Abstraction

 

An abstract painting exhibit featuring the works of six artists will be on display at Heartland Community College beginning August 12.

The Joe McCauley Gallery presents Abstraction: Paintings by Jan Brandt, Allison Carr, Joann Goetzinger, Megan Hinds, Megan Kathol Bersett and Melanie Dockery, August 12 through November 8, 2019.

An artist’s reception will be held during National Arts and Humanities Month on October 7 from 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Gallery.

Each of the featured artists approach abstraction from personal and formal considerations, and use acrylic paint as a primary medium. Abstraction offers viewers a wide range of content, style and painting techniques:

• Brandt builds biomorphic forms with encrusted, textural surfaces.
• Carr develops organic imagery by layering transparent and opaque mixed media.

• Dockery employs gestural, expressive brushwork on large scale canvas. 
• Goetzinger constructs with cut-out, wood reliefs and linear patterning. 
• Hinds saturates and manipulates floods of vibrant color on canvas. 
• Kathol Bersett paints, tears and composes paper and canvas, collage-like on panel.

  
About the Artists
Jan Brandt’s compositions are not literal, rather they are created from her memories of slide images witnessed through a toy microscope she was given as a youth. Colorful, unexpected microscopic life forms continue to inspire Brandt as she builds abstracted, fantastical environments in two-dimensional paintings and three-dimensional site-specific fiber installations.
Allison Carr’s paintings are inspired from details in our natural world.  These aspects of nature are frequently ignored, but in her eyes are beautiful and worthy of notice. She combines her internalized memory with color and line to transform the subject and in turn prompt the viewer to see their world differently.
Melanie Dockery is from rural southern Indiana. She grew up near fields, farms, woods, the sky, stars, streams, and a river. The cycling seasons and landscapes inspire her to explore the ever-changing nature of life in the universe. Her paintings explore capturing a sense of that change with color, light, and brushstroke.
Joann Goetzinger decided to concentrate on the visual arts, after many years of studying and teaching voice and doing some professional singing in the music field. She continually discovers more relationships between the visual arts and music. Therefore, lyrical structure, color, rhythm and theoretical understanding of music has greatly influenced her art.
Megan Hinds is an artist from Champaign, IL. She attended Parkland Community College and Illinois State University where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts. She is constantly investigating nature’s collective brilliance and communication. She creates work that reflects pattern and movement integrated in such a way as to display community.
Megan Kathol Bersett works with paint and mixed media to visually process conflicting elements of daily life. She has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions at venues across the United States. The artist is currently serving as the Interim Director of Operations at Illinois Art Station, in Normal, Illinois.