Ash Roberts
Ash Roberts has an enduring connection to the natural world, which is rooted in her childhood, having learned its artistry from her parents, who worked in landscape design. “It’s a very poetic sensibility or way to live. To observe how a garden grows over time, and to witness how it all comes together,” says Roberts. “You learn early on that nature is the best metaphor.”
With an ethereal color palette, Roberts’ work evokes that of Claude Monet, in the way she conveys the sensation of nature’s transience, rather than the literal objects before her. She is also interested in further iterations of the ideas, techniques and colors put forth by Monet in particular, the abstract expressionist paintings of Joan Mitchell, who responded to the same sliver of landscape in Giverny that Monet painted, many decades later.
The work of Helen Frankenthaler and the Color Field painters of the 1960s and 70s have also been influential to Roberts, whose paintings feature large swaths of uninterrupted color a melange of different tones which seem, suddenly, to crystallize into areas of figuration: a flower, leaf or lily pad appearing from the depths. Whilst the landscape as a subject has prevailed over many centuries, Roberts’ exploration is rooted in the current moment, where nature and politics have become entangled, and the natural world is in flux, if not decline
Recent developments have seen the artist incorporate gold leaf, either as an all over wash or as an accent. Making reference to the Japanese technique of Kintsugi and the philosophy of Wabi Sabi, these pieces explore ideas of beauty, value and imperfection. “My work is about nature, or rather, the ephemeral things in nature the fleeting experiences that only last a certain time, or that you can’t quite articulate in words.”
Roberts lives and works in Los Angeles, painting in a light filled studio in Koreatown. Having studied at Otis College of Art and Design, recent collaborations include a project with Rowse (2023), and a commission by Festen Architecture for a 300 sq ft mural, which is on view in Soho, NYC.
Caroline Kaufman
Caroline Kaufman is a New York City based textile artist. Her work investigates the interaction between color, texture, and pattern through processes of traditional craft. The artist uses synesthesia as well as an instinctual relationship with color to translate daydreams into abstract color depictions.
Caroline holds a BFA in Fashion Design with a focus in textiles from Pratt Institute. She is a nation al winner of the Windgate Fellowship from the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design. Other achievements include a Positive Impact Award and Junior Venture Fellowship (Brooklyn Fashion + Design Accelerator), Varda Artist Residency returning artist (2017-2020 Sausalito California), Ideas Island Residency (2022 Stockholm Sweden).
Hermentaire
Born in 1972, Damien de Medeiros is a French artist living and working in Paris (France) and Paros (Greece).
Damien is a multi-disciplinary artist who expresses his creativity in various art forms and disciplines. First a music composer, he started by making a name for himself by composing original soundtracks for documentary films. He then became a film maker, a photographer and more recently a decorator. Each artistic practice nourishes and complements each other. While doing all these artistic activities, Damien has always painted and drawn. He has developed this particular visual vocabulary overtime and signs his pictorial work under the name Hermentaire, his third middle name, a reference to the Saint who killed the dragon of his home town in southern France.
His work is constantly evolving whether it’s the format or the form. For some time now, in addition to acrylic on canvas, he has been painting with water colors on paper. His interest in this technique started as he enjoyed the possibilities of transparency watercolors allow. He first created more or less zoomorphic colorful characters whose shapes have unconsciously evolved
towards characters with more African inspirations, maybe a tribute to one of Damiens' heritage. He has created the members of an imaginary tribe, he named «Djambo O’cibilé» (in reference to the title of a song he wrote and composed and which is of course their anthem). They appear in monochrome, mostly black, brown, sometimes blue or gold. Recently Hermentaire has introduced more colorful and diverse portraits but regardless of the color, they all share a strong personality.
While creating this collection of characters, sometimes represented as a couple, sometimes alone, he began to stage them in their environment. His characters appear now in several sceneries and landscapes. The Djambo's are shy, somewhat a hidden tribe, a little suspicious, as until now, they lived quietly in their natural element in the heart of nature which is today disrupted, threatened by the violence of the modern world. Therefore, there will always be an eye somewhere in his work and Hermentaire plays around this sometimes in a figurative way, sometimes in more abstract composition.
While ongoing his artistic journey, Damien has also collaborated on a few interior design projects for the renown interior architect & designer Emmanuelle Simon (AD100) as a decorator in which many of his paintings have been showcased and included. He has also done a few commission works for other interior designers. One of his work has served for the design of Maison Balzac’s special perfume Candle “Le Rêve” (2021), he was also commissioned as decorator and art director to design a store in Paris for Bienaimé, a French perfume brand, in collaboration with the interior designer Paul de Saint Maur. Damien also made an illustration representing the perfume bottle.
After contributing to exhibition shows in Paris (Galerie Jag in 2019 & 2020), in London at Atelier LK (2021), or MAH Gallery (2022), Hermentaire is currently participating in a group show The Land of Wonder in Melbourne at Otomys Gallery until Dec 15th before his solo show that will take place there in August 2024.
Damien’s constant creativity has led him to co-direct & co-produce with his wife Alexandra Leroux their short film Cosmos Melancolia for which he has also composed the music. The film has already won numerous awards in several international film festivals in 2023.
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