Alicia Saxe - Glass Souls Michelle Vigeant - paintings William Sharp - paintings June 2-29, 2023 MICHELLE VIGEANT: paintings Lions, tigers and bears, oh my! Portraits of big cats on bodies of stars, surreal foxes and colorful swirls of textural "sound" grace the canvas. Michelle Vigeant is a visual artist from Sunderland who uses a variety of media to paint expressive scenes of animals. Lately, she has been exploring sound and feeling through the use of heavy textural acrylic mediums. She experiences synesthesia, a phenomenon where some people can "see" sound as color or light, and she tries to capture this in her work along with the soul of the creatures she portrays. ALICIA SAXE: Glass Souls I started painting glass in 1999 as my mother had collected a large pile of blue bottles and I wanted to utilize them in some way. While I had previously painted abstracts, what appeared on the bottles were faces, mostly primitive. Over the next 23 years, I refined the faces so that they were more often based on photos I saw and I would then alter them and add abstract elements. I call them Glass Souls because they are evoking the individual and unique expression within all of us. WILLIAM SHARP : Recent Works Recently I turned 80 years old and feel fortunate to be able to paint most everyday in my home studio in Florence. Throughout my 60 years of oil painting I have painted still life, portraiture, plein air; both abstract and realistic. From the earliest time in my career, the mastery of color has been my desideratum. With the recent works included in this show, I have focused on color divisions to create harmony, and color contrasts to create movement. Along with my study of Greek mythology and primitive art, I have been inspired to imagine and paint invented and vibrant compositions. These compositions are vehicles for experimentation with color and also express what I hear from the natural and spiritual world. My paintings are an orchestration of color and story that sparkle and excite the mind of the viewer.