energetic abstractionism
Medium: acrylic on canvas / masonite