Abstract Art Class – An Artful Blend

Mellissa Morris has been teaching an abstract art class for over 10 years.  This exhibit features the works of Mellissa Morris and her students, Pam Abrams-Warnick, Ruth Ann Kane and Liz Dodds Trimbach who have studied with Mellissa for many years.

Mellissa says of her students, “They have honed their individual voices using paint and mixed media to communicate inner emotions, outer impressions and fantastical configurations.  I guide these students through the elements and principles of art and provide assignments that stretch their understanding of the process of making art. Often these particular students have a funny way of teaching me how to be vulnerable, how to push one’s own boundaries, and how to be present in the moment.  I am honored to exhibit with these brilliant ladies… the colors, mark making, shapes, and materials are sure to entice the imaginations and curiosities of onlookers.”

ARTIST STATEMENTS:

PAM ABRAMS-WARNICK:  Pamabramswarnick@gmail.com
Pam is a curious painter always pushing the boundaries and finding ways to insert specks of brilliant color and authentic shapes. Pam’s art ebbs and flows between Chaos, color, and using her imagination. Pam is not afraid to try something different or experiment with new materials to help her paintings grow.
“Marcel Proust stated “the real discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but rather in having new eyes”. My art reflects explorations of my own history and life’s transitions, (some normal, some traumatic), and how this energy finds its way into an abstracted work of art. I love playing with and exploring varied mediums, yet, most recently, I enjoy creating with mixed media and collage. For example, I use an old painting as a substrate, or ripped up artwork, or photographs of my paintings as ephemera; synthesizing the old with the new, thus, creating a new piece that has the history to actually support it. As a retired psychotherapist, I am attuned to the emotion within words. As an artist, I am drawn to the emotion and energy represented by the marks, shapes and colors. Living on Cape Cod, with its natural beauty, also directly informs my work.”

RUTH ANN KANE:   @RUKANE123
Ruth is a Master at composing dynamic images. Imagined and suggestive of people, buildings, or interior spaces are motifs that appear and disappear in her work. She uses several different materials and techniques that surprise viewers.
“Paul Klee described a line as a dot that went for a walk. That’s how I feel when my art takes me away on a journey. I follow the dot, the line, the shape and I find myself lost on a mystery trip. I am eager to be immersed in the language of art, the elements of art, the freedom of experimentation, and the surprising feeling of detachment and lost sense of time when I’m in the zone. My art is evolving toward the abstract with the bold use of black ink, charcoal, collage and color play. As texture builds in a piece, there is often a figure that appears making me ponder its identity and story.

I have followed my love of art and have experimented with watercolors, plein air painting, pastels, acrylics, inks and oils. All of these artistic roads led to collage, mixed media and abstract painting all of which have fed my soul and spirit. I love the way abstract elements appear and disappear with mark making, layering, scraping, and manipulating color and space.”

MELLISSA MORRIS: www.Mellissamorris.com

“I was a sensitive kid crying at the rain and mad at the cracks in the road. My favorite hiding place was at the top of a tree, at the end of the road, where I was able to nestle between branches, stare off into space, and watch the clouds change. I don’t know if it was my upbringing or my New England accent, but my mouth always had a hard time wrapping itself around words that expressed my experiences. When I discovered paint and other media I finally felt like I could express all of my sensitivities and deep connections with Nature, Energy, and Magic.  My work is a cacophony of mixed media materials, evocative marks, torn papers, splashes, drips, and scrapes. I enjoy working on a variety of papers, from time to time my work will show up on canvas or hard wooden boards. I like simplifying and inventing my own painterly abstracted landscapes. I don’t always adhere to a strict Horizon line, Earth, and Sky schematic; in fact, I will often allow those elements to be reversed and/or non-existent in my painted worlds. I collect natural items like rocks, seashells, leaves, sticks, and seaweed and will use those objects in the process of painting by dragging elements through the paint, tracing around the things, or as inspirations for lines and drawings within a painting.”

LIZ DODDS TRIMBACH:
Liz is a provocative mixed media collage artist who often uses her own inventive language and mysterious veils of atmospheric spaces to create luminous compositions. Liz’s pieces are poetic visual gems. NYC-born and now Barnstable-based artist Liz Dodds Trimbach received her BFA from Roger Williams University and an MA in English and Creative Writing from Rhode Island College. In 2015, Liz turned her creative energy to the visual arts, starting in collage at Snow Farm, the New England Craft Program in Williamsburg. Multi-media studies followed.

“An ancient, stained page of text, a water-spotted photo, a bit of torn envelope — these are the things I’m drawn to, that spark my imagination and push my aesthetic button. I’m devoted to mixed media and collage, combining found elements with the marks of my own hand. We humans lose, discard, and leave behind so much material (as well as damage); much like an archaeologist, I want to dig into what is wasted and what remains, attends to their banality and their beauty, creating works that inquire, intrigue, and provoke.”