Painter Artist Categories

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Terry Acebo-Davis

Visual Artist: Painter, Print Maker

Evident in her meticulous, cross-referential body of work Acebo Davis reflects the symmetry of the artist’s duty as a professional recorder of experience and memory and the basic human desire to do so. Looking at Acebo Davis’s ouevre now, one realizes that her work was not only timely, but also is timeless. -Reena Jana / Art Writer (New York City, NY)

Kathy Aoki

Visual Artist: Painter, Print Maker

Kathy grew up on the east coast in the small town of Natick, a Boston suburb. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, followed by two years at Washington University in St. Louis for an MFA in Printmaking. Currently Kathy lives and works in the Silicon Valley where she is an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Santa Clara University. Past awards include fellowships from Kala Art Institute (1995), the MacDowell Colony (2001), Headlands Center for the Arts (2003), and Djerassi (2006). Her work can be found in major collections across the U.S. such as the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA , the Harvard University Art Museums, and the New York Public Library. Past projects included a 2004 grant from the San Francisco Public Arts Commission for the Art on Market Street Kiosk Poster Project. Her series of linocut prints were transformed into 4 x 6 ft posters entitled “Champions of Market St.” showing Market St. pedestrians dressed in super-hero garb performing random acts of kindness. In January 2012, Aoki completed an interactive “Political Paper Dolls”art installation commissioned by the San Jose Museum of Art for the exhibition “Renegade Humor.”

Kelly Detweiler

Visual Artist: Ceramist, Painter

Kelly’s work is varied in content and in media. Having started as a ceramist, the mentality creating multiple objects still resonates in his work. The connection to his ceramic past is echoed in subject matter such as vases and vessels throughout the work. The floral and landscape imagery often refer back to his childhood in Colorado and to his extensive travels as an adult. Aside from the obvious influences of his teachers, the work of many European painters informs his work. Picasso and the cubists, Balthus, Bosch, Bocklin, Beckmann and many more can be seen in various pieces. The overriding sense of the work is a fun loving and optimistic approach to making art and experiencing the world around us..

Don Fritz

Visual Artist: Painter

My work has evolved from an early interest in Pop Art and icons of American pop culture expressed through popular imagery and cultural artifacts. I explore visual symbol for what it represents both literally and metaphorically. I am fascinated with the psychological disavowal that is required to live with and accept the pervasive cultural narratives of childhood, power, and gender. Simultaneous acceptance of contradicting information is rooted in these narratives. Childhood, as a concept, is a place charged with fantasies of freedom and innocents. It is addressed in my work by appropriating familiar imagery and reconstructing it on an image surface in a self-reflexive and highly material approach. Through techniques of layering and erasing of visual element conflicting ideas and develop a trace of my psychological process. In reworking the surface, each layer brings me further into the dialectics of the issues being addressed. Toys and children’s books become objects of ritual when in a culture like ours they are imbued with conscious and unconscious meaning. The various meanings are based in cultural constructs of gender and power. To illustrate the construction of childhood imagery, larger-than-life ceramic sculptures of iconic toys and books demonstrate a banality that comes from being oversized and heavy while also fragile; mimicking the duality in childhood mythology. I use humor to juxtapose the underlying presence and psychological consequence of the menacing cultural narratives intrinsic in children’s toys and books. Power is trivialized and becomes symbolica accessible in stylized toys such as guns, jet planes, and rocket cars where the violence is hidden under their glazed surfaces. Fantasies of power are closely linked to gender identities. Gender identities that are formed in childhood depend greatly on visual representation in media images and toys. The toys that seem to reflect the innocence and freedom of childhood are embedded with weighty social contracts dictating gender identities. I incorporate images of toys and children performing gender roles in combination with ghost images into my investigations of American pop culture and its fantasies to show the disparity between our idealized fantasies and our physical based realities.

Lucy Gaylord-Lindholm

Visual Artist: Painter

Richard Godinez

Visual Artist: Painter, Print Maker

Once a political cartoonist, San Jose artist Richard Godinez creates large-scale oil paintings and pastels that protest imperialism and globalization. He is a graduate from San José State University and Stanford University and the recipient of the Silicon Valley Arts Council’s Individual Fellowship Grant.

Elizabeth Gómez

Visual Artist: Painter

In my work I search for images that convey a somewhat utopic coexistence between humans (usually women) and their environment: an ecology that ultimately does not exist. This is why in my seemingly innocent stories there is always a hint of stress. I am interested in concepts of environmental hierarchy both in the wild and in our human reality. My work is influenced by popular arts from around the world and by surreal artists who explore reality through fantastical transformations. I love the qualities of sharply outlined cartoons that I infinitely watched as a kid. I often have in mind the Mexican retablos of my childhood. I also delight in the jewel-like Persian or Indian miniatures and medieval illuminations. I strive for work that has the honesty and directness of hand-made crafts with the use of over-decoration and space-flattening pattern.

Dana Harris Seeger

Visual Artist: Painter, Print Maker

Dana Harris Seeger was born in El Granada, California. She received her MFA in Printmaking from San Jose State University in 2011 and her BA in Painting from Anderson University in 2004. She has been a member of the California Society of Printmakers since 2011, and a board member until 2014. In 2012, she was an Artist in Residence at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California, and taught Lithography courses there. In 2014 she co-founded an art studio and school in San Jose called the School of Visual Philosophy. She currently runs the school with her husband, a sculptor, and holds her studio there. She exhibits her work nationally and has been published in Studio Visit Magazine. She has won awards for her work including 3rd Place Print for her lithograph “Toledo” at the Triton Museum’s Annual 2D Salon in 2017. She was recently named one of KQED’s 10 Bay Area Women to Watch. She resides in Ben Lomond, California with her husband Yori Seeger, daughter Lyla and twin boys Hayden and Esben.

Emanuela Harris-Sintamarian

Visual Artist: Painter, Print Maker

I was born in Bucharest, Romania, where I did my undergrad studies at University of Fine Arts. While in college I received a couple of scholarships in Italy (Instituto Romeno di Cultura-Venice) and France (under the tutelage of Association Culturelle de Saint Remy de Provence). In 1999 I came for the first time to the United States in an one-month student exchange program. I volunteered to assist and participate in opening a basic art program for the children of a Sioux Falls Reservation (South Dakota). In the summer of 2000, I returned to the United States on a scholarship offered by the University of Delaware, where I received my first MFA in Printmaking. In 2005, I received my second MFA in Painting at San Jose State University. Since I relocated to the Bay Area (2002), I have shown at various venues around the Bay, including: Jack Fischer Gallery, Frey & Norris Gallery, ArtSF, SoEX, (San Francisco), Swarm Gallery and ProArts (Oakland), Triton Museum, (Santa Clara), ICA, Works Gallery, Anno Domini (San Jose) to name just a few. I have also shown in New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Philadelphia, as well as Sweden, France, Canada, Austria, Italy and Romania. While in 2005 I was nominated for the SECA SFMOMA Award, in 2008 I was the recipient of the 2008ArtShift Award; the Artist’s Grant Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, and the AIR Program Grant from Works Gallery. In 2010 I was the recipient of the 2010 Silicon Valley Arts Council Award. Over the years I have been in several residencies (such as the Djerassi, Vermont Studio Center, Works, ICA-San Jose)

Nina Koepcke

Visual Artist: Ceramist, Painter, Print Maker

Nina Koepcke has over thirty-five years’ experience working as both artist and arts facilitator. Her ceramics, paintings and prints receive consistent recognition with awards and inclusion in regional, national, and international art competitions. Her artwork in public and private collections in the United States, Canada, Russia, France and Japan, includes the permanent collections of the Triton Museum, the Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz, CA, the Valley Medical Center, San Jose, City Museum of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia. Fujiwara collection, Okayama, Japan and AIR Vallauris, France.

Judith Komoroske

Educator; Performing Artist: Choreographer, Dancer; Visual Artist: Painter

Dancer, choreographer and teacher Judith Komoroske is now retired after a 38 year career. She now pursues creative expression through painting and writing.

Barbara Leventhal-Stern (Deceased)

Visual Artist: Painter, Print Maker

Barbara Leventhal-Stern was born in Springfield, Ohio in 1948. Her formal art education began in St. Louis, Missouri at Washington University School of Fine Art. It was in their gallery that she first saw the paintings of Max Beckman, who had taught there after leaving Germany. In the Art School Library she found a collection of books on German Expressionism, and she immediately fell in love with their wood cut prints. After two years, Barbara left St. Louis and enrolled in The Boston Museum School where she was free to spend hours in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, next door. In Boston, she concentrated on Painting and Etching. She then finished her B.F.A. in London through a joint program with Tufts University and studied Printing at the London Polytech. During this time, she lived in Cambridge, England and taught drawing for the Workers’ Educations Association. Eventually returning to the U.S., Barbara joined a community of artists situated on what once was a chicken farm in New Haven, Connecticut. After the chickens died off, the place was wistfully named, “Bittersweet Farm” and was converted into artist studios, complete with bucolic goats and organic gardens. During the four years that she lived at this commune, she studied figure drawing and painting with Dutch Artist, Roger Van Damme. In 1978, Barbara moved to Southern California and began a Master’s Degree in Painting, at the Claremont Graduate School of Art. However, she did not finish her graduate degree until 1985, at San Jose State University where she studied with Sam Richardson and Geoff Bowman. Since then, she worked in her own studio in Palo Alto, California making paintings, drawings, and prints, designing and cutting all of her own woodblocks and then publishing print editions through Kala Institute in Berkley, California. To produce her small editions of etching, she worked collaboratively with Master Printer, Davis Kelso at his Made-in-California Studio. Barbara’s work was essentially narrative and there was always a story at the core of what she did. She usually worked in a series that allowed her to process subjects that both interested and troubled her over time. During the last years of her life, Barbara worked on a series of paintings about two specific communities of people; Eastern European Jews before the Holocaust and world circus performers. As wildly different as these themes seem to be, they were linked together in her mind. Both of these people lived on the edge of life and walked a tightrope, upon which they tried to keep their precarious balance, for better or worse.

Katherine Levin-Lau

Visual Artist: Painter

I am a perpetual student of nature. My explorations have taken me to physical places such as tide pools, gardens and forests and my learning broadened by museums and books. I am filled with wonder at the beautiful, horrific, bizarre and puzzling intricacies of the natural world. I feel deeply the connection between all living things. In 1992, I saw my first curiosity cabinet at the Royal Palace in Prague. These cabinets, sometimes called “wonderkammen”, gained popularity with a new breed of collectors during the Renaissance and later became precursors of our modern museums. Originally the hobby of the social elite: these private collections became more publicaly attainable when men like P.T. Barnum realized their monetary potential and purchased, displayed and scattered these collections for their own gain. It was wonderful to see the Prague collection, intact and still in all it’s chaotic glory. A large étagère dominated the room with curved glass doors and shelves crammed to the top with objects. The collection was jumbled with no clear order: stuffed birds, statues,coral, an animal’s paw, dried flower specimens, a shrunken head, turtle shells, a dried puffer fish piled one on top of the other, vying for attention. My current body of work reflects the impact of this visit to Prague. I have collected images from nature and anthropology and use these as elements in my personal iconography, juxtaposing images of contrasting origins in homage to the Prague cabinet’s Jumbled contents. Recently I have been working on a series combining skeletal remains, seeds and butterflies. These images reflect not only the cycle of life but also their interconnection. All the images are hand drawn on a zinc plate using a reductive process. The prints have multiple runs through the press. The original drawings have a monochromatic base and color is overlaid using viscosity techniques. Often the ghost of the image is used to begin the next print.

Kenna Moser

Visual Artist: Painter

My studio is full of objects that inspire, and piles of old botanical books, dictionaries and letters to be used in my work. I begin by gluing original vintage letters, envelopes and collage to a wood panel; a signature layer of beeswax follows this. I have been working with encaustic and beeswax for the past 20 years. The beeswax is applied hot, then smoothed and buffed. It provides a transparent and luminous surface for the oil painting. The letters reference the written word. The script and paper are appealing to work upon. The writer’s stories have been lost. Perhaps I am creating their narrative. There is a bit of humor in the current pieces. Small images of people cut and collaged from books combined with larger life size oil paintings of natural specimens. I am inspired by artists who work with their own visual language, passions and quirks. I believe that the path to the universal is through the personal, that you can only really paint what you know. My work is intertwined with my life. Images are gathered from trees, ferns and feathers found in the woods and stream behind my studio or gleaned from my garden.

Lynn Powers

Visual Artist: Painter

It has been said that art expresses the unarticulated needs of the world community. It’s sources are derived from all that is known and unknown, or as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu wrote …all of the ten thousand things. For most of my life I have been sustained by images, memories, and stories that contain a sense of mystery, those that pose a question, or those that require an investigation of some sort. It is my practice to bear witness to the inner life of intuition and dreams. It is a world of symbols both personal and universal. The written and spoken word of poetry, rich with undefined impressions leaves the mystery tended, but not fully explained. An elusive visual image engages our viewer’s eye and imagination in ways that a literal explanation does not. I resonate with Charles Simic’s phrase “the still moment of the eye grafted to the heart”, expressing a moment when the heart reads the meaning of a poem or painting. Studio practice requires one to have an open mind, to cultivate a pregnant moment, and to have a core trust in intuition as it meets uncertainty. It is a way of continually energizing those qualities in my life. Hopefully, the viewer will come away with a sense of having been somewhere new, and yet, familiar.

Joe Ragey

Performing Artist: Lighting Designer, Set Designer; Visual Artist: Painter

I paint “alla prima” working on location and in the studio. My work centers on creating the effects of light found in nature. I paint landscapes and seascapes capturing the scenic vistas of the California west coast. In the studio, I work on larger salon sized paintings, from small ‘alla prima” studies done on location. The paintings of French, Russian, American Impressionists, and in particular, the early California Impressionists influences my work. Some of the artist’s that I admire include, Joaquin Sorolla, John Singer Sargent, Charles Hawthorne and Guy Rose. As a painter it is important for me to capture the unique California light at various times of the day and year, under a variety of lighting conditions.

George Rivera

Visual Artist: Mixed Media, Painter

George Rivera, M.A., is the former museum of art Executive Director & Senior Curator, at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara. Rivera was with the Triton Museum of Art since 1985, before stepping down from his position in July 2013. Prior to the Triton, Rivera was the Executive Director & Curator of the San Jose Art League from 1982-1985. Rivera received his academic training in art for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from San Jose State University. Since 1977 he has organized and curated over 375 exhibitions including local, state, national and international projects, collaborating with small and major national museums, galleries and private collections. This includes developing, organizing and overseeing in-house curated exhibitions that toured nationally in both museums and art centers. As a juror of art Rivera has served as a solo juror or as a member of a panel of jurors for over 400 (1978 to the present) exhibitions and competitions of local, regional, statewide, national and international art programs, projects, fellowships, artist-in-residency programs and competitions. He is an Associate Faculty Instructor of Art at Mission College in Santa Clara (1986 to the present) where he has taught drawing, design, color, life drawing, museum and gallery studies, air-brush painting and oil, acrylic and watercolor painting. He was an Art Instructor of life drawing, figure and portrait painting at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto (1998-2008). Rivera teaches a life drawing/portrait and figure class throughout the year at the Triton Museum of Art School. In 2005 he began instructing a class at De Anza College in Cupertino for a course entitled Art Exhibition Analysis where he meets his students throughout the Bay Area at museums, art galleries and artist studios to discuss contemporary art. Currently an Extension Instructor of curatorial/art history studies for the University of California at Berkeley extension program (1996-2000, 2007 to the present), Rivera presents lectures of Bay Area Art history from 1945 to today throughout the region. Since 1979 he has taught art studio, art appreciation and introduction to the arts/art history classes at San Jose State University, San Jose Art League, Pacific Art league, UC Berkeley Extension, DeAnza College, Triton Museum of Art School and Mission College. Committed to giving back to the art community, Rivera participates year-round in artist critiques to individual artists, students and art groups/clubs/associations and organizations, portfolio reviews and career counseling. As an artist, Rivera has been included in over 100 exhibitions locally, nationally and internationally. Since 1974 his drawings, mixed media and paintings have been presented at art centers, galleries and museums. His work have been represented by art galleries including the Group 21 Gallery, Los Gatos; Freeman Gallery, Palo Alto; Branner-Spangenberg Gallery, Palo Alto; Sperling Gallery, San Jose; the Pope Gallery, Santa Cruz; Ebert Gallery, San Francisco; Michael Himovitz Gallery, Sacramento; d.p. Fong Galleries, San Jose; Washington Square/Togonon Gallery, San Francisco, and now currently with the Sandra Lee Art Gallery, San Francisco. Locally his drawings and paintings have been presented at the San Jose Museum of Art; the De Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University; the Art Museum of Los Gatos; the Euphrat Museum of Art, De Anza College, Cupertino; the Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara; National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, CA.; Villa Montalvo Center for the Arts, Saratoga; Olive Hyde Art Gallery, Fremont; Union Art Gallery San Jose State University, ICA Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose; WORKS/San Jose, MACLA San Jose, the San Jose Art Center, Michael Rosenthal Gallery, San Francisco, among others. In 2012 there was a 30 year survey of his paintings and drawings at the Art Museum of Los Gatos. This solo exhibition featured a publication with an introduction and essays by art historians Preston Metcalf and Helayna Thickpenny and by Catherine Politopulus, Curator of Art at the Art Museum of Los Gatos. In 2013 Rivera will be in multiple two person exhibitions with his wife Kristin Lindseth Rivera at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, CA. and the Sandra Lee Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Rivera and his wife Kristin contribute works of art to art auctions, fund-raisers and gallery/museum events throughout the year in support of community art programs throughout the Greater Bay Area. Since 1978 he has produced numerous commissioned portraits of many of this region’s community leaders as well as general portraits and commissioned work. Rivera has been a recipient of numerous awards in the field of art, art education, curating, arts administration and community service, including annual recognition in the 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th and current editions of Who’s Who in American Art, and in 2005 was selected annually into Who’s Who in America 60th and 61st edition. Twice he has been nominated by peers and colleagues for the prestigious Fleishhacker Foundation Artist Award. In 2013 Rivera was honored with the 2013 Artist Laureate Award Legacy Laureate from the Arts Council Silicon Valley. He also received a Proclamation from the City of Santa Clara in recognition of this award. As an arts writer his works have been published throughout the Bay Area including museum/gallery publications, catalogs and brochures, and he was an art reviewer and contributing editor for Artistwriter publication. Rivera also served as a host of INSIDE ART! A South Bay televised art program produced by award-winning and exhibiting artist Sandra Beard that was presented on public television community access channels throughout the area focusing the art of the South Bay Area region. This program featured artists, alternative art spaces and art programs from throughout the South Bay Area. Besides his activities as an art administrator, instructor of art, faculty member and artist Rivera has and continues to serve on numerous art/community boards and advisory board/committees for non-profit organizations and educational programs throughout the Bay Area. Both Kristin and George share their knowledge and experience in assisting artists, art clubs and community art programs throughout the region.

Roberto Romo

Visual Artist: Illustrator, Painter

I am an Illustrator / Graphic Designer living in San Jose, I have been awarded 2015 SV Creates Artist Laureate in February 2015. My work has become part of bay area culture through many publications as well as art exhibits. Concurrently I work as an art instructor at The School of Arts and Culture. I hold a BFA from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in Traditional Illustration, and an AS in 2 Dimensional Design From Evergreen Valley College. Currently I am producing a series of 54 paintings, which focus on interpreting “La Loteria” ( Mexican Bingo) with new and fresh illustrations, which will be published by August 2015.

Harumo Sato

Visual Artist: Painter

Harumo Sato is a Japanese visual artist living in Mountain View. After traveling and living in Japan, France, Morocco, Tunisia, Italy, and Spain, she earned a BA from University in Buffalo, NY 2015. Through experiencing sudden sickness and severe natural disasters in her early life, her work aims to seek coexistence with nature and harmony with others for our true happiness and peace by combining psychology and the spirit of prehistoric to medieval artifacts in the Mediterranean Sea and Japan. Her painting and hand-pulled screen prints are in public and private collections and have been exhibited in diverse solo and group shows in California and New York. She has received commissions for murals and installations from Pow! Wow! San Jose, Superfine! Fair, Facebook, and Target Corporation. She also creates colorful and whimsical illustrations for organizations which make positive impacts on the community, clients include: SJMADE, San Jose Taiko, SV@Home, Culture Magazine. She has a studio at the Cubberley Artist Studio Program in Palo Alto.

Chelsea Stewart

Visual Artist: Painter

Chelsea Stewart is one of three 2022 Content Emerging Artists, receiving $5,000 to continue development of her art form in addition to being recognized for her unique artistic vibrancy. Through exploration of mass and scale, geological subjects, and mental health, Stewart constructs large scale abstract paintings and paper installations. Using erosion of geological forms as a catalyst, the passing of her grandmother from dementia, and her own experience with anxiety, Stewart admires the meditative process of the act of making to communicate personal narratives of mental health to mirror its brittleness and its underlying strength.

Gail Wight

Visual Artist: 3D, Ceramist, Mixed Media, Painter, Photographer, Print Maker

Gail Wight’s work primarily focuses on experimental media, including photography, video, interactive media, and printmaking. Her exhibition record includes nearly two dozen solo exhibits throughout North America and Great Britain. Her work has been collected by numerous institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Yale University, the San Jose Museum of Art, and Centro Andaluz de Art Contemporaneo in Spain. Among her many artist residencies are western Australia’s Symbiotica, Art & Archaeology at Stonehenge, the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, and San Francisco’s Exploratorium. She has taught in the Art Practice program at Stanford University since 2003. Wight holds an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute where she was a Javits Fellow, and a BFA from the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art. Information about her work has been published in Art and Science Now and Information Art by Stephen Wilson, Art in the Age of Technoscience by Ingeborg Reichle, Evocative Objects by Sherry Turkle, and Kunst nach der Wissenschaft by Susanne Witzgall, among other publications.

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