WHERE ART INSPIRES CONNECTION
We are thrilled to present our first group of local women artists who innovate across media:
Geneviève L’Heureux, Lisa Ostapinski, Lela Shields, and Diane Wang.
From aquatint and mezzotint, to gouache, encaustic, beeswax, gold leaf, oil paint and acrylic, to canvas, wood, and paper, the techniques and materials these artists employ reveal a creativity beyond the traditional. There’s a tangible connection with the natural world both in the inspiration for the works and the materials used in their creation. The results are completely distinct, with works that evoke the emotional, the spiritual, and sensorial. Come discover what makes these artists so exceptional.
On view October 16, 2021 - December 19, 2021
Geneviève L'Heureux was born in Montréal, Canada and now lives in San Francisco, CA. She practiced, then taught architecture for several years before developing a passion for printmaking in Rome, as a 2001 recipient of the Canadian Rome Prize. Printmaking has been her main occupation since 2012. Her preferred techniques include etching, aquatint, mezzotint, and chine collé.
Her artistic work, whether drawing or print, geometrical or figurative, attempts to express what belongs to the senses, to touch our humanity with evocative and emotional work. She challenges the well accepted theory that contrasting concepts (dark/light, mass/lightness, line/surface), stand as polar opposites and, consequently, that we live in a world of extremes and exclusion.
The intentional oscillation between opposing concepts mirrors our human condition. The work is destabilizing in that it brings us away from the comfort of established norms and strict definitions and closer to our fundamental nature: one of ambivalence and continuous transformation.
Lisa Ostapinski is a painter and art educator based in Oakland, CA. She works with unusual materials and processes including metal leaf gilding, encaustic painting (beeswax), sgraffito and oil paint marbling. Her work juxtaposes archaic media with modern forms producing a fresh, contemporary take on these art historical techniques. Lisa’s imagery pulls from a diverse array of sources including textile and jewelry design, architecture, modern painting, the natural world, scientific illustration, religious painting and occult symbolism. She chooses lustrous, visually rich materials such as gold leaf and beeswax for their natural beauty as well as their historical use in European religious painting to evoke the divine. Lisa’s work is an exploration of the potential for abstract forms and luminous materials to communicate ideas about the spiritual realm.
Lela Shields was born and raised in London and attended several fine art institutions before graduating from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1996. She has had solo exhibitions in Denver, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sydney, Australia. She has shown internationally in England, France, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. In 2006, Lela was included in a group exhibition at The Louvre Museum in Paris, France. In 2009, Lela’s work was short-listed for the Jerwood Drawing Prize – the most competitive drawing contest in the UK. In 2019, Lela was awarded The Pirkle Jones Grant from the Marin Community Foundation.
Lela relocated to the Bay Area, in 2011, from London and currently lives and paints in her studio in West Marin County, just north of San Francisco, California.
Diane Wang is a San Francisco Bay Area native and Taiwanese-American artist and designer who investigates human perception of nature’s stories. She is interested in the fundamental connection that humans have with the natural world and how this permeates through our memories and understanding of what’s around us.
Her paper sculptures are ethereal, yet raw. The hand-torn shapes, textures, and dimensionality in her work result from her reconstruction of nature’s processes, both ephemeral and eternal. These, contrasted with dream-like forms and light, invite calming recollections that foster contemplation of connection and our place with nature.
Diane studied ink-wash painting throughout her childhood and received her B.A. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction. Post-graduation, she designed award-winning technology interfaces at Google and Nest. She continued her studies in the visual arts and abstraction at the California College of the Arts. Her cross-cultural background and exposure to a variety of creative practices influences her distinctive approach, techniques, and processes.