Second Saturday artists’ reception and wine tasting February 9, 4-7pm featuring these artists:
Peter Roussel is a ceramic artist that truly embraces nature with his art form. During the firing process, Peter uses nature’s gift of horse hair and feathers to “burn” onto the surface of some pieces producing a wonderful artistic effect. For the last several years, his focus has been on black and white horse hair vases, in addition to brilliantly hued reds and oranges created with the use of ferric chloride.
Just like in nature, Roussel also produces pieces that display a range of light to deep dark, rich blues by using copper sulfate in the firing process. The artist uses no traditional glazes in his work, staying with raku, pit, sagger and smoke firings. With the sagger process, nature really gets into the act. Pieces are wrapped in aluminum foil along with horse hair and sugar, and then fired at different temperatures. Sometimes they are even fired multiple times. When each piece cools and the foil is removed, the true serendipity of “playing” with nature is revealed.
Nature provides light, energy and color. Bonnie Junell embraces these gifts from nature and uses them to produce fine art oil paintings that speak to the viewer on a very emotional level. Her use of texture and strong color is illustrated in the wide range of subjects that Junell paints – from beautiful nature scenes (especially the Sunriver landscape) to animals, sports and people. Her “red poppy” paintings are really popular with collectors of her art. Junell’s exuberant personality is also reflected in her work. Many viewers have enjoyed watching as she makes the plein air painting process look effortless. Others have had the pleasure of attending one of her many gallery classes.
An artist doesn’t receive a better start from nature than feeding a chickadee from her hand. In Marjorie Cossairt’s painting, Mountain Chickadee, the viewer can also feel the wonder and beauty of nature. Because Cossairt lives on her own 20 acres of meadow land paradise with views of the surrounding mountains, she has access to an unlimited number of subjects.
The artist excels at interpreting the beautiful natural surroundings that are so plentiful in Central Oregon. Her watercolor paintings display an impressionistic realism that is entirely unique to Cossairt. “The fluidity of the medium, as well as the interaction of pigment and water, along with a blend of spontaneity and control is the essence of my paintings,” she explains. “Experimenting and discovering different techniques, my approach to watercolor is mostly intuitive, working in a carefree manner creating shapes and textures resulting in representations of reality.”
She provides not only original works, but high quality giclee prints that allow everyone to enjoy her depiction of nature’s beauty.
There is a hidden art to sculptures created in hot glass. It is the dance of balancing molten glass and coaxing it into existence, but this is a privileged view point like knowing how a magician performs his illusions. Jeff Thompson is inspired by his team of artists which provides him with the skillful hands required to create his visions in sculpture. “Everything I make requires talented assistants and sometimes I require up to five on the most difficult sculptures,” Thompson explains. “My team lets me focus on creating the sculptures of my dreams. Behind the art there is a scientist in me and I find it very satisfying to design, engineer and build my studio equipment which includes crucible furnaces, oversized kilns and many various peripherals. This global view of my process gives me the ability to create custom equipment or melt special glass formulas and is a requirement for my own mastery of the medium.”
Artists’s Gallery Sunriver, Paper Station building 541-593-2127 or 541-593-8274. www.artistsgallerysunriver.com