MAE JEON

“My artwork is a pictorial transform of spiritual words within the subject of flowers. To each flower in my work, I assign the role of performing spiritual scripture in the background, which is digitally created. It is often an abstract image so that the simulated environment is able to convey spiritual words.”

“At the age of 12, in school in Lugano, Ticino, the Italianspeaking part of Switzerland, I discovered art as an intimate pleasure and emotional outlet. After that, I chose art to accompany me at UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA, with an emphasis on personal creativity that suits my intuitive Alla prima painting, letting inspiration surge from deep within me and seizing the spark of the emotion at the origin of an artwork.

While living for four years in Rome, among other places in the world (Tunisia, Vienna, Greece, and Geneva, where I settled), I selfstudied the Italian Renaissance masters. I absorbed their mastery of color and composition to transmit meaningfulness to an artwork. In addition, I also studied Giorgio Vasary's first methodology of art studies, which is still a backbone in art schools today.

As a prized poet and performer, these are the poles of my art, with poetry as its weft. Amidst all the tragedies that I am experiencing, with the recent loss of my son and my daughter suffering from mental illness, art deepened and increased my understanding of life. It has brought me back to a meaningful life and made me develop my version of contemporary art and sometimes abstracts that go beyond the limits of reality into Infinity, as defined by Angelo Crespi.

As an artist, I am guided by the following quotations, which demonstrate art's duty to bear witness to life throughout time, thanks to the freedom granted by its current contemporary form.”

“If the soul does not guide the hand, it is not art.” -Leonardo da Vinci

“It is the mind that guides the hand—mental maturation of an emotion." -Michelangelo

"Let the material do as it pleases... it will surprise you." -Soulages

"The essence, always the essence..."

-Arthur Miller www.arttourinternational.com

“My artwork is about my life’s journey and the joy of living through abstract form and color. The creative process which produces a product is the voice that reflects my soul, expressing many different facets of life’s experiences. The color and form of my abstract art are enmeshed with internal and external world influences and a blending of subconscious and conscious thoughts. The featured artworks are expressive paintings created after a visit to Yosemite and the surrounding areas. The indigenous trees, plants, rocks, and streams are an amazing landscape. It’s my desire that the viewer can feel the landscape, and the emotions associated with the natural beauty of the land."

“People often ask questions about how I got started, how long I have been painting, and where I get my ideas, so I will use this space to try and explain. I've been painting for as long as I can remember. My grandmother was a self-taught painter, and she always had a painting hanging around her house that she was working on.

Sometime around the age of five, she encouraged me to join her, and I eagerly jumped in. She taught me how to use the tools and mix the paints, and soon I was creating my own paintings. It's funny; I don't remember ever using crayons or chalk like most kids. I just had my paints, and they seemed to like me. My grandfather taught me about the natural world and the American Indians; his teachings have influenced me my whole life. My mother made sure I got art lessons when I was young. My beautiful wife, Paule, has been by my side with love and understanding all my adult life. Oh, and by the way, she put me through college at The Art Center College of Design.

I start every painting with an idea. Whether it's a commissioned painting with a suggested subject or if it's one of my projects, it always begins with an idea. For instance, in "Spirit of the Wave," I was fascinated by the foam patterns created on the face of a wave as though it were a story of the wave itself. Each one was different. What would this wave's story be?

The worlds that I've created never existed in reality. I combine animals or people who live together only in my fantasy world. I create an environment that the viewer finds more interesting the longer they view the painting. They may find things they didn't see the first time they looked at the painting.

I spent considerable thought developing a title for the painting because that adds another layer to the viewing experience. For the painting of the tigers, the title "Pride of the Father" could refer to the essential paternal pride of the white tiger, perhaps the excellent stone mountain behind them, or the pride of the Creator for having created such beautiful creatures.

I work on large surfaces with tiny brushes. I want people to be almost able to physically pet the horses or shake hands with the riders in "The Rising." Or hear the horses' hooves in "Four Directions, Seven Grandfathers."

When I started painting, I had no idea it would become a driving force. I have no concept of my life without painting. There's a part of my soul in every painting and every brush stroke. Some people say my paintings have a spirituality, which may be true, but not in the traditional way. They see great respect for people and the natural world and how they relate to each other. The American Indians say, 'Mitake oyasin,' 'We are all related.' I like to say we are all painted by the same paintbrush."

“Looking at the subject's obvious, close observation and engagement, and then amplifying it with three-dimensional texture and bold color, I push beyond the norm to create an innovation in which the viewer engages with the painting on various levels; a painting, a sculpture, and countless paper wrinkles create complexity and detail— transforming shape and movement into a protruding canvas. Is it a sculpture, or is it a painting? I proclaim it is both. I was never satisfied with the simplicity of a one-dimensional painting, so I considered another element a fundamental concept.

Tissue paper is formed, compressed, and glued to the canvas to create a threedimensional work of art. After drying time has occurred, oil paint is applied, giving the art even more theatrics. The energy and movement of the piece vibrate as if having a pulse. My subject consists of abstract, land dwellers, nature, living off the land, mountain living, and the human struggle."

Through a digital overlay and collage process, award-winning master artist Monika Bendner creates multilayered, surrealistic experiences through a combination of photographic prints and mixed media. Her compositions, printed on various materials, create a narrative that evokes emotions and multiple responses from her viewers.

Monika Bendner's work has transformed with a background in photographic design as she's entered different phases of her growth and development as an artist over her active career. Her use of abstract lines and shapes conveys movement in their dimensionality, and her bold, rich, textured application of color emanates meaning through their saturation. Viscerally recognizable through their intensity and layers, Bendner's work is diverse and unconventional due to her various materials, methods, and techniques. She creates her work using different alternating canvas combinations, metallic photo printing, acrylic, glass, photography, and found objects.

Her metallic photographic prints are layered and expressed outside of time and space. She brings hyper-real kaleidoscope imagery behind a thick acrylic/glass amalgamation. With the common motive of a figurative hand layered in most of her collections, she leaves her work open for interpretation.

As an artist with stories to tell, Newel Hunter's artworks are deep and mysterious, using highly physical gestural marks to create endless possible interpretations. Even at their most abstract, his canvases speak to the viewer, replacing words with paint that is scraped and spread into fluid, sculptural compositions. The landscapes of love and loss transition between light and dark to communicate life and death stories, exploration, and unrequited passion.