Acrylic Painting

Kirah Van Sickle is an adventurer at heart. Her early years set a foundation for travel, exploration and visual storytelling. Her acrylic and mixed media works explore incorporating found objects and papers with the paint glazes. These are deeply personal expressions of her memories and dreams. In addition to her studio practice, Kirah is a dynamic instructor and lecturer, leading custom studio courses through museum schools and local art associations, directed to both beginner and seasoned artists. She is an award-winning illustrator, graphic designer and studio artist, a certified Golden Artist-Educator, and active in community arts programming, preservation of cultural resources and enhancing arts education. Kirah lives on the Cape Fear Coast of North Carolina and is a staff instructor at the Cameron Art Museum, Johnston Community College, and Cape Fear Community College. Details on workshops, exhibits and work can be found at her website: www.kirahfineart.com

Artist Statement
The silence between words defines them, gives them meaning. This is Caesura…a notable pause. It is a threshold or vast sea over which one crosses, both literally and metaphorically on the journey to self. Visually exploring this theme creates a record of my travels, memories and dreams.

My process includes painting en plein air, exploring the immediacy, unpredictable aspects of color, time and place, as well as commitment to my studio practice. I paint vast color fields of a muted, complementary palette, seeking the geological patterns etched in nature, and memory. Incorporating ephemera between layers of acrylic glazes onto canvas provides a mixed media process that hints at experiences, producing nuances of texture and color. By marrying both my foundational, representational style with a contemporary mixed media process, my paintings speak to the duality and journey as artist. Exploring my own contemporary narrative, these works reflect the hopes and desires common to this theme – bridging the unknown, ultimately finding meaning and connection to ourselves and each other.

Jessie Robertson is a multimedia artist who creates equally scientific and inviting depictions of animals. Jessie’s best known for her focus on frogs, which alongside art has been her lifelong passion. By painting and sculpting the diverse species she researches, Jessie works to promote their conservation.

Jessie donates 10% of her sales to the international amphibian conservation organization SAVE THE FROGS!.

Artist Statement

Ever since I can remember, I have been filled with a great love for frogs and toads. Everything about them, from their bright eyes and wide grins, to powerful movements and adaptions, amazes me. That’s what’s inspired me to capture their diversity through art. However, this passion took on a much greater meaning when I discovered the international frog conservation organization SAVE THE FROGS! in 2012, and learned of the enormous threats that frog species face. Of the more than 7,000 known species of frogs and toads, it is estimated that over 70% are in decline, with roughly 1/3 of all amphibian species in danger of extinction by 2050.

Ever since, I’ve been determined to use my art to help. By combining painting, sculpture, and infographics to present frog species’ stories, I hope to spread awareness of the overwhelming threats they face. By sharing my art at Art in Bloom Gallery, I work to raise funds for their global conservation. And by expressing the beauty I’ve always seen in frogs, I hope to encourage viewers to love them as well. The tragedy of frogs’ dramatic declines is that every threat they face, from climate change to infectious disease, is human caused. But that’s exactly why I have so much hope that we can work together to save them. Frogs are our friends, and I hope we can learn to be better friends to them.

Biography

Born in Memphis, TN, Jessie Robertson moved with her family to Wilmington in 2010. Since 2017, Jessie’s award-winning art has displayed in several group and solo art exhibits, including shows at Wilma Daniels Gallery, ACES Gallery, 216 N. Front Street, the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher, and Art in Bloom Gallery. While continuing her education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Jessie worked as a gallery assistant and filmmaker at Art in Bloom Gallery, where her work is represented. Now, having graduated from UNCW with bachelor’s degrees in Studio Art and Digital Arts in 2023, she continues to explore artwork through painting, sculpture, and digital multimedia. Jessie hopes that the more she learns and creates, the more successful she will be in achieving her goal of saving the frogs.

More of Jessie’s work can be found at: https://jrfrogs.com/

Mark Gansor is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

In the early 90’s while supporting himself as a church organist and freelance piano accompanist, he began experimenting with decorative painting as a hobby.  Soon it blossomed into a full-time profession.   He now devotes his time to rendering decorative finishes, faux effects, plasters, and murals.  He works in both residential and commercial settings and has painted in several buildings that are listed on the National Registry of Historic Places.   Completely self taught, he learned the painting craft through reading books and studying the work of others. He has been trained in the application of fine Venetian plasters and has taken master classes in Trompe l’oeil painting. He has painted in commercial and residential structures throughout North Carolina and the Grand Strand of South Carolina.

For several years he has been painting works on canvas and hopes that this can be his career in retirement. His work is available at Art in Bloom Gallery. He has also recently become the Organist at First Baptist Church in downtown Wilmington.

ARTIST’S STATMENT

“I have been painting for over 25 years but have only now begun to see things in full color. Art is a journey after all: perception is not just blue sky and green grass. Bright color, thick paint, landscapes, and Wilmington architecture are all things that stimulate me. My formal training is in music which was my career prior to painting. Over the years I have dabbled in painting canvases, becoming even more passionate about it since moving to Wilmington.  Transitioning from walls to canvases I believe that finally my personal style is beginning to develop.  My dream and goal is to become solely a painter, an interpreter of the beauty around me.”

American artist, Bradley Carter, is an award winning, international selling artist who grew up pursuing his passion for art in Virginia prior to moving to North Carolina in 2007. He predominately works in the medium of painting with his passion in Abstract Expressionism, but his works also include collage, paint skins, and furniture.

Bradley completed his BFA in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2002. He is active in both local and national juried shows. He is active in regional Art associations and past curator of Abstract Expressionism on Fine Art America (FAA). Bradley currently has work in Eclipse Artisan Boutique, Art in Bloom Gallery, The George on the River Walk, and Port City Mortgage in Wilmington. His work can be seen on ABC’s Secrets and Lies, Season One. He currently resides in Wilmington, NC.