"Regionalism" New Exhibit at Aurelia Gallery

Regionalism definition
American Regionalism is an American realist modern art movement that included paintings, murals, lithographs, and illustrations depicting realistic scenes of rural and small-town America, primarily in the Midwest. It arose in the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression, and ended in the 1940s due to the end of World War II and a lack of development within the movement. It reached its height of popularity from 1930 to 1935, as it was widely appreciated for its reassuring images of the American heartland during the Great Depression. Despite major stylistic differences between specific artists, Regionalist art in general was in a relatively conservative and traditionalist style that appealed to popular American sensibilities, while strictly opposing the perceived domination of French art.

Javier Chalini
Through the creative process I build my visual narrative walking between past and present, gathering memories, dreams, collective concepts, and daily events. This helps me to pass beyond simplistic forms and concepts, find or create symbols, metaphors, and myths that can embody an action or relationship.
Creating images is an exploration of profound understanding of what I have lived or learned but hadn’t made fully conscious. Through the creative process I build my visual narrative walking between past and present, gathering memories, dreams, collective concepts, and daily events. This helps me to pass beyond simplistic forms and concepts, find or create symbols, metaphors, and myths that can embody an action or relationship. It is a visual game that is intolerant of contrived perfection or inhibitions. There are no restrictions with respect to techniques, mediums, or incorporated elements; the source and evolution of my imagery are instinctive. I bring figures and symbols ready to dance in a visual way to conceptualize the space/time, action/reaction, assemblage/ chaos, conflict/passion. In this process, I recognize universal quests, verities, and our individual as well social humanity. I hope that when encountering my journey with these visualized processes, the observer will share in, but also depart from mine to experience their own reflections.

Joe Osmann
Evolving from many years of painting urban street scenes, the direction of my current series explores a whimsical perspective. Raking bands of blue and violet light define villages, plazas and inhabitants in sharp detail, yet with a mood of places visited in dreams. Dreams have long been a fertile ground for human creativity, perhaps the perfect vehicle to look beyond the surface to what lies submerged. I have been attracted to the challenge of giving form to the intangible and symbolic nature of dreams. Inspirations from Edward Hopper and Rene' Magritte and Maxfield Parrish guide my visual stories.
Enjoying the challenges of painting almost every day makes me feel very fortunate to have stubbornly adhered to my early desire to make art.
My mother provided the first family story of my attraction to the visual arts. She noticed me, at age four, drawing my own designs in the margins of a coloring book. I was ecstatic when presented with sheets of blank paper. The pursuit of the visual arts was bolstered by Saturday classes at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh starting at age twelve. While resisting career advise that was often negative toward the arts, I received a BFA in painting from Penn State U. which included a semester at the Slade School of Fine Arts, University College, London. Four months in Europe included tours of many major art museums and exposure to a more positive, continental embrace of art careers. While teaching art and art history, first at a high school and later at colleges in Maryland, I received an MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, while continuing to paint. A program that was very meaningful was a summer gifted and talented arts camp, titled the Maryland Center for the Arts at Goucher College, Towson, MD. I taught painting there and was the director for five years. The faculty was an inspiring collection of visual and performing artists. For the past fifteen years, my retirement in Colorado has been rich with exploring the visually extravagance of the west. Devoting my time to painting and teaching studio and art history courses at the Osher Institute, CSU in Fort Collins has been a pleasure. Recently I taught a six-week course titled, 100 Years of Surrealism. The research included many powerful artists that are not household names, but delightful additions to my current painting ideas. Also, many trips to Santa Fe with explorations of the many galleries and museums has been a positive influence.

Monika Steinhoff
Monika Steinhoff is a Santa Fe-based artist known for her magical realist paintings that explore themes of death, rebirth, and transformation. Originally from Germany, she has lived in Santa Fe since 1973 and began her artistic career in her late 30s with drawings and etchings before transitioning to painting. Her work, which has been collected by the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts and is available at galleries like Aurelia Gallery, is characterized by its unique vision and exploration of the human condition. I have been called a narrative, magic, poetic realism artist addressing my social environment with humor, compassion, and the light.Frieda Kahlo transcended her incredible suffering by going back to her spiritual roots to create unforgettable art. Goya doing Etchings of the suffering of the 100 years war, survived the Inquisition because he was the kings’ first painter. Irven Petlan did the most incredibly beautiful paintings of one of our worst ‘mistakes’: the Vietnam war. Kathe Kolwitz did etchings and paintings of the starving workers and their families on strike for starvation wages, while bearing two sons (one died in the WW I and her grandson in WW II). Bernard Heisig working under the Eastern German communist occupiers, created the most beautiful paintings of heart-rending, archetypal scenes. Van Gogh, a man few could get close to, just wanted people to know his sensitive (and loving) heart (from his letters I picked up in a used book store while a student at the U. of Munich). These were and are still my role models. They believed and expressed the Truth they experienced, as I do.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Aurelia Gallery