3rd Leaves & Petals Art Exhibition Monthly Winners

Best in Show (Traditional)
David Hoque

I am an American artist borne in Monterey, California. I am primarily self taught with some formal advanced art training. I have a BS degree from Excelsior College, Albany NY. I specialize in watercolor and colored pencil art pieces. I am a professional member of the International Guild of Realism and the Colored Pencil Society of America and have had art pieces juried into their prestigious annual international exhibitions every year that I have been a member. I have also been published regularly in Ann Kullberg’s “Color” Magazine and her annual “CP Treasures Vol. III and IV”, as well as “Colored Pencil Magazine”.

My primary subjects are still life and some human and animal portraiture. I have a great interest in realism and creating my pieces with great contrasts between light and dark color and tones. I enjoy conveying its balance and how these visionary qualities complement each other. I draw and paint with a heavy hand but with rich, deep color pallets. My subjects are balanced and precise and I tend to favor reflection, fire and objects that are simple but interesting. Its important for me to create pieces from the world around us that the observer can draw dramatic perspective and positive emotion from and walk away inspired by the experience.

Please visit David’s website if you are interested in seeing more of his work.

Best in Show
(Digital & Photography)
Ulrike Unterbruner

Ulrike Unterbruner (born in 1953) is an Austrian amateur photographer. She is a member of the Salzburger Fotoklub/Austria (http://www.salzburger-fotoklub.com ). Seeing the world through a camera has always fascinated her. At the age of 10, she got her first camera from her father, an amateur photographer, and was sometimes allowed to watch him in his darkroom. She can still remember the magic moment when the white paper suddenly turned into a photo. So photography also became one of her hobbies. But with the amount of new possibilities offered by the digital photography and Adobe Photoshop, the hobby became a passion. She finds her favorite motives in nature – water, from the raindrop to the wave, flowers and trees, animals, landscapes… Not only portraying them with her Olympus E-M10 camera in an aesthetic way, but to capture their spirit is challenge and enjoyment for her.

Please email Ulrike directly if you are interested in purchasing this award-winning piece or if you would like to see more of her work.

2nd Place (Traditional)
Elizabeth Burin

Elizabeth Burin is an independent artist working in Baltimore. Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Switzerland, she worked as a museum curator and medieval art historian before turning to studio art. She holds a Certificate of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is a Signature Artist member of the Baltimore Watercolor Society. Elizabeth exhibits frequently in the mid-Atlantic area and online, and she has received many awards for her work.
Elizabeth Burin’s artistic inspiration derives from her travels and above all from nature’s infinite variety of forms. She values the expressive power of color and often revisits a subject to enhance a coloristic effect. She particularly favors the fluid and luminous medium of watercolor, for layers of transparent pigment provide the key to the brilliance she seeks.

3rd Place (Traditional)
Pam Harp

Pam Harp is a Contemporary Realist fascinated by the intricate detail she observes in nature’s alluring flowers. Her passion for flowers inspires her paintings – – From the lacy petals of a peony to the folds of a rose, her tightly rendered watercolors capture the delightful beauty of these exquisite subjects. She loves to work with watercolors that are vibrant and bright, lending an incredible depth and wonderful tonal range to her paintings. Layering transparent colors to achieve rich dark backgrounds is a hallmark of her work. She has received several awards and have been exhibited in galleries in Iowa, Minnesota, and Colorado. She is currently represented at Summerwind Gallery in Arnold’s Park, IA, Bijou Gallery, Storm Lake, IA and Art and Frame on Main, Marshalltown, IA. Her work has also appeared at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts, Wayzata, MN, DeWitt Theatre Arts Center at Northwestern College, Orange City, IA, Witter Gallery in Storm Lake, IA and most recently her art was shown at the Lincoln Gallery in Loveland, CO. A permanent installation of her piece, “Summer’s Radiance” will be available for viewing at Hegg Memorial Health Center Avera in Rock Valley, IA when their new facility opens in January 2018. Harp is a member of the American Watercolor Society, the Iowa Watercolor Society and the Minnetonka Center for the Arts.

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

3rd Place
(Digital & Photography)
Cindy Vondran

Bio: Cindy is a lifelong resident of Northern Illinois, USA. She has been interested in photography since she was a child. In 2013 Cindy received her BFA degree in Studio Art with an emphasis in photography. She credits her strong art background in art and art history for helping her to become a better photographer. Photography and computer generated art are now merging and she is excited to be a part of this new art movement using the computer as a tool for this medium. What was formerly impossible can now be generated, and without the need for a large studio space in which to work. Cindy intends to keep exploring all the possibilities in both traditional and digital art, as well as honing her photography skills.

Artist Statement: Cindy’s loves variety and that is evident in her work. She loves to experiment with many different styles. She is generally attracted to things that are highly sensual, evocative or exciting, vacillating between light and dreamy and dark and moody. Strong, bold colors and lighter pastels are used with equal preference. Cindy feels it is important to allow her muse to have a voice in her art and yields to her guidance. Cindy desires that her art be perceived as poetic in nature. Each image has a story to tell and she is delighted when her art pulls at the heartstrings of the viewer.

To inquire about purchasing this award winning piece or to see more of Cindy’s work, please visit her website.

Honorable Mention (Traditional)
Yochi Yakir-Avin

Yochi Yakir-Avin is a Florida based artists. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts “Brera” in Milan, Italy. She participated in numerous art exhibitions in various Art Galleries, Museums and in art activities in Italy, Israel and now in the U.S. Recently she relocated to Florida where she established her studio.

Yochi sculpts and paints using various materials, which allows her to experiment new combinations. She strives to create different moments – different moods by capturing irregular positions and angles, studying how the light plays across and gives depth. She paints in thin layers of color that results as the texture and create a sense of vibration and depth.

Among her recent and upcoming exhibitions: The Armory Art Center (West P.B. FL.), The Box Gallery (West P.B. FL.), The Coral Springs Art Museum (Coral Springs, FL.), The Lore Degenstein Gallery in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, The Naples Art Association in Naples.

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

Honorable Mention (Traditional)
Traci Loving

Traci creates detailed colored pencil and Acrylic artworks of many different subject matters and styles. From colorful snapshots of desert cacti to realistic depictions of local missions, her drawings each achieve a similarly skillful capture of the subject depicted. Traci is also an art teacher in the city of Monrovia giving private lessons to children and adults.

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

Honorable Mention
(Digital & Photography)
Charles Hopkins

Photography has always been a passion of Charles Hopkins – believing that’s there a direct parallel between life and art. As a commercial photographer for several years, Charles is now expressing his own vision in a very creative and inspiring way.

As a Photo/Artist Charles embrace the traditional methods, alternative techniques and the ever changing technology. Seeing things with fresh eyes and expressing his vision through his artwork, Charles is very mindful of the creative process, of the subject and of his intentions. Charles is Photographer that’s sensitive and grateful of the visual offerings.

To see more of Charles’ work please visit his website.

Honorable Mention (Traditional)
Julia Hamilton

As a multidisciplinary artist, Julia Hamilton enjoys creating traditional media artwork and new media artwork with equal passion. She lives and works in her hometown of Columbus, Ohio, where she is currently attending Columbus College of Art & Design’s Master of Fine Arts program.

Her inspiration comes from the cosmos, science, nature, and the mystery of the human brain. Hamilton uses color to set the mood of her abstract paintings and drawings. She uses her unique vocabulary of intricate shapes to pull viewers into her work, where they can enjoy getting lost in mesmerizing layers of spirals, tendrils, helices, teardrops, and honeycombs.

When something is hopelessly lost, it is said to have “gone where the woodbine twineth.” This phrase was the inspiration for “Where the Woodbine Twineth”.

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

Honorable Mention
(Digital & Photography)
Dan Cohen

My name is Dan Cohen. I am a photographer from Israel. I started photography about 3 years ago. Since then I am totally married to the camera. My life goes like that. I work a little bit, save money, buy a ticket, fly, land, explore and take pictures – each time going to a new location. Now I am in LOS ANGELES! California dream! I have been doing all kinds of projects in the LA area for a while and now wish to just sell my art that I create.

I move among all styles and elements like water. I do not have a preference for compilation. But overall I take a lot of photographs of what surrounded us. All kinds of objects that usually miss us because we are too busy on the phone. In the collages you will discover a dimension of sacred geometry, faces and characters, and most importantly, you can go deeper with philosophical questions about nature and our connection to the object.

To purchase this award winning piece or to see more of Dan’s work, please email him directly.

Honorable Mention (Traditional)
Zephyr Greyhaven

My work is an homage to the subtle brilliance and magnificence of the natural world; it is an appeal to the mystique and hidden order of our reality. The physical world around us is illusory, as all things are energetic in essence. Our reality is a symphony of vibrations, of interfering and resonating energetic frequencies. Sound, color, heat and matter are all similar electromagnetic waves; everything is light.

My paintings are meant to communicate not only the visual quality of an experience, but rather the cerebral excitement which stems from the gamut of deeper sensitive perception. While I tend to indulge in the empyreal aesthetics of the flora and fauna that I observe, my paintings are intended to express fleeting moments of transcendent sublimity.

Patterns form a foundation upon which resonate the visual motifs and metaphysical energy of the environment, its atmosphere, and its inhabitants. This sympathetic patterning, derived from sacred geometry, alludes to that which is beyond the perceptible, to the ubiquitous structure of the universe; it invokes divinity and visualizes the unseen energetic forces which bind matter, spirit and consciousness.

I received my MFA in Drawing and Painting at Utah State University in 2017 and I continue to work out of my home studio in Logan, Utah.

To see more of Zephyr’s work please visit his website.

Honorable Mention
(Digital & Photography)
Barbara Smith

Artist’s Bio
Barbara Smith has been teaching photography and Photoshop in Central Wisconsin for more than eight years. She has taught in the Continuing Education departments of UW Marshfield and Stevens Point, along with classes at the Center for the Visual Arts in Wausau, the Riverfront Arts Center in Stevens Point, and the Waupaca Community Arts Center in Waupaca. She also offers private instruction. Previously, Barbara worked for magazine and book publishers, where she was involved in the selection of photos for publication, the supervision of photo shoots, and the training of editors in photo quality control. She is retired from publishing and living in Plover, Wisconsin.

Artist’s Statement
“Without a camera, I have only two eyes. With a camera, I have a thousand eyes,” Smith says. Anything hidden from casual view – the intricacies of flowers, the iridescence of feathers, the mysteries of intimate landscapes – entrances her. Intrigued by unexpected colors and shapes, she loves exploring light, shadows, and reflections. Macro photography and merging several images in interesting ways are her mainstays. She enjoys making montages, such as Music Blossoms. Recently, she began a new series, called “Floral Improvs.” Lily Improv and Rainy Day Bouquet are from that series.

To purchase this award winning piece or to see more of Barbara’s work, please email her directly.