The Artist Space Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the second Nature Art Exhibition. Along with the selected artists, the jury selected award winners in the following art categories: painting, photography, and sculpture. The show displayed a variety of artistic styles and mediums: oil on canvas, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, colored pencil, photography, digital, stainless steel, bronze. Out of all submissions received 79 artworks were selected to be included in the exhibition.
Best of Show
Chantal Bourque
Short Biography and Statement
Born in the province of Quebec in Canada, Chantal Bourque was amazed from childhood by the emotional power of images. After studying art, she started painting trees, and they are now the center of her creations. She draws her inspiration from the authenticity of the forest. Combining a realistic style with her artistic vision, it is with humility that Chantal expresses in her paintings the emotional balance that the forest provides. Through her wooded universe, Chantal hopes to encourage people to live in connection with nature, and especially to respect it. An awareness that we are all interrelated to this grandiose nature, which can bring us so many benefits. "I believe that each tree has its own identity, its own story. Through my paintings, I convey a moment in their lives when they caught my eye, a unique moment that pays tribute to them. In each of my works, which I affectionately call my tree portraits, I integrate small pieces of real bark. They are a tangible reminder of the precious and fragile co-presence between man and nature."
Painting Prize
Renee DiNapoli
Short Biography and Statement
Renee C. DiNapoli, award-winning, professional artist/instructor and former faculty member of Ringling School of Art & Design is noted for her contemporary florals and interior beachfront realism. Renee’s striking oil paintings have received critical acclaim for their high contrast, unusually intense use of color and exquisite detail. Her ability to achieve both impact and delicacy in her paintings attests to her 36 years of training with Italian master and studying at The Louvre in Paris for many years. She has taught at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL as well as Tulane and Loyola Universities in New Orleans, LA. Her graduate study was conducted at The Red Mountain Institute of Art. Three of her paintings were purchased by the State of Florida and placed in their permanent collection. Renee just completed an oil painting commission for Stallion Boot Company, El Paso, TX. One of her paintings was accepted into the permanent collection Vieques Museum of Fine Art in Puerto Rico. Several of her paintings were juried in international exhibitions at The Brownsville Museum of Fine Art in Texas, a national exhibition at the Ellington-White Contemporary Gallery, the Amalie Arena in Tampa, Raymond James Financial Center, among many others.
Sculpture Prize
Jason Shih
Short Biography and Statement
Sculpture is to interpret the beauty of light and shadow, rhythm and volume through the visual techniques of color, shape and texture. The qualities that the creators of sculpture pursue to touch people's hearts are actually as abstract as temperature and smell, but rich in profound penetrating power. This aura that directly points to people's hearts, and the aesthetic sense that makes people enter the drama in resonance, may also be like nostalgia, embodied in the nostalgia of seeing things and thinking about them, and the timid expectation of being close to the hometown. Sea breeze, mountain mist, morning sun, sunset, in addition to shape and color, there is also the memory of temperature. Cooking smoke, hot soup, wooden tables, pottery cups, the echo of the smell is the gradual tone of nostalgia. In people's daily aesthetic experience, the memory of temperature and smell accompanied by touch often becomes a kind of fuse to revisit the journey of old dreams. The work involved in sculpture creation is to "condense" and record all kinds of beautiful presence in this beautiful time and space in an appropriate way and with true emotions.
Photography Prize
Patrick Aalto
Short Biography and Statement
Raising awareness of Earth's beauty, through image-making, education and partnership in an effort to help every person enjoy nature, where they find it. This is at the heart of what I do at Patrick Aalto Photography. Photography has been a part of my outside life since I was in middle School. My first exposure to photography was shooting underwater photos in the Florida Keys with an Ikelite Aquashot. I learned a lot about taking not-so-great photos, yet, feeling great excitement to share the stories of my adventures. I started, in earnest, to take photography serious in 1998. Since then, I have traveled and stayed local, wherever that was, to explore and find great things to photograph in nature.
Winners