“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” -Pablo Picasso
I think original art is one of the MOST important design elements in an interior. It reveals the personality of the inhabitant, elevates the other surrounding items, and adds a magical dimension to any room. Working on the art for the Southeastern Showhouse was a dream come true. Two of my favorite artists, Brad Thomas and Alexis Walter created works specifically for my spaces and my favorite Charlotte galleries, The New Gallery of Modern Art, Hidell Brooks Gallery, and SOCO Gallery allowed me to curate my own dream installation from the artists they represent, many of whom have become friends. The majority of works are by Southern contemporary artists with a nod to my NYC days represented by Stephanie Hirsch and Scott Duce seen below. By playing with scale, unifying colors, and juxtaposing different mediums, I tried to create harmonious compositions throughout the spaces.
For pricing and inquiries, please click HERE.
BRAD THOMAS
“To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .” ––From “Mystery and Manners” by Flannery O”Connor (1925-1964)
“This mixed-media work is the first in a new series that examines the influence Southern writers have had on shaping my worldview. Having lived and worked in my native North Carolina for most of my life, I am now based in Minneapolis. While this has been a creative and culturally enriching experience, it has also offered objective reflection on those aspects of my heritage that I value most. The very concept of “truth” in contemporary society is constantly being spun, contorted, and tangled. As a result, I seek guidance from those luminaries who have deeply pondered the matter as a means of finding clarity when truth gets “lost in the weeds.”- Brad Thomas
Brad Thomas has over 25 years experience as a professional artist, curator, and administrator. He has served on the Arts & Science Council’s Public Art Commission and has worked alongside dedicated arts professionals and educators at Davidson College, The Mint Museum, and McColl Center for Art + Innovation to promote contemporary art and the artists who make it. In spring 2015 he was awarded UNC- Charlotte’s inaugural Distinguished Alumni Award in Art+Art History. His commissioned works have been featured at the North Carolina Museum of Art, The Halsey Institute for Contemporary Art, and The Craft Museum of Finland. His works are held in numerous private and public collections including the Mint Museum, the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is represented by SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, NC.
Click HERE to read more about Brad’s work.
ALEXIS WALTER
“My paintings, like my hometown of New Orleans, are the result of adding layer upon layer over time to create a rich, compelling narrative.To me, New Orleans is much greater than the sum of its various cultures, architecture, cuisine and music. Although the end result is beautiful in its simplicity, each element adds a layer of complexity that becomes apparent only as you take the time to explore it. My paintings mirror this extraordinary aspect of New Orleans.” -Alexis Walter
SELENA BEAUDRY
Selena Beaudry lives and works in London and received her MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her work consist of piles, cut out collages and oil paintings. The focus of her paintings is color through loose gestural brushstrokes. Her piles and cut out collages are intricate, delicate and precise as they weave across the paper. Selena is represented by Hidell Brooks Gallery.
“Painting is my first love. The languages of paintings are what drives my work the slashes, smears, and blobs are like words or songs for me. Cutting up my paintings and drawings allows me to see my marks in a new fresh way. I create my pallets from the blobs, slashes, hatches and smears.” -Selena Beaudry
KATE LONG STEVENSON
Expressionist painter Kate Long Stevenson was born and raised in North Carolina. She began her professional career while studying at The University of the South. Gestural brushstrokes and a passion for color are characteristic to all of her pieces, ranging from figurative paintings to abstracts. A life-long lover of music, Kate relies on mostly classical compositions to guide her as she builds a painting, layering chords of color over energetic swirls of charcoal and paint. “It’s important to me that my paintings have a subject, despite how non-subjective some can seem. With my nude paintings, the figure is the vehicle that invites you to discover the true subject: the elements–the way it was painted. The abstracts have just skipped that introduction, altogether, but they’re still about something–music, tempo, motion and emotion. It all comes from a feeling, but then the challenge is not only to translate that to the canvas but to have it make sense, compositionally.” Kate lives in Charleston, South Carolina with her two sons and is represented by Hidell Brooks Gallery.
SCOTT DUCE
Scott Duce received his MFA from Boston University and his BFA from the University of Utah. His paintings reveal a fine-tuned understanding of archetypical landscape reinterpreted in an uncompromisingly individual way. Dedicated to the universal rather than the particular, Duce’s keen insight reinvigorates the tradition of landscape painting. Among his awards and honors he has received a National Endowment for the Arts/SECCA artist grant. Scott Duce is on the faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. He paints in his studio in New York City where he captures a lot of his subjects from the in marker series by photographing people going about their every day activities. He is represented bu Hidell Brooks Gallery.
HERB JACKSON
“To require that an image, to be a bearer of content, must be recognizable is to suggest that there is no form to the unknowable.”-Herb Jackson
Herb Jackson’s childhood he was a regular at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh and won his first award for art in a juried exhibition there in 1962, as a teenager. He received his undergraduate degree from Davidson College and three years later he earned his Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. in 1969, while finishing up his graduate studies, Jackson began teaching at Davidson. He soon became the chair of the art department which he held for 16 years. He retired from teaching in 2011. Jackson’s work is now in more than 80 collections including the British Museum in London and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City.
In 1999, Herb Jackson was given the North Carolina Award by the governor. This is the highest civilian honor bestowed by the state. Herb Jackson’s paintings are built up in many layers which are scraped off as they are being applied. Shapes and marks come and go as the painting develops to a hundred or more layers. The final outcome is the result of a process of discovery similar to the life experience itself. He is represented by Hidell Brooks Gallery.
GERALDINE NEUWIRTH
Geraldine Neuwirth attended the American University before moving to Los Angeles where she studied under the artist Martin Lubner for six years. Lubner had his own teaching space in Los Angeles and was an art professor at UCLA. Her work has been influenced by Elizabeth Murray, Frank Stella, Terry Winters, and Arshile Gorky to name only a few. Geradline handles paper in such a way that is only learned over time with a mature hand and a unique vision complied from a life full of experiences.
Early years “I spent time watching rehearsals, waiting for my dad who worked for Shubert theaters, and “a world within a world” became present to me. I later carried it into a theme connected to the circus, representing the stage of life and many aspects existing beneath it.A vocabulary of forms developed in my process, and i have been working with this language and allowing the freedom of it to explore different ways of building my images.
Creating this “thread of existence”, exists historically as well as spiritually. The spiritual being particularly important to me as I look at life in a layered way and enters into my work increasingly as i physically build layer upon layer of paper as well as building many layers of reality, revealing an energy that reaches beyond the visible.” The artist is represented by Hidell Brooks Gallery.
SHAUN CASSIDY
Shaun Cassidy was born in Surrey, England. He studied sculpture at Norwich School of Art, Norfolk, UK and at the University of Alberta, Canada. His sculptures have been exhibited extensively throughout the US including the Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; Franconia Sculpture Park, MN; Forum for Contemporary Art, St Louis, MO; the Columbia Museum of Art, SC; and the De Cordova Museum, MA. Cassidy is a Professor of Sculpture in the Department of Fine Art at Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC. Whether sculpting or drawing, Cassidy is concerned with the relationship between color, surface, and form “to evoke feelings and a contemplative state one often associates with being immersed in a natural environment of astounding beauty.” Shaun is represented by the New Gallery of Modern Art.
STEPHANIE HIRSCH
Stephanie Hirsch has exhibited throughout New York, the Hamptons, Miami, and Los Angeles. In 2015, she was awarded an artist residency at the P3 Studio at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, curated in partnership with Art Production Fund. Given her background of a degree in costume design and founding and designing a resort fashion line for over 10 years, Hirsch’s work lends itself to the world of fashion and has therefore been featured in Miami Design District’s Art Walk, showcased in the Mercedes Benz VIP lounge at Lincoln Center during New York Fashion Week, and a commission by the iconic beauty brand Erno Laszlo to create a Crown for The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee for display at Harrods, London. Hirsch currently lives and works in New York City and is represented by The New Gallery of Modern Art.
Click HERE to read more about Stephanie’s work.
STEPHEN WILSON
Born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, Stephen Wilson is a conceptual artist whose unique medium carries his message. Blending luxury fabric, 3D-printed sculptures, laser-engraved acrylics, and highly detailed embroidery pieces, Wilson’s manipulation of multiple materials produces wholly original works of art. His early career in the commercial fashion industry, along with a wildly successful embroidery software company, has equipped Wilson with a range of technical skills. His work channels Americana, high fashion, and traditional crafts and is influenced by pop art, street art, graffiti, and iconography, as well as traditional quilting and handicrafts. Each artwork is unique and expertly crafted in his Charlotte, North Carolina studio, using both traditional and modern tools. The artist is represented by The New Gallery of Modern Art.
Click HERE to read more about Stephen’s work.
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