Alice’s Featured Artist

Catherine Gutsche

December 4, 2018/in Alice's Featured Artist /by Cathleen

Featured Artist: December – January 2019

Catherine Gutsche is an Ottawa abstract / mixed media artist and graphic designer with paintings in private collections in Canada, the United States and Europe. She studied Fine Art at York University in Toronto, Canada, earning an Honours Bachelor of Fine Art degree with a major in graphic design. She worked for several years as a graphic designer in the vibrant downtown Toronto arts market.

Since moving to Ottawa Catherine has returned to her beloved roots in painting, enjoying again an intimate relationship with colour, texture and pattern. Non representational abstract art is Catherine’s passion.

Travel has always played an important role in Catherine’s life, starting at the age of 16 with a trip to China during the period of Mao Tse-tung. China showed Catherine the importance of pattern. She was inspired by the Chinese ability to manipulate designs and colors to form intricate repetitions that are flipped or rotated to create masterpieces often seen on walls, floors, ceilings and household objects. Exposure to the capitals of Europe gave her an appreciation for the masters in all their glory – size, colour and textures – none of which translate in flat books that fit on coffee tables. But it was in Australia that she gained a feel for the impact of colour where Uluru (Ayers Rock) changed from earthy reds to silvery-greys, with streaks of charcoal black algae. Nowhere else in the world are there colours that extend as far as the eye can see.

Catherine brings all these experiences into her paintings, combining textiles, found items and paint, and finally allowing her joy of colour to spill onto every canvas she works on. To see examples of Catherine’s artwork please visit: http://www.catherinegutsche.com/

Deborah Guthrie

September 6, 2018/in Alice's Featured Artist /by Cathleen

Art for September and October, 2018.

Artist Statement:

Deborah Guthrie has an artful life. Ideas and inspiration are her constant companions. As a graduate in Visual and Creative Arts from St. Lawrence College, Kingston Campus along with the daily learning curve Deborah is comfortable with her ideas and inspiration and how they allow for the exploration that she loves. A member of five art groups, she enjoys all the opportunities they provide through both juried and non-juried shows and has received a number of awards over the years.

Deborah paints; works in many areas of mixed media and has recently returned to her love of fabric. She has been creating painterly garments taking the paint off the canvas and into the street as wearable art. She looks forward to where all this will lead her both in her painting and her other artistic endeavours. As always it is a positive journey with a destination unknown and that suits Deborah just fine.

debbiesg@hotmail.com

613 831 4286

https://www.facebook.com/ThousandsOfThings

Maciek Peter Kozlowski

July 6, 2018/in Alice's Featured Artist /by Cathleen

Art for July and August 2018.

Artist Statement:

Bringing You Joy through Art
The aim of the works is to evoke a new set of emotions and visions both in me and in the viewer. To produce a new sensation, like a new taste. To communicate ideas with visual language that touches the emotions directly first, before the intellectual familiar brain looks for recognizable patterns and familiar emotions.
The newness of the thought and idea about the subject is more important than the physical representation of the subject. Ideally it needs to be original, at least original to me. The idea takes over and governs representation. The idea must have meaning by deepening my understanding for me to give it studio time.
I do not imagine a scene, or see it from life, and then “reproduce” it. I am more interested in discovering what colour, line, shape, and form makes me experience.
I fight not to remain in one specific style or subject matter for long. I purposely only make short collections in a particular style and medium so I do not get too comfortable. This gives me an ever expanding range of materials to work with. Favourites are vintage components to make assembly pieces, structures and sculptures from wood, plaster, and metal, oil painting, acrylic painting, digital and hybrid sketches and compositions, video, and collage.
My art has become a synonym and an expression of my life state in all its harmonious contradictions.

Bio
Maciek Peter Kozlowski is a multi award winning international artist. His awards include Artist of the Year in the U.K . in 2017 at artistsinfo.co.uk
He has been producing art for 30 years.
His works are in numerous private collections in Europe, Japan, and U.S.A. and Canada.

Contact Info
Instagram: @maciekpeter
Ecommerce web site: www.maciekpeter.com
cel: 613.292.7512
email: maciekpeter@gmail.com

JOSÉE ROBILLARD

March 12, 2018/in Alice's Featured Artist /by Cathleen

Artist Statement:

March-April 2018

I am a printmaker and mixed-media artist living in Ottawa. I believe that the creative process in artistic self-expression offers a powerful and unique opportunity to promote growth, healing and transformation in and outside of one’s self. I am guided by an interest in the visual language of a thought or feeling, the generated image and its imminent potential for transformation. I investigate the power and vulnerability of a landscape, whether concrete or conceptual, the underlying energies and movements, and its affinity with the human experience. By means of experimentation, tactile techniques and layering, I have the opportunity to observe and explore the interaction of materials and the interplay of colour and form, subsequently creating texture and depth, and finding a balance between design and spiritual tone.
My current investigation in printmaking has unleashed newly discovered potential to assimilate my creativity and knowledge with my enthusiasm to succeed in producing new and unique printed art. The intent is to entice the viewer to consider what’s hidden within, between, and below the layers.
Intaglio is a printmaking process in which the design is cut, scratched, or etched into a printing surface of a copper, zinc, or aluminum plate. The ink is then rubbed into the incisions or grooves, the surface is wiped clean, and the paper is embossed into the incised lines with pressure from a roller press. Intaglio processes are the most versatile of printmaking methods, as they can produce a wide range of effects. Depending upon the colors and techniques used, the style of printing, the imagery is explored resulting in numerous yet distinct representations from one single intaglio plate.

Contact Information:

josee.robillard@gmail.com

(613) 791-1392

Roy Ketcheson

September 7, 2017/in Alice's Featured Artist /by Cathleen

September and October, 2017

Roy Ketcheson -Artist Statement:

In this current selection, Roy Ketcheson features everyday scenes from nature in a series of paintings. At times his work is a thoughtful rendition of a fleeting and quiet moment in nature and at other times his paintings invites the viewer to consider the relationship between humans and nature as in the beauty and destruction series. For many years, Roy has worked as visual art educator with a local school board and has, with his students, contributed to many community projects designed to beautify communal spaces. His work has been featured in the Ottawa Citizen, an educator magazine, buildings in the Ottawa area, and a Toronto billboard. As well his students have won many local, provincial, and national art contests.

Roy can be contacted at roy.ketcheson@ocsb.ca or by phone at 613-6924105 (home).

Rachelle Elie

July 10, 2017/in Alice's Featured Artist /by Cathleen

July and August, 2017

Rachelle Elie -Artist Statement:

Rachelle Elie has been a Toronto-based self-taught painter, clown and comedian for the last twenty years but moved to the Carp area in 2015. Her paintings are vibrant expressions of her inner landscapes, many of which are self-portraits of one sort or another. She uses bright colors and dramatic symbolism to express her vision and share her inner journey.

When approaching a blank canvas Rachelle allows the materials, colours and impulse to guide the painting. She observes the creative process without judgement and lets the message transpire. This creates a synergy of colour, shape and design, allowing the medium to speak memories, stories and truths through the canvas. This style has evolved over the years as Rachelle has painted, travelled and been exposed to different techniques and ideas.

As a young girl Rachelle visited Haiti, her father’s birthplace, and these early experiences along with ongoing exposure to Haitien art and culture have had a deep impact on her work. Further travel introduced Rachelle to the work of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. She later discovered Miro, Gaudi and Picasso in Barcelona, and the French Impressionists in Paris. These early visual art experiences impacted her relationship to color, design and painting.

As an emerging artist Rachelle spent three months painting in the tropical retreat of Fiji, with an associated visit to Australia. The rich culture and visual beauty of the Fijian people and islands, coupled with a tour of the the Kluge-Ruhe collection of Australian Aboriginal Art in Sydney left her deeply moved and further reinforced her own approach to painting. She noticed that the aboriginal artists worked from intuition, resulting in dynamic and expressive creations. This resonated with how she had been approaching her craft for years, not only in the visual arts but also in performance. Clown, comedy and theatre involve listening and following impulses. Rachelle’s integration of the originative process creates harmony within the creative urge.

In addition to her travels, meditation has been a significant influence on Rachelle’s art. As a young woman she began attending ten-day silent Vipassana retreats. Through self-observation, this type of “insight meditation” aims at uncluttering the mind and bringing inner peace to the meditator. The central figure in many of Rachelle’s paintings is a woman, eyes open or closed, in a contemplative stance. The shapes and details around the central face often represent mindful breath, a personal struggle, or an inner challenge. Rachelle’s years of acting training also involved inner search and self-reflection; ideas that often find their way into her drawings and paintings.

Recently Rachelle had the opportunity to turn that reflection outward; over three years she spent several months living and travelling in Kenya. While there Rachelle facilitated an eight-week course with thirteen HIV-positive artisans, teaching her own self-taught and process-based art. In 2009 she co-founded the Imani Artist Collective in Eldoret. All of the artists were living in deep poverty. Although none of the artisans had ever painted, when brought to a blank canvas all were creatively free, in a way very unlike artists in North America. The art produced through this process centred on self-reflection, truth-telling, honest impulsivity, and – ultimately – process over product. The Collective’s work is documented in a book entitled “Living Positively: Kenyan Artists Paint Their Truths.” Their art is on permanent exhibition at the Riley Mother-Baby Hospital in Kenya.

Upon returning from Africa Rachelle has embarked on a new series of paintings and drawings. Several pieces were completed in Kenya and some have been completed upon returning to Canada. Her work continues to deepen as she commits to her inner process. Rachelle’s work is in many businesses and private collections in Canada, US and Kenya.

Alice’s
Featured Artist

Catherine Gutsche

Deborah Guthrie

Maciek Peter Kozlowski

JOSÉE ROBILLARD

Roy Ketcheson

Rachelle Elie

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