ArtTalk – Meet the Artists – Viewers’ Choice

We asked you, the viewer, which artists in the 92nd Juried Art Show you would like to hear more from and you responded! Here are the three artists selected from your suggestions: Luiz Vilela, Rita Siemienski Smith and Jan Lipes. Three very different artists with unique styles and histories with the exhibition. We will discuss their works, inspiration and what the Phillips’ Mill Juried Art Show means to them. Be sure to join us on October 24th for an exciting show.

Artist Bios:

Luiz Vilela

Luiz Vilela works primarily in oil but his proficiency extends to watercolor, charcoal, pastel and pencil on paper. His work includes landscapes and river scenes painted in the environs of Bucks County and Lambertville where he lives. He is renowned for his interior scenes of iconic area landmarks, especially the Boathouse Bar. Cape Cod and Provincetown are another source of inspiration for his images, and also Brazil, Europe, especially Yorkshire in England where he likes to summer often, painting the English landscape. Luiz’s mastery of portrait and figurative work reflects years of study at Studio Incamminati under the tutelage of Nelson Shanks. He has also studied with Ronald Sherr and David Leffel, among others.
 

Rita Siemienski Smith

Contemporary life can be recorded as angry, vulgar or obscene. Rita Siemienski Smith chooses to relate to and be inspired by the peaceful, beautiful and spiritual qualities of man and nature. The process of creating art is her passion. Color and line produce surface patterns and textures on paper and canvas, using watercolor, oil or acrylic as her medium. Nature, abstracted or suggested, appears as subject matter in many of her paintings. Landscapes, waterways and linear sketches drawn while traveling become idea references. Imagination along with inspiration and invention produce the painting while intuition completes the process.
 

Jan Lipes

Jan Lipes is a self-taught painter who works in the Pennsylvania Impressionist style. He paints mainly in oil, and his subject matter is the landscape of the area in and around Bucks County, Pennsylvania and Hunterdon County, New Jersey, particularly scenes along the Delaware River. In 1991, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and leaving his career as a physician, Lipes began painting. His subject matter follows the Pennsylvania Impressionist tradition of depicting local buildings, trees, hills, and the river or canal, though his rendering often presents a heightened expressiveness through a bold color palette and hundreds of visible brushstrokes that comprise the work.