3rd Annual Colorful Abstractions Art Exhibition Monthly Winners

Through exploration of texture, depth and color, Shelley creates art that is at once transcendental and yet almost tangible. Her work encourages revolutionary thinking, contemplation of humanity and realization of how connections both physical and spiritual manifest our identity. Her ingenuity is inspired by the fluidity of the Post-Impressionist Romanticism Movement, the dream like quality of Surrealism and all music that evokes passion and intense emotion, resulting in a diverse visual cadence that ranges from the subtle nuances of Fredrick Chopin to the intensity of Disturbs rendition of The Sound of Silence.

Shelley works with a wide variety of textual mediums and different types of paints including; oil, acrylic and watercolor dyes on canvas or artist panel with a scale ranging from 8 ’x 8” to 6’ x 4’. Many of her pieces are covered in epoxy resin. Shelley is an emerging Seattle area artist who studied Art History at the University of Washington, volunteered as an art docent for the Issaquah School District, raised two beautiful children and currently resides in Issaquah with her life partner Eric Lennier.

Shelley lives a multifaceted life with exuberant passion for health and her family that spans five generations. She is an adventurer who has traveled to many interesting places including Brazil, Argentina and Turkey. She loves the water and is an avid wake surfer who enjoys the irony of being a young grandmother who is still carded on occasion.

Most days you can find Shelley doing what she loves, flinging paint, at her spacious art studio in Bellevue, Washington where Eric has designed a dust free clean room for resin application, gallery walls and a comfy lounge area.

Please visit Shelley’s website if you are interested in purchasing this award winning piece or to see more of her work.

Kathy B. Shapiro is an award winning photographer specializing in modern, abstract, color photography. She seeks to create abstract art through manipulation of her lens and camera settings. Kathy’s focus is on lights and colors. She likes to capture the extraordinary in the ordinary! As an experimental photographer, Kathy uses different cameras and adjusts her settings to obtain her finish pieces. She starts experimenting and when she finds a camera or setting and angle that gives her a desired output, she goes back and recreates, adjusts or manipulates further. She focuses on color & movement and is often surprised with her unique images. Kathy often uses minimal post processing techniques like hue adjustments. Thus, her abstract work can be viewed as “engineered serendipity”.

Kathy’s work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States including New York, Vermont, Florida, Rhode Island and throughout California. In addition, Kathy has been a juried artist in the Beverly Hills artShow, Pasadena ArtWalk, Los Angeles Artist Association and the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art. Private collectors include Hoag Hospital, Irvine and Richard Landry, AIA.

Please visit Kathy’s website if you are interested in purchasing this award-winning piece or if you would like to see more of her work.

Abreesha Jones was raised in Moreno Valley, California. The Southern California native first discovered her artistic niche while in high school, where she discovered her natural talent for painting. Abreesha went on to study various aspects of form, space and color manipulation during her attendance of the distinguished Otis College of Art + Design, based on the west coast of Los Angeles. Abreesha later began painting full time while she managed her self-titled online art gallery and attending various art circuits in Atlanta, GA. Reluctantly, Abreesha found her passion for art would have to be put on hold as she focused on family and furthering her education. Now, five years later, Abreesha is excited to have received her BS degree from UC Riverside while revamping her online art gallery. Seeking to be an overall motivator to those she encounters, Abreesha is currently expanding her education by pursuing a Master’s Degree from Cal State University Northridge in order to fulfill her dream of becoming an art therapist.

Abreesha has proven her ability to reach goals by simply choosing that it is never too late to take one more step towards winning. She hopes that her artwork will one day inspire those who face, what may seem like, defeating moments to push forward and appreciate such moments as opportunities for growth. She lives by her saying, “True happiness goes beyond good circumstances, live no matter what the day brings”.

To purchase this award winning painting or to see more work from Abreesha please visit her website.

As a young woman, Nancy pursued several different mediums, including but not limited to, batik and weaving. While both allowed her to explore her love of color, design and texture, there was still something missing. After taking time off to raise a family, she began her study of photography at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. There she was able to hone her skills in the technical aspects of photography, while focusing on the use of color and light in her photographs. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Special Education, with an emphasis on behavioral theory and a master’s degree in Human Resource Development. She has utilized her educational background to teach both children and adults various methods in art.

In the past several years, she has participated in many on line exhibitions, Contemporary Art Gallery On line and Fusion Art, winning best of show on both websites. She has also exhibited in several brick and mortar shows, Black Box Gallery, Palm Beach Photographic Center and Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA). She recently won second place in the abstract category in an international juried show at the FMoPA, where the piece remains part of their permanent collection.

To see more of Nancy’s work, please visit her website.

Carl Owen has had many roles in life. He has earned an A.A. degree in applied arts, a B.A. in psychology and an M.A. in correctional counseling. He has received several awards of achievement throughout his life careers. Among all the awards received while employed, he considers the award for writing and directing an administrative bulletin for the California Department of Corrections that actually saved lives and a New Mexico Corrections Department policy and procedure that brought the Mental Health Bureau treatment practices into policy compliance within 90 days as the most important ones.

Carl has been a marine, a steel worker, a correctional officer, lieutenant, counselor, court liaison officer, drug treatment program designer/director, senior trainer at UCSD, adjunct professor and an Assistant Mental Health Bureau Chief for the New Mexico Corrections Department. Given the above-mentioned life roles, Carl Owen is an artist. He has always been an artist and shall always be an artist.

His first painting was done on Christmas day after receiving his first art set at age four. His last painting has not yet been produced. Carl’s artistic approach considers that there is a knife’s edge between order and chaos, between style and ability, between realism and abstraction. He believes there is something deep inside that instinctively knows, appreciates and desires ownership of objects of beauty. After all words, excuses and rationale vanish, it is the work of art alone commanding the viewer to accept or reject it. His efforts are aimed at making a work of art that commands attention. This is his life’s quest.

Please visit Carl’s website if you are interested in purchasing this award winning piece or if you would like to see more of his work.

Michelle is an award-winning photographers and artist from the Omaha area. As an artist, she works with graphics and photos to create multidimensional contemporary and traditional works of art. Her subject matter is very diverse and she loves to help clients design custom fine art pieces that personally represent them.

Born in Fargo, ND and now living in Elkhorn NE, Michelle was the first born twin to a couple of “hobby” artists. Growing up watching her parents paint, Michelle soon became caught up in the world of creativity. However, having practical parents they suggested a more reliable form of income in a career choice. Michelle attended and graduated from North West Technical College with a degree in Commercial art. She was immediately hired as a graphic artist and soon after gaining enough experience, opened and operated her own graphics art business in Fargo, ND.

In 1998, Michelle’s husband was transferred and Michelle sold her business to follow her husband’s career and to grow their family. Seven moves and four children later, the Woitzels landed in Omaha. Once settled in Omaha, Michelle started taking pictures and soon started her photography business, Woitzel Photography. Still not satisfied with the level of creativity in her daily life, Michelle started combining her education in graphics with her love of painting and her skill in Photography to create multi-media digital works of art. Michelle is now limiting her time spent on portrait photography so she can focus on her passion for creating unique pieces of custom art.

To purchase this award-winning piece or to see more of Michelle’s work, please visit her website.

Born in 1949 in Logan, Kansas, Eldon currently resides in Okemos, Michigan. He was always interested in art, having won a county-wide poster drawing contest (Boulder County, Colorado) when he was eleven years old. However the tenor of the post-Sputnik era lead him into a technical career. He was a research engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, CA (1982 – 1985) and was a Professor of Materials Science at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI from 1985 until he retired in 2014.

However, ten years ago, an inner call led him to pursue oil painting. He is largely self-taught although he also has taken several workshops/short courses from nationally known artists. He paints both landscapes and abstracts, using oils and acrylics. For all of his paintings, Eldon likes to explore color, including both value and hue. Although he tends to emphasize bright colors, he also examines the interplay of lighter values with more intense values. He also likes to experiment the interaction of hue and value with form.

In January 2017 Eldon won second place in the juried art competition “Winter Abstract Show” at the Michigan Institute for Contemporary Art in Lansing. Also in 2017, Eldon has had paintings included in three international juried online art exhibitions including the Colors of Humanity Art Gallery’s show “Red”, Light Space and Time’s Abstract show and the Fusion Art Exhibit entitled “Colors”. In August 2017, Eldon had work included in the Mildred M. Cox Art Gallery’s show “Light and Shadow” at William Woods University, Fulton Missouri and in October 2017, Eldon won first place for a landscape painting at Wheaton’s Art Gallery, Mason Michigan.

To purchase this award-winning piece or to see more of Eldon’s artwork please email him directly.

Originally from Perth, Australia artist Lee Musgrave studied in Los Angeles primarily with Hans Burkhardt and Fritz Faiss. Hans was studio partner of Arshile Gorky and Mark Tobey. Fritz studied at the Bauhaus with Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. “I am deeply indebted to Hans and Fritz for their unfailing encouragement and enduring friendship,” stated Musgrave.

Lee Musgrave is the recipient of an American National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and his work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He specializes in abstract painting and photography. His paintings were recently featured in a major exhibit at the Museum of Northwest Art and he received several international awards for his abstract photography which was featured in the 2016 Berlin Foto Biennale, Berlin, Germany and in the 2017 9th Pollux Awards Exhibition, Barcelona, Spain. Lee lives in White Salmon, Washington.

To purchase this award winning piece or to see more of Lee’s work please visit his website.

“My mission as a painter is to bring a life’s experience with Rock music on canvas. The music, the lyrics, the spirit, the heart, and the soul. The power, the light, the fire, the darkness as well. Since I was a child, I was always painting. In the beginning, I tried to capture what I saw – a landscape, a face, a building, whatever. I tried to master every detail. Never achieved it. Then I realized it’s not about creating a perfect copy. It’s about getting the essence. For me, everything is connected to Rock music, nature, spirituality. It is inside my heart, inside my soul, and my works of art reflect my soul and my experience of life. Over the years, my style changed, my technique changed, but my passion never changed.”

Crow is the founder, vocalist and songwriter of the Heavy Metal Band Medusa’s Child (1999-present). Since 1999, the band has reached the Top of the music charts in North Europe with several hit songs and have been touring around Europe and Asia for years.

Their 2014 album also won a Gold award in England. However, the stages of this world were never enough for Crow. So he turned his microphone into a brush to create mystic sounds on canvas. But it is not enough to just look at his paintings, you have to listen to them.

For Crow, as an artist, writing songs, performing onstage or painting is a way to give back to the people, to give a piece of himself to the people who influenced my life. Be it in a positive or negative way. It takes both to make you grow, as an artist, and as a Person.

To purchase this award-winning piece or to see more of Crow’s work, please visit his website.

Vasile Ghiuta was born in Bucharest, Romania and currently lives in Toronto, Canada. He is a self-taught artist, and his work is inspired by human feelings, thoughts and emotions. Visiting museums in Paris, NY, Boston, Brussels, LA, and Rome he saw the importance of the details in artwork and the perfection that our great art masters aim to. Visiting the ancient cities of Jerusalem, Rome, Amman, and Petra, he realized how fragile humanity is and how eager humans are to express their feeling through the arts. From the colorful layers of the stone at Petra, he learned to appreciate the simplicity and the perfection that nature shows us.

He believes that life is a sum of various experiences that carry a large amount of energy, which could be transposed through the power of color and specific painting techniques into real stories. His acrylic on canvas works aim to express this concept, inviting the viewer to take a step forward into the world of self-discovery and meditation. Each of his canvases tells a story, and every story needs to be shared.

To paint about life is more like telling a story: not using words, but colors. It is an invitation to meditation, soul-searching and revelation. It is about sharing your experience/vision with others. Whether is about joy or sadness, if it is about happiness or dismay, his work is for sure an expression of his vision that life is an amazing journey and only the human beings can make it unforgettable. It is all about life experiences, emotions and evolution. It is all about feelings, thoughts and vibes translated into a language that uses colors to express an idea, to convey a message to humankind.

To purchase this award winning piece or to see more of Vasile’s work, please visit his website.

Alan McDonald has always enjoyed nature, photographs and photography. Growing up in rural New Brunswick in the 1960’s, one of his favorite things to do was to look at the great photographs in his collection of National Geographic magazines. Self-taught, photography had been a casual pastime throughout his whole life. In recent years, however, he has had a unique opportunity to photograph rare and wonderful things almost daily in the waters of Canada’s world famous Bay of Fundy on his 60’ whale watching yacht and has logged over 5000 hours on the Bay of Fundy in all imaginable conditions of weather, light conditions and subject matter – Camera in one hand, binoculars in the other. This has provided him with an unequalled opportunity to photograph many rare and wonderful creatures and natural scenes of the Bay of Fundy, much of which can offer spectacular results just in the subject matter itself – a rare right whale, birds only seen at sea or a mother whale and her calf.

About 5 years ago McDonald started taking abstract images of up-close reflections on water which represented a new direction for him. A definite deviation from the whales and seabirds he had been known for. His abstract and close-up images of the ever changing reflections on the waters of the Bay of Fundy artfully capture the complex, ever-evolving world of each ripple and wave and takes the viewer on an intimate and elemental visual journey that both awakens the mind and inspires the soul as they explore the hidden life of water at a micro-level that few, if any, have ever seen or considered.

The driving force behind this new direction for him….in his own words……”plain and simple, it’s all about the beauty!”

To purchase this award-winning piece or to see more of Allan’s work, please visit his website.

Kelly Quinn is a Florida wildlife painter and photographer. She is a recent graduate of the Fine Arts program at the University of Florida and now serves as the Artist in Residence at The Florida Aquarium with the goal of connecting the sciences and the arts to inspire conservation in our community. Her mission is to paint stories that connect people to the environments we call home and to the wildlife we share our lives with. Each piece aims to serve nature by revealing the identity of an animal and their purpose in a particular habitat to inspire curiosity and understanding in all who have the opportunity to view one of her vibrant artworks.

Kelly’s inspiration to become an artist came from the experiences she had with wildlife while hiking and kayaking the 6,000 acres of Kissimmee conservation land she grew up exploring. She describes Florida as a paradise, and after graduating from college she realized there were too many unaddressed environmental problems in this state to stay quiet, so she began painting the stories of the wildlife who sparked her imagination and passion for nature.

Kelly uses GOLDEN heavy body acrylics on canvas with heavy gel medium to create depth and texture. Color is one of the key elements in all of her artworks, and she uses it to show an animal’s personality, their “true colors” so to speak as well as create emphasis on light and movement.

Kelly has been featured in The Tampa Bay Business Journal, Sun & Surf Magazine, Connect Magazine, and on Fox 13 News. Her artwork has been shown in the St. Augustine Art Association Gallery, The Florida Aquarium, Ocean Art Gallery and the Amalie Arena in Tampa Bay. Get connected and follow the journey at @Kellyofthewild or www.kellyofthewild.com.

To purchase this award winning piece or to see more of Kelly’s work, please visit her website.

My passion for photography began when my parents bought me a Minolta 35mm camera for high school graduation. I worked a summer job to save money for some cheap darkroom equipment and started developing my own work. That was the beginning of my love for black and white. I began developing my creative side by shooting everyday landscapes and streetscapes in urban Brooklyn, NY and Long Island.

After my 2nd year of college in 1979, I was lucky enough to have my hobby morph into my full time employment when a local editor from “Look” magazine took notice of my work after a chance encounter at a family dinner. After several years of apprenticeship in my early twenties, I formed John McManus photography to focus primarily on architectural/interior photography. For the past 35 years as an assignment photographer, I have thrived in the Savannah/Hilton head area as I’ve managed to develop relationships with architects, builders, designers, magazines and resorts. Throughout the rigors of my many years of contract architectural photography work, I found solace and refuge in the flowing landscapes of coastal Georgia and South Carolina.

My “seascapes of the low country” fine art collection offers a glimpse at my peaceful commune with nature, which I feel is somewhat enabled through my lens. My travels have brought me to Ecuador where I’ve discovered my passion for “streetscapes, abstracts, the highlands and its people. I try to find and photograph the less obvious and I am intentionally vague about the image locations in my photos in a hope for others to seek their own inspiration in places off the beaten path.

To purchase this award winning piece or to see more of John’s work, please visit his website.