"New Beginnings" opens at Pyro Gallery on January 3 and will feature work by Janet Dake and Erica Chinise Wilcox, Janet joins us in the studio this week to talk about it. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.
Janet Dake is a figurative painter from Versailles, Kentucky, now based in Louisville. Her work is about people, both real and imagined. Dake’s paintings tell stories. Through intricate (and often made-up) backgrounds, Dake creates narratives that reflect contemporary social issues and cultural phenomena. In 2021 she completed an Artist Residency in Toronto, Canada, where she had her first solo show entitled Human Nature. In 2022, her work was selected for the Ferrara Showman Gallery for their annual No Dead Artists group show and the Post Roe Louisiana show at the Carrollton Gallery at Tulane University. Her work was recently displayed at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art for the annual Louisiana Contemporary showcase. Dake is currently a member of Pyro Gallery in Louisville, KY.
“New Beginnings”, in which Janet will be exhibiting with Erica Chinise Wilcox, opens at Pyro Gallery on January 3, with a reception from 5:30-8:30 pm
Sabra Crockett's exhibit, "The Education of Desire" opens this week at Kore Gallery and she invited Edwin Ramirez to join her. Hear them tell all about it this week. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com Thursday at 10 am.
Born a Yankee, and wandering through the South, Sabra Crockett finally found her home in Louisville, Kentucky with all the beautiful songbirds surrounding her, and the most spectacular variety of trees she could possibly hope for.
Crockett has exhibited extensively in Kentucky, and in NYC, North Carolina, California, and De Harmonie, Leeuwarden in the Netherlands.
Edwin Ramirez is a Chicano multimedia Artist, DJ, hairdresser, campaign organizer, and professional dog trainer. My skills are quite varied but my career focus is to assist progressive candidates to win seats in public office.
Their exhibit, The Education of Desire, opens November 3 at Kore Gallery, with an opening reception on November 6 from 6-9 pm. Runs through November 28.
This week we talk with James Russell May about his work and how a single catastrophic moment may or may have not have influenced his paintings. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on Artxfm.com Thursday at 10 am.
James Russell May is a native of Savannah, Georgia and a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design. He has exhibited widely throughout the United States. He currently resides in Louisville, Kentucky.
“Thoroughbred Stallion” by Monica Barnett, Graphite, 40x30in, 2019, $975
In Kentucky, you will find horses as a subject in the work of many artists. It seems particularly inevitable for painters. Perhaps it is the power and speed, or the movement even in more relaxed moments, that draws them. For Monica Barnett, it seems to be all of these things.
“I have been an artist my entire life, and while I have focused on animals in my drawings and paintings, my work is centered on horses.”
In one image we have an anatomical study suitable for a veterinary text, and in another, the equine forms are highly stylized as figures on a spectral carousel, uneasily situated in an undetermined fantasy space that elicits the opposite of the expected reaction to a child on a carnival ride. The subjective use of color even lends the human child in the image a slightly sinister aspect.
“Carousel Ride” by Monica Barnett, Acrylic on wood, 48x48in, 2019, $3000
Barnett was for many years a Part-time Staff Artist at The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times, where she created drawings, maps, and charts for daily news articles and was a page designer for all feature sections, The Saturday Scene, and the Sunday Magazine.
In March of 2019 Barnett was in the Huber Farm Winery Art and Wine "Stella di Luce" Show; in May she was in the Mother's Day Spring Art Show at Mellwood Art & Entertainment Center; and early March through late May she had a drawing in a juried show in Lexington at the Living Arts and Sciences Center.
“Rooster” by Macei Hamilton, Acyrlic on wood, 12x18in, 2018, Private Collection
“Serious” art people are often skittish about paintings of animals; simple, straightforward, portraits of pets are the work of “hobbyists” they might say. Yet the concept that any artist’s practice draws directly from their immediate environment and experience is a common point of discussion in any critical appraisal.
Macel Hamilton resides in the knobs of Casey County, Kentucky, a rural area in in which her menagerie of12 dogs and 12 cats is not that unusual. So why shouldn’t these plaintive yet precocious subjects serve as a valid expression of Hamilton’s environment? Hamilton was raised in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, so the attachment to the land and its non-human inhabitants comes naturally to Hamilton.
A nurse by profession, Hamilton has only been painting for about 4 years, and for having painted for so brief a time, there is authoritative us of the brush in capturing the details of this “Rooster” that is compelling. Nothing is overworked. The relative lack of experience seems to have merged with the intimate understanding of subject to finish a simple, naturalistic expression of wariness in this Bantam’s face. It is as individual as any portrait of a human subject.
Hometown: Ligon, Kentucky Facebook: Macel's art
“Dobey” by Macei Hamilton, Pastel on sanded paper, 14x10in, 2019, Private Collection
“Horse” by Macei Hamilton, Acrylic on wood, 12x10in, 2018, Private Collection
“Baby” by Macei Hamilton, Acyrlic on canvas, 16x20in, 2018, Private Collection
“Low Rider” by Macei Hamilton, Acyrlic on canvas, 12x16in, 2019, Private Collection
