Artist Statements

Onaje Benjamin
Inspired by the works of Gordon Parks, James Van Der Zee, and contemporary creatives Dawoud Bey, Debra Willis, Latoya Ruby Frazier and Devin Allen, Onaje’s views the camera, as did Gordon Parks, as an weapon to combat poverty, racism and other forms of injustice. Onaje’s images reflect the diversity of life and culture, the conflicts and cultural fault lines which create borders of indifference and tension; beauty and tragedy-the passive destructive forces of gentrification which threaten and uproot historically marginalized communities.

Self-taught, and defining his work as documentary and humanist, Onaje’s photography captures the complexity & culture of urban communities-specifically African American and other marginalized spaces. His early work documented street life in New York, Trenton, NY and other urban areas. Exclusively monochromatic, his photographs challenge the viewer to negotiate the complexity of contrasted tones and highlights, light and darkness.

For Onaje, who celebrates over three quarters of a century of lived experiences, his current images are reflections of the world through his “Lens of Eldership”. Onaje’s photographs represent a form of visual storytelling.

Jess Blaustein
I consider my work to be a material practice of attention. I try to capture the feelings of systems we belong to but can’t always see.

The things I make are double-edged. They are so-called ordinary things projected into other dimensions. They are often constituted from waste streams and offcuts of existing systems. They are made to be seen and handled from multiple sides. They have fronts and backs, insides and outsides. They open and close, fold and unfold. They are obsessively tactile. And they meander across scales, from global logistics to the tiniest domestic detail.

I play primarily with discarded textiles and paper, and sometimes with found materials. Textiles I stain, stretch, pull, wrinkle, wrap, stitch, and tear between abstract and everyday dimensions and processes. With paper, I cut, rip, shred, and pulp its tangled associations with administration, identification, and truth-telling but also with secrecy, forgery and fiction. Other materials I occasionally find, I follow down rabbit holes and into territories of all various shades of grey.

Alaiyo Bradshaw
Bradshaw’s artwork takes a passionate view of a social conscience that incorporates drawing and painting through visual journalism. In her work, she reconstructs dreams, children’s stories, cultural iconography, ethnography, and social issues. She brings her training as an illustrator and graphic designer into her work as a fine artist. She thinks of her paintings as single-frame narratives–windows into the subject. Her artwork is linked by repeated formal concerns as well as through its conceptual content. Each personal project consists of multiple works grouped around specific themes and iconography. She uses watercolor as a medium to create depth, translucency, and opacity.

In her conception, her art means bringing images to life through representational depictions reflecting a visual language that she speaks.

Lucille Colin
I work on a small intimate scale.

I am drawn to the duality of art making the equilibrium of confidence and lack of pretension, being cautious as well as reckless even with the possibility of defeat. Louise Bourgeois talked of fear and even being a victim, but with her art she said she was the murderer, the duality of fear and the bravery to destroy a piece that may bring a change, an opening.

I believe the importance of art today can be unifying and explanatory – even hopeful in a doubtful world.

Matthew Crain
I take pictures of things that want to have their pictures taken and me to do the taking. I take one shot and that’s it.

Maxine Davidowitz
Amazon Study I is one of many monotype studies done for a series of works—entitled Terra Infirma—that express my deep concern with the destruction of the environment. This study is one inspired by the burning of rainforests in the Amazon region, known as the ‘lungs’ of the planet.

Maureen Gates
The beauty of flowers has always attracted me to them. Like any living thing, flowers have a life cycle, from bud to dropping back into the dirt with a beautiful presence in between. The end of their life cycle is the “destruction” of the flower. This process has a beauty all its own as the delicate petals dry up and they transform into new textures and beauty.

Working with light, shadow, and form, I prefer to use the tonality of black and white to preserve the last gasp of the delicate beauty of flowers. Spending time in the garden and nature, I see and capture the beautiful life transitions of many different plants and flowers.

Black and white photography is what I most enjoy working with.

Dan Goldman
Maybe it was the war-torn buildings and holed walls of Seville, Spain photographed by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1933 that I remembered most. As these new photographs emerged I could not help but remember Bresson’s photographs. Some art has a way of staying with you only to manifest in a completely different way decades later. These photographs came to me as much as I went out looking for them. They are part of a larger series. They are ethereal and spiritual in their creation. They speak to the future, as seen through the eyes and heart of a social art activist. Images of how life might look a lot different should the human race not find better ways to live together.

Ed Grant
Liminality and uncertainty are central themes in my work, with uncertainty becoming more and more prevalent in my thought process. Uncertainty comes in many forms. Some uncertainties are internal, manifesting physically in the form of our health, or psychologically, in the form of doubt (in recall and memory, or in questioning positions or ability). Other uncertainties arise externally, the recollections and actions of others (misremembering and gaslighting), or the impacts of nature. This has led to voids, or empty spaces, becoming increasingly common in my compositions. My titles, too, are informed by this unfolding focus.

The way in which I approach mark making is intended to reinforce states of liminality and uncertainty. When working on Evolon, a woven synthetic paper that wicks away water, erasure becomes physical. Painting out areas with gesso, creasing, scraping and sanding, the physical structure of the paper is altered, and sometimes, destroyed. The paper becomes an analogue for how our bodies accumulate traces of our lived lives.

The tension between luck and intentionality, the strain between surety and uncertainty, is a fertile ground for growth. It is an exploration of agency while still being aware of the limited ability to guide that agency, a detente with uncertainty.

James Hannaham
In 2021, as I prepared for the publication of Pilot Impostor, a book of short works and photographs related to the poetry of Fernando Pessoa, I realized that the rights to four of the pictures I wanted to print were too expensive. So I decided to draw them. I had not done much drawing for a while—my practice largely consists of conceptual pieces that use wall text and letter-quality printing to subvert voices of authority—and was surprised to discover that I still had some “chops,” as musicians like to say. The photographs were from the aftermath of various plane crashes, which is a theme in Pilot Impostor. I continued making these drawings. That June, my mother-in-law passed away unexpectedly, and the drawings seemed to mirror my emotional state, that of my husband, and many of my in-laws. The aftermath of a disaster. So the drawings became a kind of lifeline. Now I sometimes make a drawing to commemorate the death of a relative; most recently I did so for my uncle, the artist, Larry Walker.

Trang Huynh
Thương is a powerful word in Vietnamese. Thương means unconditional love, a love that exceeds one’s personal selfishness. When you add the adverb “bị” in, bị thương means being hurt. My work explores the contradictory meanings of this word, illustrating the intertwined relationship between love, pain and forgiveness. Drawing from historical references and personal experiences of growing up in a Vietnamese post-war generation with family members on opposite sides, my work dives into this and serves as a catalyst for healing. My two-dimensional mixed-media paintings portray people with colorful traditional clothing in intimate settings. Colorful linoleum prints of traditional Vietnamese patterns invite a warm welcoming feeling while the highly contrasting color palette represents intense emotions. Rarely meeting the viewers’ gaze, the figures are bound up in moments, interacting with one another amongst a densely layered composition. I create a personal nostalgic narrative that examines my own yearning for love, tenderness and family in relation to generational trauma and forgiveness.

Yoko Izu
As a second-generation Japanese American, my work is rooted in finding a way to bridge the gaps between my cultures, countries, and languages—and creating a place of belonging as a result.

The foundation of my work begins with acrylics, applying different textures and marks to build shapes and depth. I then incorporate specialty papers and gold leaf or gold paint to add further dimension, layers, and contrast.

Though I straddle the line between my Japanese roots and American upbringing, my style and approach are inherently influenced by my family’s heritage and the natural result of the experiences, traditions, and environments ingrained in me. As much as my work is grounded in the complexity of identity and inhabiting the space in between, each finished piece also holds feelings of joy, peace, and resolution.

Roxie Johnson
It is my objective to create intimate and thought-provoking imagery that explores the integration and decomposition of our natural and man-made world.

I employ abstraction, alongside a wide variety of media, to invent complex spatial environments where apparent randomness and disorder suggest an organization happening on a different dimensional level. I like to think of this as a state through which both chaos and order coexist and cooperate.

My approach is one of defining and redefining. Obsessed with layering and peeling away, I find a level of comfort there. It seems to complement my interest in those relationships lying beyond the ordinary field of awareness. And when fully engaged, I feel better able to embrace the unpredictable with possibility, while remaining open to any alternative healing process and ultimate balance in my life. I’m grateful for this emotional and fertile territory. It continues to compel me to recognize our shared humanity in a world of constant change, decay and renewal.

Chong Kang
I paint what is in my present frame of reference with respect to the past.

The environment I exist in is the inspiration. Living in Saugerties year-round, surrounded by the woods, fields and the magnificent sky has been a great source along with my travels to Korea and Japan. There’s a balance between the landscapes of Hudson Valley and East Asia. I’m intrigued with the duality of the organic forms found in nature and the conceptualized shapes and symbols of the East.

My current technique involves the four elements of the earth: wood, fire, water, and air. I’ve discovered the black walnut ink offers a tone of neutral darkness, which has been the base for my paintings. I make my own desired ink which is used to manipulate textures with heat, water, and brushes. The symbolic elements are juxtaposed using colors familiar to the Far East to create a focal point without overpowering. I intend to create a balance between natural organic forms and modernity.

Tracy Leavitt
With high-viscosity oil paint sticks, I draw by laying color on top of color and then manipulate and refine the imagery using a suitcase full of homemade tools. The physical actions of this sketching process – the layering, gouging, smoothing, scraping away, pressing into – obscure and reveal a history of the marks, shapes, and colors. The process parallels the inherent psychology of how we consciously or unconsciously conduct ourselves in pursuit or avoidance of pain and joy in the living of a life. In that context, my current work examines moments of epiphany – sometimes celebratory, sometimes devastating – during which one recognizes something previously hidden, and there is transformation of one sort or another.

This piece is from a series called UnderWater made following a traumatic accident. The symbols emerged in the sketching process to speak to the scrambling of memory, and the truth that healing begins in the pain.

Dorothea Marcus
I am a lifelong art collector who has always had a love of art and an eye for choosing it. In the last several years, I have turned my focus to creating my own art. My “eye” now has a “hand” too, so I can manifest my vision.

I work primarily in collage, printmaking, and photography, and often combine them. I favor abstract imagery, and look for synergy in composition, color, and texture. I work from the “id” rather than the “ego”, quickly and intuitively. My travels often inspire my work.

I study painting, collage, and printmaking at the Woodstock School of Art. I am a founding member of the Women Photographers Collective of the Hudson Valley. My work is exhibited throughout the region.
I live and work in Woodstock, New York.

Jim Nickel
A vajra symbolizes destruction of ignorance allowing for endless creativity and skillful means. Black and white is often used in cautionary signs. These drawings superimpose a double pointed, black and white Vajra symbol over fixed and damaged prints. The decay of the paper and the constantly changing, floating world depicted in the content, are arrested by this symbol.

Yukie Ohta
I seek to capture the beauty of the quiet moments that often slip through the cracks
of our busy lives. I invite viewers to pause, reflect, and rediscover the tranquility
hidden in the depths of everyday existence. My artistic process revolves around the
idea that negative space is as vital as the thread itself. It’s the pause, the silence,
and the absence that gives depth and meaning to my compositions.

David Ort
My current printmaking work explores themes of nature, divinity, distortion, and isolation by layering digital and mechanical processes with interventions by hand. Beginning with photography or found photographic reference, I think of these raw materials as references to reality and unreality to be used as collage fodder or object to study and redraw. The results are distorted images of the world; each image an abstract or dissociative relationship between nature, self, god, and awe.

Suzanne Parker
Three themes have played throughout my life informing my art: whimsy, process, and color. I use humor to cope with adversity, to make social connections, express my ideas, and when necessary, as a weapon. I have always been attracted to process in the form of taking up various artisanal pursuits including fiber arts, stained glass, and mosaics. I began unconsciously, and now with intent, to incorporate these aspects of myself into my work. I aspire to have my art be part of the visual tradition of satire and social commentary. I employ a spectrum of materials and techniques. I gravitate towards the time ravaged and damaged products of nature—weathered wood, rusted metal pitons, which also represent how humans have used, and more often than not, abused nature. My reclaimed wood mostly comes from pallets used to transport rocks destined for construction projects.

Susan Phillips
My mediums are photography and collage.

My photography portfolios deal with beauty found in simple places. I search for things overlooked by people rushing by: street abstractions formed by the effects of traffic and erosion; artistry in torn papers and restructured surfaces; graffiti; oxidized rusted surfaces; reflections in puddles, ponds, or store windows; ice patterns; flowers and food.

I marvel at transience and seek unintended compositions. I adore the constant flow of change, recognizable only upon recurring visits to the same spots. I search for the abstract, aesthetic potential – the visual language – inherent in the random papers left to decompose; the seasonal pond changes. While damaged surfaces are frightful to some, the continual metamorphosis is energizing for me. As my mind studies an array of pasted, torn, painted over graffiti, or a store reflection—fragments of the conscious and subconscious interact, and then choose the final, “elegant”, cohesive composition.

In my collage work, I play. I transfer images, use antique papers, rusted objects, old letters, dried flowers- whatever strikes me as engrossing. Often, I tear up the finished piece and reassemble it . My collages may hint at landscape, suggest the passage of time, or trigger the recall of forgotten dreams and memories. The viewer decides.

Eileen Power
There is magic in manifesting ideas.

I love the process of making art – of turning something upside down and inside out – of trying variations on the same theme. I enjoy exploring the many possibilities of an image or technique. There isn’t a raw material I would turn away. I particularly like upcycling objects others might discard into art.

I am drawn to color, but I also appreciate the absence of color.

A good line is very seductive.

I try to maintain a “what could happen if…” frame of mind. My goal is to remain open to as many possibilities and mediums as possible, to “show up” and see what happens.

Ultimately, I’m fascinated by the inexplicable nature of the process of making and responding to art.

The drawing has to do with breaking down the landscape into abstraction. It is a breaking down of a remembered landscape, much in the manner of Joan Mitchell’s “I carry my landscapes with me“ The drawing is mounted on cradle-wood board.

Regina Quinn
Radiant edges of day, veiled in mystery, quiet as a held breath, yet energized by the tensions between shifting darkness and light—these are my inspirations.

Rooted in my deep connection to the natural world, my encaustic paintings are an expression of my love and sense of stewardship for the fragile balance that allows life to thrive on this planet.

The work is part of my current exploration of ephemerality and beauty in decay.

I lay a variety of papers on my encaustic palette and apply paints to the hot surface. The molten wax moves into and across the paper, often in quite unexpected ways. An image is there for a fleeting moment; in an instant, it has broken apart. This ephemerality makes the process an emotional dance as I respond to the emerging, continuously changing work—joy and loss, juxtaposed.

Betsey Regan
I lost my home and studio in Hurricane Sandy. As I stumbled around in the foggy aftermath, I realized that part of me would be lost forever, and at the same time, part of me would be free.

I found Spanish papers that I bought in Madrid floating around the house. I started to work with them. Somehow, it is creepy, yet alluring, to know they were soaked with the water that ruined me.

Slathering plaster onto paper and then sanding, gouging and scraping causes pain and releases pain at the same time. The process echoes the message.

John Scribner
Anatomical prints, found photos, branches and soil, artificial food, bones, and old toys are some of the provocative objects I reconstitute into art that infuses the familiar with mystery. Collage and assemblage sculpture evoke disjointed narratives that reference History, Science, Literature, and the Arts. Rational bearings are tweaked with humor and critique in work that channel vibrant wells of memory and dreams.

Amy Silberkleit
My work explores the visible effects of natural forces on objects and scenes. Clouds form and reform, roads and fields recede into the distance, buildings, plants and animals age and decay. The sun rises and sets, and its light and heat change the look of our world dramatically between dawn and dusk, winter and summer. I select an object or scene that will be interesting to draw. I then compose the subject and draw it, making hundreds of decisions regarding degree of detail, intensity of shading, what elements to emphasize and which to obscure or leave out entirely.

The tonal range made possible by the lithography stone’s fine texture lends itself perfectly to highly detailed representational art.

Linda Stillman
I am interested in the passage of time in nature. I focus on how plants grow and die and how we try to preserve and remember their fleeting moments of beauty. My work is a collaboration with nature.

I think about the impact humans have had on nature. My emphasis lately has been on how climate change and invasive plant species have been affecting our environment. There is a sense of sadness and doom…and yet plants remain a source of beauty and inspiration.

I consider my cyanotypes a kind of sketch as the work is created quickly and is unpredictable. Like a sketch, things appear as you compose the materials on the treated paper. The chemicals and the sun exposure often produce unexpected results.

Mimi Young
The Distress 16 is part of a series I began in the beginning of 2024. I physically engage each piece with the ground by using a rock or piece of wood to pummel the paper on gravel, dirt, and incidental plant material. There are many variances depending on the weight of paper, how much I wet it with water and the type of surface used. I then use the charcoal from my wood burning stove to make my marks. The irregular shapes influence how the marks are made.

Most of the materials are seemingly natural and organic in nature but have in fact been made. The gravel crushed by machinery and laid as a driveway; the charcoal created by my burning wood for warmth. To further add the human hand, I may roll hardened, unfired clay, pastel or add scraps of discarded fabric or paper.
There are many aspects to these drawings that keep me engaged. They are a captured moment of an almost violent event. Sometimes filled with holes and wrinkled up because of the dousing with water. This piece is comprised of a couple of layers of distressed paper. The added depth really shows how beat up and deformed the paper has ended up. I support the idea of vulnerability by not framing them, I hang the damaged piece by a concealed wire.

In all my work, I reference aspects of my immediate surroundings, mostly distressed and disturbed rural settings. The gestural lines and shapes become a shorthand for my experiences and memories as well as working out a response to the toxic political and environmental events that unfold daily.

The consistent thread throughout my work is change. I am excited by what I can’t see, what is hidden in plain sight and the realization that what is not there is just as important as what is. These disparate elements forming incidental relationships and the patina that emerges creates a unique history. The surface is thus charged with missteps and afterthoughts creating a texture that reveals the pieces’ past. Cause and effect play a large part of where the pieces go. I have no preconceived ideas; I just know by give and take the conflicted process will end up ok with no compromise.