The Overall Winning Artists Category consists of the 10 Best Entries received from the 2 media categories of the Painting & Other Category and the Photography & Digital Category.
The winning artists will now be featured on the Light Space & Time website for the month of February 2016 and thereafter, the artworks and links to the artist’s websites will remain online in the Light Space & Time Archives.
Congratulations to our artists who made our 6th Annual “CityScapes” Art Exhibition so successful this month. At any time, we invite our winners and other interested visitors to link their websites to the Gallery’s Archive section for further ongoing promotion.
The Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery will have digital “CityScapes” Award Certificates, Event Postcard, and Press Releases sent to the winning artists within the next week or so. Thank you to all of the artists who participated and for being a part of the gallery. To return to the CityScapes Home Page here.
1st Place – Jeffrey Friedkin – “Intersection”
Jeffrey Friedkin was born in the Bronx and has lived in and around New York City for his life.
Jeffrey enjoys discovering slices of urban life in all of its gritty details and intense colors throughout the seasons. The lush rural landscapes and sparkling seascapes of the Hudson River Valley region equally inspires his photography.
Jeffrey employs a synthesis of the artistic eye and technology. His work focuses on New York life: the streets, people, architecture and nature.
My images tell these stories. http://jeffrey-friedkin.comistwebsites.com
2nd Place – Renee De Gagne – “Urban Veils – XXVII (Montreal)”
Renee De Gagne is a Canadian, Montreal-based, professional visual artist. Her artwork focuses on urban architecture. For Renee, architecture is an expressive statement of its urban dynamics. Through her warm color palette, she captures the energy of a city by maintaining a balance between figuration and abstraction.
Renee states the following about her passion, “My paintings reflect my love of architecture, be it breathtaking towers or ancient constructions. Buildings are an important testimonial of our presence on earth, and my artwork is about this “presence”. I find inspiration in architectural details, textures, reflections, contrasts formed by complexity and simplicity. Although you may be able to recognize a specific cityscape, my endeavor is not to reproduce reality and authenticity but rather to record my emotional impressions.”
Working in mixed media enables her to innovate and integrate several materials: acrylic paints and mediums, ink, collage, photography, Japanese papers, etc. Essentially self-taught, Renee has taken classes, workshops and coaching with renowned artists and masters in mixed media in Canada and the United States. She works only on cities she knows well and that she visited several times. As she relates, “Starting from my own photographs and drawings, I research on the history of the buildings that I target and their urban environment. Then, I start painting instinctively and intuitively, keeping in mind memories, stories and pictures.”
Renee aims to depict atmosphere, the emotional state, the relations within buildings, their dynamics in different contexts and cultures, and, hopefully, to bring the observer to see the city differently and to realize the importance of its architecture.
She is represented by galleries in Montreal and Vancouver, has won several awards in Canada and the United States, and her work is present in private and corporate collections across Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. www.reneedegagne.com
3rd Place – Arturo Gonzalez – “Chicago Skyline at Night”
Arturo Gonzalez is a photographer who was born and raised in Chicago, IL. He was inspired to pursue photography via the wonderful photos in numerous publications and websites.
Arturo expresses the following “Photography has allowed me to capture the beauty of an object at that exact moment in time. Landscapes, downtown architecture, nature, and sunrise/sunset scenes are some my favorite pieces to photograph.” He goes on to state, “My travels have allowed me the opportunity to see how spectacular this planet is. Via photography, I hope to catalog the uniqueness and beauty of this world.” https://arturogonzalez.smugmug.com
4th Place – John Jaster – “LA Commute”
John Jaster was born in Columbus Ohio, graduated from Ohio State and lived in the mountains of Southern California for 20 years. Although John learned to draw and paint as a young boy, his degrees are in the computer science field. It wasn’t until 2010, when his wife bought him a large easel and encouraged him to start painting again, that he began to take his art career seriously.
Since then John has been selected in a number of gallery shows and juried contests, including the National Oil & Acrylic Painter’s Society 2013 International On-line Exhibition and 2014 Best in America show. John’s Carousel Horse #1 was featured in the June 2014 issue the Artist’s magazine Competition Spotlight. Recently John has been living and working in Dayton Ohio. Many of the scenes of his recent paintings are taken from the woodland parks and scenic back roads in the area.
John works with heavy body acrylics on fairly large canvases with a lot of detail and bold colors. He calls his style “realistic impressions” because, while the overall feel of the work is definitely realism, he offsets the detail with impressionistic splashes of color. Instead of smooth blending, he likes to use puzzle pieces of color to emphasize the complex relationship of light and shadow over form. John’s inspiration comes from the hidden beauty in ordinary objects.” http://JohnJasterStudio.com
5th Place – Jerrie Sasson – “Aerial Mapping of a Remote Location Hollyhead GB”
Jerrie Sasson’s encaustic paintings called “Aerial Mapping”, as they are compositions that were inspired by aerial views of cities, sky and water that have been compromised by current technologies.
Sasson is a painter and she uses encaustic, an ancient Roman art process, as her medium of choice. Sasson is unique because she makes her own paints from beeswax and pigment, and then creates subtle textures and patterns that she embeds with other materials.
Sasson’s paintings are playful and her imagery is colorful and flowing. Her work reflects her discomfort with technology and its abuse of the environment. www.jerriesasson.com
6th Place – Peter Alessandria – “NYC Nite”
Peter was born and raised in New York City and Long Island. After attending law school, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as an attorney in the entertainment industry. Today he is a commercial and fine art photographer based in New Jersey.
As a fine art photographer, Peter has created numerous collections of landscape, seascape, cityscape and still life images. His work has been featured in many solo and group photography and art exhibitions. His photos have garnered popular and critical acclaim: he has won twenty-three (23) awards for his fine art photos in the past few years. His work has been the subject of newspaper, radio and television interviews.
Photography is a second career for Peter. He spent the first part of his work life as an entertainment and intellectual property attorney in Los Angeles. Working in the film and television industries sparked his own interest in creativity and in the early 2000’s he began experimenting with digital video and became an amateur filmmaker. But it wasn’t until he picked up a still camera for the first time in 2004 that his full creative passion for image-making came into being.
Like many people, things changed dramatically for Peter in 2008. That year, as a result of the Global Financial Crisis, he lost his law practice. In the days and weeks that followed he struggled with the question of what to do with the rest of his life. It was only after much deliberation that he decided to follow his passion for photography, and in 2009, he began pursuing photography full-time.
Peter finds inspiration mostly in the work of other photographers, and not necessarily the famous ones. Rather, it is his peers – many of whom he connects with on social media – that inspire Peter to go out and try new things or shoot in new locations. This connecting with others has helped fuel his creativity greatly over the last several years.
As a both a photographer and filmmaker Peter’s intent is simple: create compelling images that appeal to his own sense of beauty and aesthetics. His goal is to use his art – and his life – to inspire others. He shares his photos in the hopes of touching people’s hearts and minds in positive and uplifting ways. www.peteralessandriaphotography.com
7th Place – Lindsey Kustusch – “Afternoon Lift”
Lindsey Kustusch is based out of San Francisco, California. City living has played a major role in the development of Lindsey Kustusch’s work. Her layered approach to building a painting makes heavy use of palette knives, battered brushes and hardware store finds while the ever changing energy of the city has allowed her freedom to experiment on the canvas. Working with oil, her aim is to create realism by interpreting life in the essence of a memory verses depicting it in perfect photo-realistic clarity.
Lindsey states this about here art, “How we remember something and how we visualize the moving pictures stored in our memories, is for me, the truest form of real life. We have a filter on all of our experiences and an emotional attachment to all of our memories, so by tapping into how that may appear in a two-dimensional sense is the closest I can come to painting something real.” She adds, “I also feel that art has the power to change how we look at the world around us and make something that was never given a second thought, suddenly significant. Art provides us an option to see life in a different light… And for me, a city is limitless when it comes to seeking out it’s inner beauty.”
Kustusch strives to evoke real emotion from her work, so therefore is constantly adjusting her technique based on her subject matter and focal point. “Staying inspired as a working artist can be challenging”, she says, “so if I focus on painting what’s real to me, hopefully that will resonate with the viewer, and the experience I strive to create will be a success.”
Kustusch is currently showing her work in several galleries around the country, including Studio Gallery in San Francisco, CA, Abend Gallery in Denver, CO, Lovetts Gallery in Tulsa, OK, Howard/Mandville Gallery in Kirkland, WA, and Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. She will be participating in exhibitions all throughout the year, beginning with “The Altitude Project” at Lovetts Gallery Feb. 5th, a two person show at Howard/Mandville in July, and a three person show at Abend in September. Visit her website for more details www.lindseykustusch.com
8th Place – Jon Holiday – “Dallas MHH Bridge”
Jon Holiday is a skyline freak. He has been taking pictures since he fell in love with photography when he received a Kodak Instamatic model 134 at age 9. His love of urban photography began as a teen-ager with a ministry trip to Minneapolis, where he discovered all kinds of diverse and interesting subjects to photograph. Eventually, the idea of capturing a “profile” of the largest cities moved to the top of his To-Do list..
The art of skyline photography is largely technical, especially in terms of logistics, however:
“The way I ‘see’ things is key. I love to work in that narrow timeframe where the daylight fades and the artificial light begin to glow. Creating an image where I have to deal with the different types of light, structure, textures, composition, and colors takes a surprising amount of time and effort. And, I always try to bring something of myself into an image, so it that it doesn’t end up as run-of-the-mill. Motion-blurred clouds add drama, moving traffic in the foreground provides colorful leading lines, or a foggy sky makes Los Angeles look like a fictional Gotham City.
In 2002, he began the Hope Camera Club in Ft. Worth, Texas, and led it for 8 years, and as such he has done numerous instructional presentations and training sessions related to photography, and conducted many competitions. He has experience with many types and styles of photography, and has received numerous awards for his images.
Notable awards among others include several Bronze Awards in the Epson International Pano Competition over the last few years, second place in the Texas Photo Forum, a finalist entry in the Photographer’s Forum “Best of Photography”, as well as in the Worldwide Gala Awards 2011 “Colour” exhibit. He has been juried into gallery shows across the US, and his images have appeared in a movie, television shows, and have been produced as huge wall murals in the US and Italy.
On photography in general, he says,
“…allows me to depict things as the best that they can be. An old abandoned building becomes a refreshing mecca, the desert turns into a visual oasis, and happen chance elements are magically given purpose and focus. I love to produce images that make the viewer say, ‘Oooh, I want to see that in real life. Now.’ “
Another focus for Jon is “TexasScapes”. This includes natural settings with bluebonnets and wildflowers. Several of his Texas wildflower images acquired in the last few seasons have received wide recognition and numerous awards. They also appear in one whole wing of patient rooms in the newest hospital in Dallas.
Most of his body of work is made up of “Beautiful Places” type subjects, and has been frequently used in office, restaurant, and healthcare environments. Jon especially enjoys taking photos in and around his hometown of Fort Worth, where he and his wife of 29 years and his 22 yr old daughter are active in church, school, and community.
Explore all of Jon’s “beautiful” work at www.photosbyjon.com, and cityscapes at www.skylinesbyjon.com.
9th Place – Nancy Torbitt-Stewart – “City Mirage”
Nancy was raised the youngest of 3 girls in a home where you were not allowed to express your emotions. It wasn’t until she went to college that she realized that her upbringing was not “normal”, and her confusion finally made sense. She eventually graduated with a degree in theater and as she states “I was pretty good at being who I was supposed to be, but investigating who I really am is taking me a lifetime.”
Nancy elaborates this about her art. “I use my art to make sense of things. At times there is just an image that comes to me that proves to be the metaphor for what I am feeling. Sometimes I have to give a painting a fair amount of leeway and just keep painting for it to become what it wants before I see it. Every painting has taught me something, and helped me get to know myself a little better.”
Nancy began to add text to her paintings almost 20 years ago. She describes how the process came about, “I was dating a man who had a dream about me he was too embarrassed to describe to me so he wrote it down. It was a lovely erotic dream and I decided to make a painting of it, adding his words to the canvas and painted the scene. The text I applied had an actual dimension on the canvas and the interaction of the paint with that dimension really intrigued me to explore more of that texture with paint. I found the interaction of the visual and the literal aspects very interesting. I always write in cursive, not just because I find it beautiful and flowing, but I fear it is becoming obsolete. With so much technology these days I am afraid the personalization of the written word will disappear. Writing is such a human activity, I want that hand in the work.”
Nancy states that, “My belief that making art can help one find one’s voice led me to produce ‘Art Start’ in 1990, a series of 9 art instruction videos based on media exploration. The program is still being used in public education settings and is now streaming through a national distributor. With that same goal, I designed a coloring book, ’The Many Colors of Me’ for the children at CHOC, to offer them an opportunity to express themselves, to show how they feel, and to let all the people caring for them to get to know them a little better. I have been working with the long-term patients at CHOC for over 10 years creating art during bedside visits.”
Nancy goes on to say, “From the dimensional cursive writing in my early paintings to my current work combining processes like the etching press and encaustics, I continue to be fascinated by the complexity and depth of texture, each mark a visual memory. I see my work as an excavation of memory, each mark like a fossil form the pressure of experience or emotion.”
She has several pieces of her art now living in New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Missouri and Southern California. http://nancytorbittstewart.com
10th Place – Andres Leon – “Miami’s Brickell Colors”
Andres is a landscape and wildlife photographer living in Tamarac, Florida. He is a computer programmer by profession, but he uses his passion for photography to break away from the physical confines of working in an office and explore and reveal the wonderful world and natural beauty that is around us.
Andres describes his artistic journey, “This quest to explore and capture its imagery through my camera lens has led me, and my wife Nelly, to visit many fantastic international locations such as Iceland, Greece, Costa Rica, and Italy; and explore some of the great American parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Tetons, and the Great Smokey Mountains. But no other subject brings more joy and pleasure to my soul than the outstanding contrast between nature and human progress found in my own back yard of South Florida.”
He continues his thoughts, “Our neighborhood offers a unique, fragile, and beautiful contrast between the slow and steady evolution of nature versus the relentless and accelerated force of human progress and advancement over its environment. Few other locations demonstrate such stark juxtaposition other than the Everglades and the city of Miami. I enjoy documenting and capturing the imagery and essence of these two magnificent locations. I hope that my images help our community understand that a careful balance must be maintained in order to ensure the survival of both areas and ensure that future generations may enjoy and thrive in our environment just as much as we do today.” www.andresleonphoto.com
