Paul Casale, American Realist
Exhibit Runs from February 2-27, 2008
Opening Receptions on Saturday, Feb. 2, & Sunday, Feb 3, 3-5 p.m.
 
From his paintings, you can see that Paul Casale was a City kid. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, and never lost his love of the colorful people and street scenes he grew up with. His early high school training in Manhattan exposed him to teachers like Social Realists Irwin Greenberg and Max Ginsburg, a Realist with a narrative slant. As a result, Casale’s work always portrays the specific time and place lived in by the people in his paintings. But Casale has no political agenda. Instead, he’s endlessly fascinated by the juxtaposition of figures within their particular environment. His goal is to capture the character of a place and the people in it, whether city or countryside. He’ll use whatever medium and style that will capture this interplay best. The result? You’ll feel yourself entering the scenes he portrays, as though you’re looking through doorways and window frames rather than picture frames.
Casale is a graduate of the High School of Art and Design (Manhattan) and Pratt Institute (Brooklyn). He has won many awards for both his fine art and illustration. He is a member of the prestigious Society of Illustrators in NYC, and his fine art paintings are held in both corporate and private collections.
His latest exhibit, “Paul Casale, American Realist,” runs from February 2-27 at The Guild of Creative Arts. The works on display range from street scenes of Venice and Rome to the beaches of Coney Island and the Jersey Shore. The meet-the-artist reception for this show is Sunday, February 3rd, from 3-5 p.m. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, noon to 4:30 p.m., or until 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays. There is no admission charge. For more information, contact the Guild at 732-774-1441.
Mike Menendez “The World Through My Lens”
Mini-Show from February 2-27, 2008
Mike Menendez’s photo images will lift your spirit. His eye for composition, detail, and color gives his images depth and warmth as you can see from these examples of his work.
 
|
|
Fifteenth Annual Juried Show
October 2007
Award and Achievement Winners
________________________________________________________
First Prize Winners
Muriel Rogers (Colts Neck) -1st prize in Painting. Rogers, who paints in both watercolor and oil, loves color, blending and mingling pigment to capture the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere in a realistic-impressionistic style. Her prize-winning watercolor, “Home Town Creations,” tells of a day in the life of a Colts Neck craftsman, who worked every day outside his workshop with his dog, building and painting birdhouses and outdoor benches, and displaying them outdoors for all to see. In this painting, there is so much content, but it’s beautifully simplified, with the detail in the foreground playing off of the softness in the background.
Buren Gilpin (Wall) - 1st prize in Sculpture. Gilpin is a New Jersey artist who uses rare and exotic woods to create decorative and functional art. Growing up in rural Kentucky, he developed a love of wood early in life. His award winning piece was inspired by Aztec designs. The scrafitto-like pattern on its rim gives the impression of flowing water. Hence its name, “Aztec Rivers.” The asymmetrical design contrasts beautifully with the simple but rhythmic patterning of the bowl’s rim.
Debora Santiago Bruno (Atlantic Highlands) - 1st prize in Photography. As a photographer, Bruno works with a wide variety of subjects, including portraits, still lifes, and “scenes” using a variety of photographic and computer-enhanced techniques. She especially loves capturing the quality of light and play of color in her landscapes and architectural subjects. The color saturation and print quality of her award winning piece, “Perception No. 2,” is wonderful, but what sets it apart is that it is telling a story: encapsulating a commemorative mural of Frank Rizzo, former Mayor of Philadelphia, in its setting in the Old Italian section of Philadelphia.
Achievement Winners
Valeriy Dyshlov (Morganville) - Achievement in Painting. Dyshlov, born in Siberia, has been painting since he was 5 years old. A student of Vitaly Lenchin, Dyshlov taught graphics at the Art School in Kharkov, Ukraine, before coming to the U.S. in 1995. Many of his art works hang in Ukrainian museums as well as in private collections in Western Europe, Russia, Canada, and the US. His award-winning work, “Lady with Mask,” is part of Dyshlov’s “Performance” series of oil paintings. It is set in the warm color palette with reds and golds in the tradition of old masters. As seen in this work, Dyshlov uses old masters’ techniques and classical art forms and images. However he transforms them to reflect his own, contemporary world of images and actions, all in exquisite detail: a little bit fantastic, a little bit romantic. It is a fascinating work, outstanding in all respects.
Bernice Gaines (Manalapan) - Achievement in Painting. Gaines began painting thirty years ago and fell in love with the challenge of watercolor. Today, she paints realism in an impressionistic way, driving her to capture subjects en plein air. Gaines sometimes enjoys doing still life painting “with twist.” Her favorite “twist” is painting onions in all sizes and colors. She also enjoys eating them. When this year’s judge saw her painting, he exclaimed “Now that’s an onion!” You have to see this one in person to understand his reaction!
Anthony Migliaccio (Long Branch) - Achievement in Painting. Migliaccio is a self-taught artist with a special gift for capturing the mood of a scene. His award winning painting, “Trail to the Water,” is a view of the bridge to Sandy Hook. It was painted en plein air, a challenging technique that requires the artist to capture the essence of a scene while painting on location. When painting en plein air, Migliaccio’s first goal is to make the color, texture, value and composition work together. Then for him it’s all about color. This is a very painterly piece, with wonderful use of an expanded foreground.
Douglas McIlvain (Tinton Falls) – Achievement in Sculpture. McIlvain is a well-known area artisan and former Georgian Court College professor. He recently developed a series of tree trunks that are carved into creations that are part tree and part flower. His award winning sculpture, “Flora III,” is part of that series. This is a sculpture that is effective from every angle. Working across the grain, as in this piece, is very challenging, but McIlvain pulls it off with aplomb.
Deborah Candelora (Colts Neck) – Achievement in Sculpture. Deborah is a self-taught sculptor. Her formal training was in engineering, and her sculptures are a fusion of art, mathematics, and human psychology. She uses a variety of materials and is always trying something new, but her passion is carving a work from a single solid block of clay. “Musical Wave” is a fluid, curvilinear form inspired by the rhythms and motions of the natural world. “Three Pi Swan,” her second award winner, is a combination of organic and geometric shapes, which offers an unexpected, hidden element and is intriguing to view from all angles. They are dynamic and intriguing designs.
 
Martin Honig (Somerset) - Achievement in Photography. Honig learned photography when he served in the Army in Germany in 1954. Nature is his favorite subject. His award-winning work, “Trees in Fog and Snow,” is a fantastic composition, with great simplicity and wonderful softness in the trees. Honig tells us it was taken on Route 1 in North Brunswick on the property of the Johnson and Johnson corporation. The fog and snow isolated the trees, making them stand out from what is normally a distracting background. Although it appears to be black and white, the shot was taken on color transparency film using a tripod mounted Olympus OM-1 camera with a 28 mm wide angle lens. Honig used a 15 second exposure with an f16 exposure and ISO of 64.
William Imhof (Middletown) - Achievement Photography. Imhof is a photographer and freelance writer. His photography is varied, ranging from broad landscapes and scenics to unusual close-ups, and abstract images of everyday items. His images have raised many thousands of dollars for charitable causes. Imhof’s award winning image, “Mo’s Margarita Bar,” is part of a growing number of city scenes which Imhof has been working on. Imhof says, “Mo’s Margarita Bar cries out with the vibrancy of New York’s upper East side. The almost garish colors, the advertising and the lights all speak of the vibrant night life of New York.”.
Peter Cohen (Toms River) - Achievement in Photography. Cohen’s award winning image, Puddle of Mind-10, initially strikes the viewer as an arresting abstract painting. But it is a photograph that, in the words of the juried show judge, “successfully pushes the envelope for digital photography.” Cohen says of his work, “All of my photo art begins as an inspiration traveling through the Exploding Eye, which exists in the infinite space between my camera and my imagination. It harnesses the flow of light and dark, and focuses a river of color through a prism of possibility.”
Elizabeth Ryan (Wall) - the Mitchell Award for Acrylic. Ryan is a long-time resident of the Jersey Shore and has been painting all her life. She focuses on large panoramic acrylic and oil landscapes of Ireland. Her paintings offer long sweeping views that are both moving and palpable. Ryan wants the viewer to experience the same calm she feels while painting, and then be inspired and moved to a peaceful place. Her award winning painting, “Donegal Dusk,” achieves this goal, creating beautiful atmosphere through her soft edges and diffused light. She painted the vast and misty sky with broad strokes and a warm palette to convey the serenity she finds in the Irish landscape. Her soft edges and diffused light establish movement and atmospheric perspective.
Donna J. Roettger (Brick) - Kojola Memorial Award for Realism. Roettger is drawn to the magical quality of watercolor’s transparency and loves to use it to capture the equally magical way that light bounces off objects in nature. Roettger says, “Sunlight shows no discrimination. It strikes indiscriminately and dispassionately, yet creates magic at the same time.” Her award winning painting, “Hidden Treasure,” uses that light to tells a very personal story of a terminally ill friend playing in the sand with Roettger’s daughter. While painting the scene, a transitory patch of sunlight made the image of a candle between the two figures, as though the older woman, near the end of her life, was passing on the light to the young girl, at the beginning of her life. This became the metaphor for the passing on of “treasure,” whatever it may be, between one generation and the next. This is a painting whose hidden message creates an immediate emotional response in the viewer.
Frank Colaguori (Long Branch) - the AAPL Award for Traditional Realism. With a background in technical illustration, Colaguori loves the challenge of using watercolor to portray detailed images that look convincingly realistic. Colaguori’s award-winning painting, “Decoy,” achieves that goal with beautiful simplicity. Colaguori says he was fascinated by the color, peeling and cracked veneer of an abandoned door, and it’s this background that sets off the two ceramic jugs and makes the piece special.
Jean Hutter (Lakewood) - Friedlander Award for Abstract. Hutter has been making art in some form for as long as she can remember. The focus of her current work is on the qualities of line, shape, color and texture. She wants to invite the viewer to take a closer look beyond the surface, to find what is hidden in the many layers of watermedia that evokes a sense of mystery and illusion. Her award winning painting, “What Zyg Taught Me,” is a tribute to one of her teachers, Zygmund Jankowski, of Gloucester, MA, who taught her about painting abstract space. In her abstracts, she paints mostly shallow space, unlike a landscape where you have perspective and middle to deep space. To create this particular painting, she used a piece of watercolor paper that her teacher had sketched on to illustrate the concept of shallow space. Hutter covered this with a thin wash of gesso to preserve the pencil lines and used this as the inspiration for her abstract painting.
|
