Beth Adams
An active artist and jewelry designer, Beth Adams' abstract paintings have been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows at galleries in the United States and Canada, and at the "Artquake" exhibition juried by New York's Newsweek art critic, Peter Plagens. Beth's work has also been selected to appear in many invitational events including the San Francisco Art Commission's invitational juried exhibition and the Bellevue Art Museum's invitational auction. In addition to her work as an exhibiting artist, Beth has taught drawing, painting and art history at Seattle Pacific University and at the University of Washington Experimental College. The former Executive Director of the Kirkland Arts Center, Beth is a partner at Hannigan/Adams Goldsmiths, Carillon Point, Kirkland, Washington. Her jewelry has been shown at Saks Fifth Avenue, Union Square, San Francisco and Naples, Florida. Her work is currently shown at Saks Fifth Avenue fine jewelry, Palm Desert, The Gardens on El Paseo.
She was chosen in 1996 as one of 12 U.S. designers at the International Jewelry Exhibition, Jacob Javits Center, New York City. Ms. Adams' painting was exhibited in the International Juried Competition, at Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, Washington, July through October, 1996. her "Pink Umbrella" painted for Absolut Vodka and shown at the Seattle Art Museum, toured the United States and is included in the Absolut Vodka permanent collection in New York City. She is most recently included in the 31st Annual Juried Exhibition at the Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, California, March through April, 2000; and a solo painting exhibition at the Desert Art Collection, Palm Desert, California, in 2004-05; as well as gallery IMA, Seattle, Washington, 2006.
Beth writes:- Over the last 30 years my paintings have evolved to include non-objective portrayals of landscape (interior and exterior). They are informed by color, gesture, energy, time and place. Symbols and meditative allusions are meant to invite the viewer into a peaceful dialogue.
Lis van Baarlen
Lis writes:-
I just do what I like to do....painting & drawing.
Never a plan...let it happen...
Stuart Baumber
Stuart Baumber discovered his passion for Art in the Technical Drawing room at Cottenham Village College in 1982. Pursuing a career in Engineering led Stuart down the avenue of Draughting and Computer Aided Design. As an avenue for his creativity, he turned to photography as his preferred media. He loves to capture the beauty in the every day, noticing the minute details that others might pass by. One of his favourite subjects is Ely and the surrounding areas, especially the monumental Cathedral. When Stuart is not observing life through a lens, he enjoys long-distance running, exploring the Norfolk coast, cooking Paella over a fire pit and owl spotting. In addition to the traditional styles of photography, Stuart also enjoys creating unusual and interesting images. This sometimes involves filling the room with smoke, setting up shots for multi-exposures, food, drink and sweets, and even making parts for Pinhole Photography.
The 'Ely Windows' images are Stuart's latest venture, which is to be rolled out over other Cities and their beautiful buildings. They are produced using the traditional method of collage, but taken to a whole new level in Adobe Photoshop. Armed with his trusty Nikon camera, Stuart captures the detail and intricacies of the numerous illuminated windows and Ely's shops, watering holes and residences of an evening. When he has loaded his virtual palette with a plethora of suitable windows, he goes about composing his digital painting.
Each window is painstakingly cut out and placed upon an outline of Ely Cathedral, which is then deleted. This leaves the warmth and vibrancy of Ely's windows shining through the darkness. Each window gives the suggestion of a doorway, arch, stained glass window and the various nooks and crannies of the Cathedral.
Each print is laminated with a water resistant laminate to maintain the highest possible quality of your Artwork.
Andrew Crane
As a student at the Central School of Art in London, Andrew Crane studied graphic
design - it was then that he developed a love for the typographic and handwritten
elements that are prevalent in his abstract paintings today.
Much of his adult life was spent in the west country, where he swapped the rigours
of type for the freedom of brush and canvas. His recent work will often contain cement
and painting materials acquired at the hardware store.
He admits that turning up at a blank canvas can be a daunting process -
"Daunting, yes ...but also thrilling! Invariably, the starting point for me, contains no
preconception - The cement is applied - 'imperfections' appear and
vanish ...appear again some other place - A line occurs, a shape, a number, a
stray blob drips from the trowel ...gradually there is form in the mix."
Andrew now lives and works at the very top of England in the wild landscape of
Northumberland. His studio is a shed, and when the wind blows strong - which it does,
he says - you may find him up the ladder with another large rock to hold the roof down.
Liz Doyle
Liz writes:-
I am English. I was born in Germany, I grew up mostly in England, but I also lived in Nepal for 2 very colourful and formative years. I lived as an adult for 25 years in Wales. Now I live in Ireland, on a tiny island (luckily with a road bridge!) off the coast of Donegal. I have 3 adult children and one precious new grandchild.
I paint in oils and often work on a large scale (so far up to 2m x 2m), mainly with a palette knife. Recently I have been experimenting with other mediums and techniques including printing (stone lithography and zinc plate etching) and mixed media collage.
I am always inspired by the rugged landscape of Donegal, the texture, light and sounds of the sea.
My work is also hugely influenced by my contemporaries on Facebook. These include Andrew Crane, Animal Pintor Pauli Josa, Carl Heyward, Josee van Lierop and many more. From the long prestigious history of art I have been much influenced by the work of JWTurner, the Impressionists, Paul Cezanne, Mark Rothko and Antoni Tapies.
I post regularly on 2 FB art groups: Arte Internazionale (closed group) and G R A P H I C (open group).
Simon Drew
Simon is internationally renowned for being world's foremost authority in the field of Sometimesology. It was his extenstive, intensive, expensive and pensive research into this field that eventually led to the creation of Happy Cow's Magical Sometimes Machine. Regular visitors to Happy Cow will also recognise Simon as a prolific contributor to our Poems section. His mesmerising lyrical wanderings are a firm favourite with many of our site visitors.
Not content with being a genius at just two things, Simon is also one of the world's greatest idiotic dancers and has managed to fill several of our galleries with his unique and varied art work. If we didn't know him better, we might think he was showing off.
Simon was raised by wolves. They later lowered him again, after he said he didn't like it much up there. Speaking later about the notorious incident, a spokeswolf said, "Aroooooooooooooo!"
Simon's recent achievements include seducing a ladybird with his little finger, teaching a bumblebee to carry large stacks of plates without dropping any, convincing a pedant that it would be much more fun to be a pedwasp, completing a diploma of web design with the Academy of the Golden Orb Weaver, and being a personal trainer for a large pod of dolphats (who have now lost enough weight to once again be known as dolphins).
Celia Fett
Once famously sung about by Simon and Garfunkel with a stutter before she was even born, Celia Fett is internationally renowned for also inadvertently breaking the hearts and shaking the confidence daily of several other leading rock stars from the sixties and seventies including Johnny Cash, The Doors, Slade and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
On Thursday afternoons if she is not too busy, Celia can sometimes be found controlling global weather patterns with her mind in order to help nice sailors get to where they want to go more quickly. A gnarly old ship's captain from Nova Scotia, Canada was once quoted as saying, "Well, that was a stroke of luck." He had no idea about the quietly benevolent nature of Celia's wind direction mind-domination hobby, and probably never will.
Celia also invented the moon.
The FJ Collective
The FJ collective is comprised of Leigh, Hannah and Ruby, 1 mother and 2 daughters.
Hannah is 13 years old and regular visitors will recognise her as the author of the wonderful poem Water Paints. Hannah is wonderful at whatever she decides to be wonderful at and when not producing creations for HC she can be found 'playing out' and shopping.
Ruby is 10 years old and regular Happy Cow visitors will also recognise her as the star of the article Life is Wobbly. When she was 6, she wrote in to HC advice with her thoughts about love in a letter called Levels of Love. When not throwing out words of wisdom, she can be found producing her own music videos and chatting all night to Lucy.
Leigh is the mum. She works, walks the dog, takes photos, sometimes writes random things, cooks, breaks up fights, chats with strangers and secretly thinks she could be a famous singer. Just watch this space.
And we love our dog, Puddles. Ruby said that needed to be included and I think she is right.
Tim Grosvenor
Tim Grosvenor is an artist living and working from Switzerland.
Born in Madagascar, he has lived in the UK, France and now in Dübendorf, near Zurich. He studied Fine Art at the University of Reading, UK where he obtained his degree. He has exhibited in the UK, France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. His work can be found in private collections in Europe and the United States.
The incredibly intricate detail of some of Tim's art work means that it can often be mistaken for close-up high-definition photography and his wonderful understanding of light and darkness create amazing illusions of depth and three-dimensional space.
Amy Hany
If the world, or life, is seen as an optical instrument, eventually we might find a position from which the works of Amy Hany are looking at us. Upon seeing her art, many different feelings arise. But are they still the same if we name them? What's still real if we want to feel them? Do we get an answer to her pictures of women? Are these women stared at, desired, manipulated? Are they the artists and we the objects?
Her artworks are letters: with addressee, for now, unknown. Are we the adressees? Are we allowed to read them? Is the content already written or are we the content?
At first glance, we seem to know what her pictures and videos are showing, how she sees her women's world, how potentially broken her conviction is, how fathomless, psychotic, destructive, sexualised below the pretty, folkloristic surface. Or are we the subject, our illusion is experienced through the mirror of her pictures?
The diversity of artworks come together to form an ornament, in which colours become an instrument, a weapon. An ornament of sense perception. We'd like to be reminded of the "neuen Wilden" (New Wilds), which is made easy for us. The art's directness leaves us the task of absorption. We get into a relation of vagueness. The pictures and thoughts that appear while watching are snowflakes. Beautiful, white, cold, crystal sharp.
Telling stories? Is that what art is? Or discovering stories, in there, between me, mirror and picture? Here lies the "point de vie", the "point de vue". It is all in all a strong snowfall (a heavy snow flurry of interpretations), that we can watch from the warmth of a heated room, or...
The longing for solace is extensive, says Haus Blumenberg.
Pete Hughes
Pete Hughes is the creator of the Happy Cow website and used to be well known for annoying you with his stories, poems and philosophical ramblings before he gave all that up to spend a few years contemplating the colour of different kinds of gravy. Occasionally, Pete creates a little picture that makes him laugh but doesn't make anyone else laugh. Because this is Pete's website, he is in a position to force all of these pictures onto you poor, unsuspecting visitors whether you like it or not.
Since September 2011, Pete has been wondering why the sky keeps throwing things at him, and he regularly gathers up things to throw back at the sky, but so far he has not quite perfected his throw. His boomerang does come back, and quite often hits him on the head, causing a nasty gash.
Pete is currently made out of mashed potato with a bit of garlic and chives mixed in.
Ann Jacoby
The Danish painter Ann Lundén Jacoby, born in Sweden, went a long way before her artistic talent popped up from deep down. Trained as a sociologist from Uppsala University, it took her over twenty years to choose another track than the academic. She started as a personal manager and concert producer in the classical music life of Copenhagen and ran her small business for ten years. Ann celebrated her 50th birthday by arranging a big charity gala for the Academy of Music in Sarajevo with 40 participating artists. Shortly afterwards, she began to fall into a deep depression, a room without a language. Long walks outside of Copenhagen was her only way to avoid the chaos.
Ann recalls:-
"Suddenly I noticed a different world than before. I started to register that the trees had different forms and colours and I noticed how light and darkness get everything to differ. I loved my walks because this new universe appeared. I had never in my life painted or made drawings, but I loved art and grew up in a home with a lot of paintings on the walls.
"It actually started in our summerhouse on an island north of Stockholm. I found some of the things that the kids used when they grew up - watercolours and crayons etc., and started to paint the forest, the view from the window in the house....and I just could not stop!"
Ann then had the good fortune to be accepted to train at a very good private art school where she was allowed to experiment and play .......Today only 12 years later we can see she has become a quite astonishing artist...
Amanda Morris Johnson
Amanda Morris Johnson has been writing poetry since she was a child. She received a B.A. from the University of Colorado in in Creative Writing focused on poetry and then promptly moved to Hollywood to discover how to write screenplays. Working with respected literary agents, successful independent producers, and finally landing at Paramount Pictures, she wrote at the same time 7 speculative screenplays that managed to make the rounds there but fell short of selling, and everything from CD Rom Games to text books along the way. A little side road led to a successful sprint as a Publishing Consultant and Liaison in the world of STAR TREK, where she coordinated writers, and worked closely with publishers on the other side of the pond...in London and Paris... to create the largest, most in depth published reference of all things STAR TREK. She's been teaching screenwriting in Boulder and Denver through adult education groups, and also has worked with clients privately since 2003.
She was the co-founder of The Shoot Out Boulder in 2004. Since 2009 she has revisited poetry and is working on a book of poetry to go with her own designs of a Tarot Deck, called The Kosmic Egg (with a "K") as well as consulting on several film projects. She's also recovering from brain surgery, done in February, to remove a benign tumor from her left temporal lobe.
Amanda writes:-
"My mission as an Artist and Writer is to hold first and then crack open the shell of reason and logic so as to bring about life's metamorphosis. Kosmic Egg Projects expose our greatest risks and worries, dislodge disgrace so we can ground ourselves again, and embrace the love we cannot live without in this lifetime."
Natasha Kirke
Natasha is young artist from London creating pieces that will either make you "Ooh" or "Ahh" or run away in terror. Natasha's work includes sculpture, pencil, pen and ink drawings, traditional and digital painting, mixed media and photomanipulation.
John McKie
John McKie was was born in 1960 in the north of England. He's been all over but now lives there again. He has become wise to the World, so he cries and cries and cries and then laughs and laughs and laughs, and finds it hard to stay in the middle ground. He tries to make nature his friend, but sometimes that's hard because he doesn't live in a cave and he has a TV and a radio.
His pictures have sold in good numbers and are now all over the World. He has exhibited in Scotland and Germany and soon in London, Belgium and the USA.
Göran Nilsson
Göran wrote:-
Jack of all trades, worked with most things. Education in social work at Lunds University, Sweden, after which I worked as a social worker with all kinds of human hardships, through counselling and therapy, mainly picture therapy which led me to self-insight and art. For me, my art is not just to paint, it is a direct conduit from the subconsious mind to the canvas, and through this process I develop myself as a human being.
I am not so much a fan of 'nice art' or 'pretty pictures' - my preferences lies towards the abstract but with an intent, a purpose, a message, a lesson. My medium is acrylic on canvas and I love the palette knives as much as the brushes and try not to get stuck in one genre but rather to experiment as much as possible, and the rules in art, I break them gladly. An empty canvas is like a universe where I can create whatever I please without following any rules but those I wish to follow. Thus in painting I am free.
Claudio Parentela
Claudio Parentela is an illustrator, painter, photographer, mail artist, cartoonist, collagist and freelance journalist. He has been active for many years in the international underground scene.
In 1999 he was guest of the BREAK 21 FESTIVAL in Ljubliana(Slovenja). His obscure and crazy artworks have been exhibited in many, many art galleries both on the Web and in the real world too.
Lottie Parker
When she is not having her playing time wasted by having to go to school, Lottie (who is nine years old at the time of writing) can be found playing, playing, playing, and thinking about what to play next. When she has had enough of playing, she goes to sleep. Sometimes the playing takes the form of creating art work. Lottie enjoys bright colours and patterns but also sometimes likes to do sketches.
Visitors to Happy Cow may recognise Lottie as the star of one of our earliest articles - Love Peepl. She also starred alongside her sister Erin in Bee Fives and is the creator of Happy Cow's jolly canine friend Ruffster Dog.
When she grows up, Lottie wants to be an artist, a writer, a vet, an actress, a pop star, a movie director and a mermaid.
Patricia Zinsmeister Parker
Patricia Zinsmeister Parker has been painting and printing for the last 5 decades. A retired professor from the University of Akron, School of Art, she makes her home in Northeastern, Ohio, U.S.A. Her studio is a 1000 sq. ft. space which will be showcased in a soon to be published book ( Artists Studios) by author E. Ashley Rooney and published by Schiffer Inc. Exhibiting in both national and international venues, her work expresses a unique visual vocabulary honed by a faithful intuition and an intellectual discipline. To quote a message from a facebook friend, David Astbury, "of all the artists I follow, you are the 'artist at large'. You make brilliant visual comments on what we all see and give it a new twist. And you are formidably self confident. Your work is utterly individualistic-as all good art is-but individualistic in the sense that it is immediately recognizable as yours-no one could do this like you do. I love seeing your work.
Patricia writes : My paintings have never really been accessible to everyone, indeed, they seem to appeal to viewers who are willing to struggle with a work of Art and/or just access it on a purely intuitive, visceral basis. It takes imagination on the part of the viewer to 'read into' visual imagery-or sometimes no imagery-just color, since color may be content in much of contemporary art. Painting, is for this artist, a form of therapy, a life line, a means of communicating some kind of message. Strangely enough, ( I don't always know what the message is) but still, I need to paint it! Sometimes, years after the completion of a painting, I am able to understand it in terms of what was going on at that time in my life. All art is, after all, autobiographical in nature.
It's also true that I take pride in 'taking no prisoners' when making Art-in other words, I try to strip myself of artifice and extraneous details that interfere with my basic message. I work hard at eliminating all the little ''tricks'' that we all (artists) know about making things look good and pretty. This is a daily challenge because I live in a very conservative part of the country and it's easy to lose ones way and fall back on gimmicks, predictability and the need to conform.
I love Happy Cow and I feel honored to be a part of the 'family'.
George Raica
George wrote:-
I spent my youth growing up in the small town of Westerville, Ohio. I attended Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio, where I graduated with a B.A. in Lit. and Fine Arts. In 1972, I was accepted to Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan where I received my Master of Fine Arts Degree in painting in 1974. I later directed two College Art Galleries in Michigan and upstate New York and was Exhibition’s Coordinator at the Alternative Museum New York City in 1990; I have been making art of one kind or another ever since....
Quite simply, I am a Formalist by nature. To me, abstract and nonobjective artwork have their own language, their own rare, unprecedented vocabulary; this language engages the interrelationships among the visual elements of line, shape, and its various configurations and size- color, with its corresponding attributes of hue, value and saturation; I am given to manipulate these elements in a variety of ways, primarily with a brush, trowel or my fingers.
Just as important as the application of materials, is its removal, using similar tools of the trade. Philosophically, I strive to be a painter’s painter, evoking in other artists, and those with the benefit of an 'eye' educated in the artfulness of the artwork’s vocabulary. I also strive to evoke in the viewer a sense of pleasure, delight, wonder and awe, without representation or subject matter. The visual language should do this for me. It is its own subject matter, unto itself. Form is the content of my work, and the context within which it evolves towards Beauty.
Lizbeth Spurgeon
Lizbeth wrote:-
A while back I became inspired to write poems and connect them with Art by some of my artist friends.......then one day I tried to explain a painting of a lady in a lake with feet on a lily pad!!!
Well, I was encouraged to try and paint that myself ......and I did. I really enjoyed getting some paint and decided to give more time to paint play. 3 years on I believe I am so absorbed by paint and the mindless place it takes me that it is unlikely that I will ever stop.....well if I still have room in the house to store works that is .......so now I paint from the minds eye and from the waking night visions and love the days I can be free to do so.
Rebecca Steelman
Rebecca is a single mom, art lover, collector, and painter living in Southern California. She is simple-minded, and hard-working. Life is living anew each day to her, the moment being its own source of amazing wonder .... and so naturally, her artwork likewise finds expression of soul and spirit in and through life with great spontaneity, freedom, concern for nature and environment, and sometimes conceptual fun.
Rebecca's work is eclectic, moving freely from one painting or drawing to the next among her varied interests. She has done many portrait commissions, yet currently, the direction of her work flows in a wide variety of media in paintings of forest landscapes, and in playful abstracts and conceptual collage paintings, such as in her 'Lifescape', 'Colour from Palette', and 'Nihilist Run In' series, all an on-going spontaneous way to let spirit and paint lead the way.
At this time she is working on getting a great website created, but for now invites her audience viewers, fans, and clients to view her updated work in her albums which she has posted in her photo albums on her Facebook page.
Fionn Wilson
Fionn Wilson is a self-taught artist living in London. Her main focus is expressionist figurative painting including portraits, landscapes and still life. Through her work as a painter she seeks to examine and explore the sensuality of presence in space and colour, not least the presence of the human form.
She says: "Painting is almost like a space I enter and, despite the frustrations that sometimes go with it, it is for me a place of pure delight. I love painting and I love looking at paintings. I like the thickness of the paint and the smell of it. I like the various brushes and the exotic sounding names of the different colours that I use. There are few things I enjoy as much and I paint because I wouldn’t know how not to paint. It is such a vital part of my life that I can not imagine myself without it".
Fionn says she is interested in exploring "life force through sexuality, the energy 'behind' things, light and the creation of spaces". She very rarely knows what she will paint when she picks up a brush. Her paintings are the result of following a series of "mistakes" and the painting often seems to paint itself. It's like the paint "knows what to do".
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