Elisacontemporaryart aafnyc booth1 47 preview 3 2015

Elisa Contemporary Art Booth 1.47

Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, New York

Yasemin Kackar Demirel Martha Hughes Mitch McGee

Michelle Gagliano Marie Danielle Leblanc Ken Peloke Matt Story

Matt Story Red Back Bend Oil on Wood Panel 42 x 28

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Mitch McGee How Many Times, 2014 Cut and Stained Birch Wood 33 x 40

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Mitch McGee Never Going Back, 2014 Cut and Stained Birch Wood 33 x 40

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Mitch McGee He Did, 2014 Cut and Stained Birch Wood 36 x 36

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Ken Peloke When The Stars Align, 2013 Oil, Paper and Resin on Wood Panel 48 x 48

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Michelle Gagliano Wisteria in Blue , 2014 Oil Glazes and Stains on Wood Panel 36 x 36

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Michelle Gagliano Wisteria Moment 2014 Oil Glazes and Stains on Wood Panel 36 x 36

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Michelle Gagliano Flow, 2015 Oil Glazes and Stains on Wood Panel 30 x 40

Michelle Gagliano Windows Breeze 2015 Oil Glazes and Stains on Wood Panel 48 x 48

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Michelle Gagliano Four Seasons, 2015 Oil Glazes and Stains on Wood Panel 24 x 24 (12 x 12 each panel)

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Marie Danielle Leblanc Bennett, 2014 Mixed Media with Varnish on Wood Panel 24 x 60 (Diptych: 24 x 30 each)

Marie Danielle Leblanc Ausable Chasm, 2014 Mixed Media with Varnish on Wood Panel 24 x 72 Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com

Marie Danielle Leblanc Loon Lake 2014 Mixed Media with Varnish on Wood Panel 36 x 48

Marie Danielle Leblanc Riviere Aux Cerise 2014 Mixed Media with Varnish on Wood Panel 30 x 60

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Marie Danielle Leblanc Pothana, 2015 Mixed Media with Varnish on Wood Panel 30 x 60

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Yasemin Kackar-Demirel Burn, Burn, Burn 2014 Acrylic, pastel, pencil, watercolor & ink on paper 26 x 20, Framed to 30 x 24

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Yasemin Kackar-Demirel Once, 2014 Acrylic, pastel, pencil, watercolor & ink on paper 26 x 20, Framed to 30 x 24

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Yasemin Kackar-Demirel Moving Out, 2014 Acrylic, pastel, pencil, watercolor & ink on paper 26 x 20, Framed to 30 x 24

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Yasemin Kackar-Demirel Parting Site, 2014 Acrylic, pastel, pencil, watercolor & ink on paper 26 x 20, Framed to 30 x 24

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

Yasemin Kackar-Demirel Into the Blue Yonder, 2014 Acrylic, pastel, pencil, watercolor & ink on paper 20 x 26 Framed to 24 x 30

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

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Martha Hughes Scenes Acrylic on Wood Panel 12 x 12 Martha Hughes Big Scenes Acrylic on Canvas 72 x 72

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

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Martha Hughes Scenes Acrylic on Wood Panel 12 x 12 Martha Hughes Big Scenes Acrylic on Canvas 72 x 72

Elisa Contemporary Art www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com Lisa@ElisaArt.com 212.729.4974

About the Artists Yasemin Kackar-Demirel According to Yasemin, “Through my paintings, drawings and installations, I portray my reminiscences of places, which I then transform onto the image’s surface by colors, shapes and patterns. I believe every place and every memory of a place is fragmental and can be broken down to its constituents. Taken out of their context, reconstructing and remapping elements that I once personally experienced enables me to express abstracted narratives.”

Being a Turkish native residing in the United States, she is influenced by both the architectural/ physical and the emotional aspects of certain environments and views them as great potentials to narrate stories through her artworks. To the viewer, the plot of these narratives can be familiar or unknown, boundless or limited, conquered or yet to be discovered. Yasemin aims to create a ‘chaotic harmony’ by maintaining a balance between these contrasting concepts via the language of abstraction.

She is constantly experimenting with various types of media that best express her memory-laden work. By using paint and various other media such as ink, graphite, watercolor, pastel, threading, knitting, and resin she creates an eclectic dialogue between the oxymoronic elements. Besides painting, drawing is also an essential part of her work. At times she portrays the rapidity of an idea or a memory only through this medium — capturing thoughts in a direct, concise and focused manner.

Yasemin’s work has been exhibited throughout the US and Turkey.

Michelle Gagliano Michelle Gagliano’s art is a continuous engagement with the notion of beauty and experimentation. Imaginary ‘natural’ forms and textural patinas are melded in an exploration of surface alchemy, presenting the viewer with a breathtaking panorama that both evokes timeless private visions and invokes universal themes and emotions.

According to Michelle, "I am experimenting with gold, silver and metallic pigments, suspended on the surface of my panels, then reworking them, erasing, sanding, re-glazing building up and taking down, stretching into, creating a ‘history’. These pigments have a transcendent quality, present in the motifs of so many cultures, including Russian Icons, art of The Incas, Renaissance, all the way to Tibetan Thangkas. Such images were made to dazzle the spectator and I love the spiritual reverence I feel using these pigments. I am influenced also by the Bronze Age, Iron Age, even the Gilded Age. The ‘metallic ages’ have given us such a rich cultural heritage and sense of the magnificent."

Gagliano has built up a considerable body of work and has exhibited extensively throughout the USA. With projects including Artist Residencies, group shows, museum exhibitions, and private installations, Michelle Gagliano’s work is held in numerous private and corporate collections throughout the U.S.A, Europe and Asia.

Martha Hughes Martha Hughes lives and works in Marfa, Texas. She received her B.F.A. from the University of Texas, Austin.

She has been exhibiting her artwork since 1987 throughout the US including a recent exhibit group show in Sante Fe featuring her work alongside, Chuck Close, Agnes Martin, and Sol LeWitt.

Marie Danielle Leblanc Canadian artist, Marie Danielle Leblanc, was born in Trois-Rivières (Quebec) and has lived and worked in Montreal (Quebec) since 1990. Her paintings transform landscapes into poetic worlds. Her deeply saturated palettes bring new life to the sea, land and sky. And she transports her viewers to timeless and imaginary landscapes.

During her travels, she likes to write down her thoughts, make a note of the weather or the name of a place, take pictures and collect images. Leblanc’s travel diary is an ideal instrument for her. Whether she is driving on the highway or in the open country, walking on never-ending beaches or rocks stroked by the sea, it is through her travels that the artist captures landscapes that stretch into the vista.

She has participated in twenty solo exhibitions, and more than fifty group exhibitions. Her work has also been shown throughout Canada and in Paris, Sydney, Mexico and Tokyo. She will be featured in an upcoming solo exhibit at Elisa Contemporary Art based on her travels and trekking in Nepal.

Mitch McGee Houston artist Mitch McGee’s artwork lives between painting and sculpture. In his current Birch series, he uses layers of wood, each illustrated, hand cut and stained to create dimensional pieces. On average, each takes 35-40 hours to complete.

His influences include Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. According to Mitch, "I have always been fascinated with Pop Art and the ability of artists like Lichtenstein and Oldenburg to take everyday objects we are bombarded with and make them fascinating. Roy Lichtenstein took comic strips and repositioned them as lithography. In an almost tongue in cheek fashion, I wondered how I could take one of his pieces and recreate it in another medium.”

McGee has exhibited his work throughout Texas since 2001 and in New York with Elisa Contemporary Art since 2012. His work is public and private collections throughout the world. His artwork was featured in the March 2013 issue of Dwell Magazine and in W Magazine in October, 2013.

Mitch McGee graduated from Baylor University in 1999 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He currently lives in Houston, TX with his wife and three kids Ken Peloke Ken Peloke’s photorealistic mixed media horse paintings were inspired by the time he spent with his wife’s horses. Ken discovered their beauty, their athleticism, and their innocence. His bold, large-scale pieces capture the pure essence of each horse – the beauty, nobility and power. His multimedia approach creates depth and incredible realism to his pieces that give them a one of a kind contemporary appeal. According to Ken, “There is such an honesty and purity that is felt while spending time with our horse, as an artist I feel compelled to try to relay those same emotions to the viewers through my work.”

In "When Stars Align" Ken has also started a new process of collaging in paper into the artwork. According to Ken, " I collage layers of paint, mulberry paper and rice paper together to create a simple, yet abstract design in the background before applying the oils for the horse. The papers have their own qualities which absorb and reveal different amounts and tones of the colors I use. The process gives the piece a bit of a different feel and depth you can't create working on plain canvas or wood."

Although born in rural New York, Ken has lived in Arizona since he was 9. Ken's work has been featured in Western Art Collector, Western Art & Architecture and is in Public and Private Collections across the US including New York, San Francisco, Jackson Hole, Miami, Scottsdale and Sun Valley.

Matt Story Matt Story studied art from an early age and demonstrated a unique skill for rendering verisimilitude, or hyper-realism. "I was lauded for 'photo-realistic' technique, but I was never after that, really, after what a camera impartially sees, because there's so much more there, captured only by the human filter of memory. We all posses these invisible imprints, through experience and living, but often its only artists who can play it back for us, to remind us. The paint surface needs to be a mirror for the viewer, reflecting back not his or her superficial self, but a deep shared humanness. This is the essence of looking at a piece that's totally unfamiliar to you and yet, being awed with a sense of recognition. Your reactions, those memories and feelings are uniquely yours but you're suddenly filled with a sense that, you share them, at least with the artist, but probably even with everyone else. That of course is art at its best: the artist, sometimes doesn't even know what he's doing because he's a conduit of his or her own collective awareness."

Story has worked for over twenty years from his studio in Los Angeles but in mid-2013 began traveling with his wife, first with a long hiatus on the Isle of Palms near Charleston, South Carolina, and recently a long stint near Santa Fe, New Mexico where he paints today, often twelve or more hours a day and seven days a week.

His method of oil painting on canvas and panel closely resembles the classical method, used for centuries by masters such as Titian and Caravaggio, two of Story's heroes, fastidiously building up thin glazes, painting "fat over lean" with traditional materials.

His work is included in private and corporate collections in the United States, Europe and Asia.

About Elisa Contemporary Art Elisa Contemporary Art represents a portfolio of both emerging and mid-career contemporary artists, with a focus on the dynamic use of mediums and materials. Currently about 25% of our artists are from the West Coast/Pacific.

Our art and artists do not fit into any particular current trend or fashion, but are those exploring and testing the boundaries of various media, techniques, materials and ideas about humanity, nature and our world.

Founded in 2007 by Lisa Cooper, Elisa Contemporary Art is dedicated to promoting the appreciation and collection of art as a way to enrich and heal our lives, our communities, and the world. A portion of every gallery sale is donated to charities helping underserved children heal through art. We support Free Arts NYC, Arts to Grow and Art Therapy Outreach Center.

Elisa Contemporary Art has participated in international art fairs in New York, Miami and the Hamptons. We have also curated over 15 public art exhibits in the Tri-State area. Elisa Contemporary Art has been featured in a number of publications including Ocean Home Magazine, Hamptons Cottages & Gardens, New York Spaces and The New York Times.

The Gallery is located at 5622 Mosholu Avenue, Riverdale NY.

For more information, visit the website at www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com or see us on You can also visit us at Facebook.com/ElisaContemporaryArt @LCooperArt