DeviantART's 1st Art Exhibition: Subtle Bodies

At DeviantART, everyone is their own professional with the ability to exhibit their works in a personal gallery for the public to view and leave comments. Often in the DA NEWS, we see articles that present a specific genre, or a theme. In many, there are deviations selectively chosen such as 'Landscape Photography', or 'The Best Digital Works'. Given that freedom, I have decided to take a more professional approach to a NEWS Feature, and offer the 'application to exhibit', where choices are juried into a cohesive exhibition here at DeviantART.

As is often the case in the 'real' art world, artists have a much greater form of competition when applying to juried shows, grants and bursaries, and even placement within an art school. These artists have grown to understand that for an art career, they must work hard - as though it were a job. Because of this professional approach,
I have asked artists to submit not only their work, but also an 'ART RESUME' that states their artistic background,
which often includes education, a list of exhibitions, and sometimes awards or publications in magazines. Not only was the high quality of work taken into consideration, but how professional the artist presented themselves as well.

I have put together 6 of the best submissions for this 1st DeviantART Exhibition into a cohesive show: Subtle Bodies.
Below each of the artist's works is a short biography describing their accomplishments at their attempts in becoming
a professional artist, as many of us know isn't the easiest career path.


DeviantART presents the work of six international artists with a penchant for the human figure and the environments
that they inhabit, whether they are solidified structures or ethereal atmospheres that rely more on the metaphorical
than the concrete. These spaces are not only unified in their wide treatment of the figure, but that they
are painted with a sensitivity that enables their works to be convincing contemporary works of art with immediate relationships between painting and audience.



SUBTLE BODIES





Laura Findlay (~paintedangel) is currently obtaining her BFA at Concordia University in Montreal. Not only was she included in October's Juxtapoz Magazine, but has exhibited from Victoria BC, to Montreal, and has worked as a teaching assistant in Photography.

Her paintings offer the artist a therapeutic window which is often meditative, and necessary to her sanity as a painter. Findlay often uses meat as an 'endlessly fascinating subject', and creates works with dizzying colour and texture, as though the process is just as crucial to the end-product as the subject itself, and often acts as puzzles the artist must manipulate her way though.

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Kain White (*kainwhite1) states: "In the spirit of traditions now gone from our minds but not from our hearts, my work is a personal journey of seeking to remember what used to be commonplace." With the steady, yet unstoppable speeding up of our lives, Kain finds painting and drawing to be a way for people to commune, while allowing each individual to continue a fulfilling solo journey.

White has exhibited at the Bendigo Art Gallery; Daylesford Pantechnicon Gallery, Castlemaine Art gallery and Melbourne Fitzroy Gallery in Australia. He was awarded Bendigo’s RAW Arts prize in 2005, and also had an entry in the 2007 James Farrell self-portrait prize. Kain also has permanent representation at the Pantechnicon in Daylesford.

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:devamycollaranderson: received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MA (Humanities) from Wright State University in Ohio. Included in the long list of professional exhibitions, Anderson has shown paintings at C-Pop Gallery, Detroit; The Hive Gallery in LA; Young Blood Gallery in Atlanta; and Museum de Giger in Switzerland in a show titled 'Flights of Imagination'. The list is truly too long to print, as it includes international awards and accomplishments.

Anderson lives in a "world-within-a-world"; where patterned rugs lay overlapping on the floor, costumed mannequins observe from the corner, brocade fabrics hang from her easel, plastic-encased bugs refract light in the window, and magazine clippings overlap on striped walls. The juxtaposition of objects and images helps me create new narratives or conjure the memories and dreams that inspire my paintings. The images capture this juxtaposition by appearing simultaneously vintage, yet modern, and beautiful, yet disturbing. I focus on themes of obsession, contrast, containment and control. Her recent work includes small terrariums that also become portable mini-studios allowing her to bring the comfort of her studio wherever she ventures.

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Johanna K. Robinson ~nicodeema received her BFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in affiliation with Tuft’s University Boston, MA. She was recently awarded an Artist's Grant and Residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Recent exhibitions of her works include: Suitcase&Street Gallery, Berlin Germany; RHYS Gallery in Boston; at Niagara in NY; and the Hackett Arts Center in NY. She has also worked as a gallery assistant, framer, and fine arts painter for Novo Studios in Carmel, NY.

Robinson states: "I attempt to turn the grotesque into the beautiful. Through observing the immediacy of decay on the surface of the fish, and then translating the flesh, scales, and disease into oil paint, I am able to change the nature of the image. I like to play around with color, using colors that would normally be associated with feelings of calmness or happiness, which pose a contradiction to the sometimes violent imagery. The viewer is both compelled to study the surface closer, and simultaneously look away."

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Graeme Balchin ~graemeb recently exhibited work in 'Ode to Nature: Grand & Demure', a group exhibition at The Palm House Gallery in Sydney. Among her highest awards, the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize stands out the most. She was a finalist for the $100,000 portrait-prize which is currently touring Australia. She was published over 10 times in 2005 alone by press and radio stations, and has had coverage throughout 2006 and 2007 with recent shows.

The artist states: "We live in a time where technology has advanced to the point we no longer need a camera to make a great image. For the commercial world, technology is the future, for it has embraced the new mediums with open arms. With this in mind, I am constantly amazed with the amount of artists who still use traditional mediums and methods simply because they wish too. I am one of those people, who has a compelling desire that borders on an insane obsession, to paint and draw. Painting has been and still is a successful way of recording history, but I feel it is also an integral part of human endeavour; the need to achieve excellence in creation."

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Meghan Chalmers-McDonald *Frost-indri received her art education from Houghton College, NY. She has exhibited at numerous locations throughout Rhode Island and New York, and has work in private and public collections throughout the US.

Chalmers-McDonald's work centers on the introspective - on the individuals contemplation of the world and their relationship to it. The natural environment also take precedence, and the relationship between humanity and the sea has long been an accepted symbol of the relationships between people. How we seek to exploit, protect, clean up, exalt in, fear, explore, ignore, expose and hide our refuse in often reflects upon our relationships with each other.

With ceramics, the artist is able to communicate almost subconsciously, bringing in that sense of connectedness by invoking memories and thoughts through texture, form, color and weight. I want people to pick up the works, respond to them, to see a memory or pull out a thought or response buried deep within him or herself.






The end of this exhibition marks the newest Call for Submissions: ABSTRACTION. As for the Subtle Bodies exhibition,
I ask you to note me a cohesive collection of 4-6 works from your gallery, an Art Resume that lists your artistic
endeavors, accomplishments, awards, or publications, as well as a short statement about the work so that I am able
to understand on a greater depth what your work means.

Thank you to everyone who submitted work for this exhibition - if your work was not chosen,
it did not mean your work or accomplishments were not good enough for Subtle Bodies, but that
it did not quite fit into the mandate of the online exhibition. There will be more, I promise.



Get your submissions together ABSTRACT ARTISTS!
Deadline for submission is January 15th, 2008.