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.

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 their powerful leaps and graceful strokes, amazes me. I try to capture the beauty I see in frogs in my artwork, and to express the love and joy I feel for them with those who see my pieces. More importantly, I hope to contribute to amphibian conservation efforts worldwide, and make a real difference in the lives of the thousands of frog species currently threatened with extinction. Frogs need us, and I believe we need them too.

While I have always enjoyed creating frog artwork, it became a true passion for me when I discovered SAVE THE FROGS!, an amphibian conservation organization, and the enormous threats that frog species face. Ever since, I have used my artwork as activism, including informative fact cards about species I depict and donating 10% of my sales to SAVE THE FROGS! I use a variety of mediums, including acrylic paintings, watercolors, sculpture, digital illustrations, and animation. My pieces tend to draw heavily from real life, both because I love animals as they truly appear and so that each species is distinctly recognizable. That said, I make my pieces lively by enhancing colors and giving all of my subjects a smile. Though frogs may be suffering dramatically in the world we live in, I want to live in a world where I can find them smiling everywhere. I work to help create that world in my art, and in real life.

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. In 2019, Jessie graduated from Wilmington Early College High School as valedictorian and from Cape Fear Community College (CFCC). Today, she is majoring in both Studio Art and Digital Arts at UNCW and working as a part-time employee at Art in Bloom Gallery, where she edits their artist films. 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://jessielrobertson.wixsite.com/portfolio

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.