Louise Saxton

Louise Saxton is a Melbourne based artist who trained in painting and printmaking at RMIT and holds a Post-graduate Diploma with the Victorian College of the Arts and a Masters Degree in Fine Arts with the University of Ballarat. 

Since 2000 Louise’s practice has centred on the reconstruction of detritus from the home. This has included the re-use of her own paintings, collections of everyday business envelopes and vintage wallpapers and discarded needlework. In 2006 she was awarded a Sir Ian Potter Cultural Trust travel grant to undertake an artist residency at Rimbun Dahan in Malaysia. Since that time her practice has engaged primarily with the reconstruction of needlework, which she regards as a "silent collaboration with the anonymous original makers."

Her work has been included in the 18th Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial 2008 and in the same year the joint exhibition dot-net-dot-au (with Tim Craker) toured to Malaysia and Singapore. In 2009 Louise was represented in Paysage/Voyage, which toured in Europe, to England, France and Holland. In 2012 Louise was awarded a grant from the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria for the development of her solo exhibition, Sanctuary at Heide Museum of Modern Art. In 2013 she held her first commercial solo exhibition, Sanctuary Too at Gould Galleries. In 2014 she was the inaugural Australian artist at 360 Xochi Quetzal Artist Residency, on the beautiful Lake Chapala, in Mexico.  She is also included in The New Textiles, at Mobilia Gallery, Cambridge, Boston, USA.

Louise's work is held in regional and state collections in Australia and private collections in Australia, Malaysia and India.

 All images  Copyrighted by Louise Saxton

http://www.louisesaxton.com/

Leisa Rich

Leisa Rich is a sculptor and artist who employs fiber, surface design, hand and machine stitching, human detritus and a variety of other unusual techniques and materials in her 2D and 3D constructions and Installations. She is an art educator with 35 years experience teaching all levels, and ages from 3 year old through college, in Fibers, Sewing, Painting/Drawing, Book Making, Printmaking, Clay, Resin/Molds, Encaustic and more. She holds Master of Fine Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, and Bachelor of Education in Art degrees. Leisa used to teach  at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center  for many years.  Her previous experience includes international fashion, set design projects for television and theatre, a successful wearable art business, Director of Art and much more.

All images  Copyrighted  by Leisa Rich

See more of her work at:
http://monaleisa.posterous.com
http://www.monaleisa.com

Tiny Paintings of Istanbul by Hasan Kale

Hasan Kale is a Turkish artist who uses extraordinary canvases for his paintings.You can find most of his masterpieces drawn on taxidermied insects, fruits, shells, seeds and more.Turkish miniature artist Hasan Kale‘s works amaze me. He paints on every small object he finds. A needle, a seed, a butterfly wing or a lump sugar turns into a canvas in his hands. He paints Istanbul panoramas, the city which inspires him, on these small objects. His art is inspired by Mohammed of the Black Pen’s brush technique and Levni’s color harmony.

Alexa Meade and Sheile Vand

Alexa and Sheile have collaborated on a body of work that explores the fluidity of form in relation to time and space. By stripping the subject of depth and dimension, a displacement of identity ensues, demonstrating the power of context over content.​​

Meade paints on Vand’s body, submerged in a canvas of milk. Vand’s performance is dictated by the opposing forces of fixed shadows and fluid space. The surface of the milk intersects Vand’s body at an uneven and unusual plane, creating a sense of movement and depth beneath her compressed form. This play on dimensionality in the picture evokes an optical illusion that activates the viewer’s experience by challenging their common perceptions. The identifiable becomes ineffable, giving the flat photography of the painted three-dimensional space an unsettling tone. By blending the borders between the subject and its surroundings, identity is muted and we’re left with the distilled nuances that shape the space.

All images © Alexa Meade and Sheila Vand