Marjorie Ball
City Night II
City Night II
acrylic
32" x 80"
2008
32" x 80"
2008
April 19 through May 8, 2009
Marjorie Ball and Alice Benvie Gebhart: The Color of Light
Marjorie BallMarjorie Ball and Alice Benvie Gebhart: The Color of Light
www.marjorieball.com
Artist's Statement
My art is like a visual journal. The subject of my art is the interplay of light and the tactile quality of oil paint on the painted surface.
I paint familiar scenes from novel perspectives. The lights of a sleeping city, dynamic patterns of sunshine on natural or man-made structures, or the curve of the sun-drenched raked by sun, or shrouded in mist. These images all find their way into my oil paintings. Repetition of human - made shapes along the highway echo the speed, noise, and rhythm of modern life. The quiet places where I contemplate the beauty of my surroundings yield paintings that are wordless meditations.
My training as a graphic designer and art teacher contributed to my understanding of the formal aspects of design and the expressive possibilities of visual images. The works of Wolf Kahn, Milton Avery, Fairfield Porter, and Edward Hopper, among others, have influenced my style. I paint outdoors or in my studio in the woods next to Frenchtown Brook. My paintings have won awards in numerous juried exhibitions and commissions and are in public and private collections in the U.S. and Japan.
Alice Benvie Gebhart
www.ABGebhart.com
Artist Biography
Alice Benvie Gebhart grew up in a family that valued her artistic talents and abilities. Her father, Chris Benvie, a prolific New England Impressionist artist, introduced her to the art of painting at a young age. She graduated from Rhode Island College in her native Rhode Island, with an undergraduate degree in art and a graduate degree in education. Working as a high school art teacher, cooperating teacher for Rhode Island School of Design and adjunct faculty member at her alma mater, she has been a professional artist and art educator since 1980.
Winning regional awards for her paintings, Alice worked alternately in oils and stained glass for many years. In 2004, she attended a workshop in glass painting with Peter McGrain and was inspired to combine stained glass and glass painting. Her work developed and changed until she discovered the rich and vivid properties of fused glass. A most recent class with noted fused glass artist Roger Thomas in 2007 gave Alice Benvie Gebhart new ideas and inspiration. Alice’s experimentation with kiln-fired glass has grown into something that stands out from the norm.
Alice Benvie Gebhart’s artistic inspiration comes primarily from the way light and color react with glass. Her subject matter is the everyday scene one may drive by or pass without notice. Working off the sketches she has created, Gebhart cuts and layers colored glass, specifically made for glass fusing, in a kind of collage. This is fired in a glass kiln, often 3-5 times to obtain the desired effect. Gebhart’s approach to the glass is reminiscent of the crayon scratchboards one would create as a child. She starts with a collage of color, not from crayons but with glass. After fusing, defining and fusing again, she hides the brilliance with traces of black using carbon oxide. Scratching through the lines of black to the luminosity underneath Gebhart reveals the true beauty of the medium and the artist’s interpretation. ?Much like the fauvist painter, Henri Matisse her subject is translated through the use of dramatic color and light. Matisse used cut paper and paint to reinterpret nature; Gebhart creates art with vibrant, painterly glass.
Alice Benvie Gebhart is a member of Glass Art Society; International Guild of Glass Artists, National and New England Chapter; American Craft Council; Providence Art Club, Art League of Rhode Island and Newport Art Museum and Art Association. Educational foundation memberships include National Art Education Association (NAEA) and its Rhode Island chapter (RIAEA). Recent exhibitions include Design within Reach: Providence Art Windows (2008), Art League of RI Annual Exhibit at Bristol Museum (2008) and Attleboro Arts Museum Auction (2008). Recent publications include Art Calendar and Glass Craftsman Magazine.