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I have lived my entire life in the Pacific Northwest, so it is therefore of little surprise that I became interested in photographing its many natural splendors. Bitten by the photography bug a little over six years ago while hiking in the Columbia River Gorge, I try to combine my love for the outdoors with my passion for photography.
In the pursuit of my images, I am always mindful that even familiar locations can hold fascinatingly new perspectives. I often travel with a small assortment of cameras to help photograph places in creative and new ways, be it with a plastic Holga, a wooden pinhole or my Pentax 6×7 loaded with Ortho or Infrared film. Despite this small armament of equipment, I firmly believe that the most important things happen behind the camera, not in it.
The entirety of my work week is also spent immersed in photography, working at Blue Moon Camera and Machine in North Portland. Much of my inspiration has come from the photographers and photography I see circulate through on a daily basis, and I in turn enjoy passing as much of that along with my own photography as I can.
If you would like to view more of my work, and I would humbly appreciate if you would, you can do so over at my Flickr stream.
Judy Dore
Seattle Artist Rachel Dory is known for her urban and rural landscape
paintings that examine the relationships we build and maintain with our natural surroundings.
As a self-described “Interpretive Realist,” Rachel is concerned with documenting site specific locations, while also attempting to capture the soul and geometry of moment and place. The ability for both the artist and the viewer to physically revisit each location she documents is critical to her creative process.
The things that I do not know how to describe or feel or comprehend or even visualize come out when I begin to draw or paint. Not that I'm trying to describe the indescribable, but rather give voice to the things that lay in the gray area of ambiguity/uncertainty/vagueness, that for me, need to receive some sort of attention, not to understand or make clear, but rather to allow myself to be in and flow with that indistinctness.
I am a local designer and artist who has been doing art for most of my life. My subjects are depicted in bold color and form, mixed with a freedom of spirit.
I paint in acrylics in what would be called a representational style. Landscape, still life, animals, flowers ... Nature in all its forms are my inspiration. My creative insight has taken form in many mediums — from doodling as a kid to stained glass, graphic design, residential and landscape architecture, ceramics and, of course, painting.
I live in Seattle with my husband and daughter who are my support and my encouragement.
G8 Artists Cooperative:
Cathy Bohlke
Margaret Davidson: Margaret Davidson is a sensitive and refined painter who focuses on the world of stilled objects. One of her unique specialties is archaeological illustration--most remarkably, creating detailed basket drawings from almost non-existent, muddy fragments. Her personal work draws from a love of natural history and the pleasures of quiet domesticity. Her paintings and drawings are uncluttered, fresh and beautifully rendered. Ms. Davidson received her BFA from the University of Michigan and her MFA from the University of Washington.
Her drawings and paintings have been exhibited in the Bellevue Art Museum, the Smithsonian Institute, and the Wing Luke Asian Museum and numerous galleries in the Northwest, currently she is represented at the Edison Eye Gallery, Edison, WA. Her illustration work has been included in over forty publications. She is a member of the Guild of Natural History Illustrators, with who she exhibits annually.
Courtney Estevenin
I have been studying drawing at Gage Academy since 2005 and have worked with Margaret Davidson, Geoff Flack, Matt Buchner and others. I am currently studying Portrait Painting with Suzanne Brooker. I am married to a French designer, and have two grown children living in the Seattle area also actively involved in the arts.
Joseph Pentheroudakis
I started making art in the mid-1990’s, when I signed up for my first printmaking class with Eva Isaksen at Seattle’s Pratt Fine Arts Center. In 1999 I helped found Seattle Print Arts, a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote print arts and serve as a resource for print artists; I still serve on the organization's board. In 2006 I enrolled in the drawing program at Seattle’s Gage Academy of Art, where I (re)learned how to draw and how to think about art. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Margaret Davidson, my primary drawing instructor at Gage; her work and her commitment to the medium continue to be a guiding light. Seattle artists Margie Livingston and Patrick Holderfield, who also taught at Gage, were instrumental in helping me understand abstraction, and helping me think about what I am trying to say with my work.
Pamela Durga Robinson
Pamela Durga Robinson is a Seattle artist whose works include life-size figure portraits done in charcoal and pastel, small graphite and silverpoint drawings and oil paintings. Her current series of oil paintings are representations of early 20th century doll casts. She has shown her work locally at Elka Rushkov Gallery and Gage Academy of Art. She also does private commissions. Pamela is currently a member of the Mark Kang O’Higgins Atelier at Gage Academy of Art and a graduate of the University of Washington and Highline High School.
Lolly Shera
Lolly Shera pursues the art of realist painting choosing natural and everyday objects in her still life compositions. Always painting from life, she uses traditional painting techniques that recall the Northern European masters. While her intent is not to imitate the masters of the past by painting “in style”, nor to describe the world with a hyper-realist technique, Shera seeks to translate a contemporary sensitivity to her work. Along with capturing the nuances of light and form, she explores the abstract visual concept that underlies each subject.
In the late 1990’s Shera left a highly successful career as an elementary educator in order to pursue her full time passion for art. While largely a self-taught artist, Shera began formal training at the Gage Academy of Art in 2006 under the tutelage of Margaret Davidson, her primary drawing instructor. She continues to study painting and drawing at Gage and Fall City Fine Art Studio. She has also trained with nationally-recognized artists, including Tony Ryder, Steven Assael, John Budicin, Robert Johnson, David Leffel, Robert Liberace. Her work has been shown in several local venues, including Gage Academy of Art, Daniel Smith Art Store, Arosa Café, Seattle, City of Duvall Art Walk and Fall City Arts Fair.
John Unbehend
After fighting left brain / right brain anxiety for 30 year I have been focused full time on drawing and painting at Gage Academy in Seattle. Margaret Davidson, Geoff Flack, Matt Buchner, and John Rizzotto have and continue to help me forge ahead (at times much to their consternation). I live in Burien with my wife Jan and bund of English Cockers (and a Weimariner). The proximity to the sound and the great friends I have made in the arts inspires my work and spurs me on.
Tere Sue Gidlof
Marc Hoffman is a multimedia producer, musician, and bird afficionado. He lives in Kirkland with his wife, Tina Blade, and has a son who is currently a college junior. Marc is an avid nature photographer, preferring to do much of his shooting from an 8-foot kayak. He makes regular journeys to Costa Rica to photograph the abundant wildlife there.
Gina Kallman
Gina Kallman (BFA-University of Wisconsin-Whitewater) has painted and created functional ceramics for over 25 years. She is currently the Cultural Arts Supervisor for the City of Burien.
Margie lee is an artist and writer living in Portland, Oregon. Originally from Bellingham, Washington, Margie studied at the Art Students League in New York and has a BS from Western Washington University and MLA from Harvard University. She has lived and exhibited her paintings in many parts of the country including, Aiken, South Carolina, New York, New York, Boston and San Diego. She has won several awards for her paintings including purchase prize at the Anacortes Art Festival with juror Jacob Lawrence. She recently had a one-woman shows at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art in Bellingham and at the Lewis and Clark gallery in Columbia, South Carolina Painting with acrylics and oils and drawing with pen and ink she depicts everything that surrounds her choosing to catch the moment of life with her figurative expressionist style. Favorite subjects include people and animals. She also paints on tile and creates Art tile tables for the home and garden.
She was a graphic artist and illustrator at the Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington and a former member of the Saturday Market in Portland where she sold Tiles by Margie. Margie also recently published her first book Kinfolk: Tracing the Footsteps of my Scandinavian and German Ancestors from Minnesota to Bellingham
Michael Lowe
MFA Boston University 1980
work (collage) in collection of Brooklyn Museum and Carnegie-Mellon
work experiences include: teaching, curator, high rise construction,
maintenance, museum guard, military (patrolled Berlin Wall), production assistant, props,
storyboard, film collaborator
currently reside just outside White Center where I work and take
refuge in my backyard studio
Rachel Loy
Rachel lives in Burien, WA, loves to volunteer, exercise, write, and watch her daughters play sports. She was born in Texas in 1968, lived in Florida most her life, graduated from Florida State University with a B.S. in Interior Design in 1990 and moved to Washington in 1991 to marry her husband Scott.
Rachel has a fourteen year background in Corporate Interior Design and has keen knowledge of space planning which is evident in most her artwork.
Currently, Mrs. Loy stays home with her two daughters after quitting a store design position in 2007. She would best be described as the typical PTA, soccer mom, driving her daughters from soccer to baseball to volleyball… When she is not driving kids around, she dedicates her time to volunteering at her daughters’ school as she feels parent involvement in school is the key to successful, healthy children, and ultimately a better community.
As an artist, Rachel applies a lot of her architectural and space planning skills to create her artwork. She also throws a lot of her humor into her work.
For this show, Mrs. Loy has painted and drawn flowers, circles, and sticks based on the style of her favorite artist Henri Matisse. She mostly uses mixed media to do these flowers and spends hours cutting out shapes and composing and recomposing masterpieces. The more organic the shape the better!
Rachel loves to have fun and make people laugh and hopes her paintings will tickle the viewer and cause a smile.
Kelda Martensen is an artist and educator living in Burien, Washington where she teaches at Pratt Fine Art Center, South Seattle Community College and Moshier Art Center and volunteers as the Youth Education Director at the Burien Art Gallery. Kelda is thrilled to be living back in the Puget Sound after living in Oregon, Ireland, South Africa, California, Japan, Alaska and Missouri. Kelda received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and her BA from Willamette University. Always interested in community art projects, commissions and collaborations, Kelda would love to hear from you. Please write to kelda.martensen@gmail.com.
This set of drawings was done from my front porch in Portland, OR. While not indicative of my normal working method, the drawings do reflect my interest in architecture, natural elements, and the ephemeral.
Michael Matarese graduated with honors from Delaware College of Art and Design and from the University of Delaware. He received a residency fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, as well as the Delaware Division of the Arts Emerging Artist Fellowship in 2007. His work has been shown at Gallery 50 (Rehoboth, DE), Gallery MC, Organization of Independent Artists (New York, NY), Afif Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), Arlington Arts Center (Arlington, VA), Lexington Art League (Lexington, KY), Launch Pad Gallery (Portland, OR), as well as other venues around the country. He lives and works in Portland, OR.
A little about me,myself and I: Soule,(pronounced like soul) was born in Warshin'ton state. Growing up in the sticks, I, me and my only friends were tree dwelling creatures. One day me,myself and I became incredibly lost and stumbled upon the "city" and discovered a wheat pasted poster. Not only visually appealing, it was delicious,me loved it. I and myself had to learn more about this new discovery, so after befriending some city folk, I, myself and me branched out on our own armed with spray paint, stencils and ink. At the ripe ol' age of 16 I had my first art show which was a success, this got the ball rolling so Me, myself and I ran with it bringing myself to Seattle, WA. Keep an eye out for Urban Soule clothing, paintings, toys, and whatever else me, myself and I feels like making!
Hailing from Seattle, Kim's site, Urban Soule, is rich with creativity. The majority of her work is spray paint and ink on stenciled canvas or wood with, as suggested by the medium, roots in street art. However, incorporating themes of the self, pop imagery, koi fish, crows and medical references - her work is at times lighthearted and personal with a decidedly feminine nuance. The iconographic approach used in her work creates a cohesive body of work with broad appeal.
The information I collect for my paintings comes from the place where suburban meets rural. Where forest and farmland gets cleared to make room for a new kind of growth. Housing developments stretch out to fields, strip malls with box stores, power lines, billboards, and highway exits with gas stations and fast food restaurants. I have lived most of my life in urban neighborhoods so much of my experience with this sprawling environment comes from glimpses I catch passing by on the highway. My paintings reflect my perception and memories of these surroundings. I am more interested in the idea of these places then the details, and create work from my memory and imagination. My memories can be vague or vanish quickly and sometimes the only thing I have left is color. I see a connection between my memories and these fleeting landscapes I create. I focus more on color and less on shapes presenting little information to the viewer. This allows the viewer to call on their memories of place and connect with the painting based on their experiences. Ideally my paintings will remind the viewer of a place they have been.
I am a encaustic (beeswax heated with gum damar and pure pigment) mixed media artist living in Burien with my husband, 2 sons and a Golden Retriever. Encaustic wax is my very favorite because you never really know what you are going to get, can't be repeated easily and the creative being just takes over. I love it! I also enjoy acrylic collage and using resin for a nice glossy top coat..
Pete Rodes
Kimisha Turner
Manipulating mixed media, playing off organic natural occurrences and the love of making a mess are the main influences in Kimisha Turner's creations. Making the viewer take a second look to find something new in each of her works is what inspires her abstractions. A native to Washington, she's grown up in small towns from Olympia to Moses Lake but her heart resides in Seattle. Using the tools and influences she gained from Cornish College of the Arts, she finds no limit to what she can create and loves challenging herself with new media for her shows. Her goal of making the viewer have a physical and emotional reaction, whether it be happy, anxious or excited is what keeps this artist chugging along to accomplish her artistic missions. Her quirky personality always shines through her work and most of the time reflects personal experiences of hers. The company she keeps, the positive influences around her and her love of making things beautiful are ultimately what progresses her work.
Ellen Van Wyck
Ellen Werner began shooting photos at age 7 (mostly pets and stuffed animals). She learned to shoot manually in high school and continues to use film as well as digital SLR. Ellen has a natural ability to capture beauty in the ordinary life of almost any setting. Her flexibility is an asset when working with individual clients. Among her favorite things to shoot are combinations of nature and urban life, nuances of culture, and candid people shots. Ellen moved to Portland, Oregon in 2003 after a long time in the southwest U.S. and most recently, the UK.
Andrea Williamson
