Experience work by local artists, including a culturally influenced piece created for the Virtual BGIF Art Show.
2021 Virtual Art Show
September 9, 2:00pm Live on the Downing Museum Facebook page – “Joe Downing: Seeking Inspiration from an American Artist in France” hosted by BGIF Virtual Art Show curator Jack LeSieur of Downing Museum at Baker Arboretum.
2021 BGIF Virtual Art Show curator:
Jack LeSieur is the Director and Curator at the Downing Museum at the Baker Arboretum, located in Bowling Green, KY. A Brownsville, native, Jack attended WKU for both undergraduate and graduate studies (Interior Design & Anthropology ’12/Folk Studies ’14). He is an artist who enjoys a mixed media approach to creating, typically achieved through painting, collaging, printmaking, drawing, and stitching, to name a few. A classically-trained pianist (and a former violinist/violist), Jack was a charter member of the Bowling Green Youth Orchestra and has played both professionally and privately for over twenty years. Jack is proud to call Bowling Green home and enjoys working with regional artists from all walks of life. He recently launched a podcast, Art Actuel, where he interviews southcentral KY artists about their inspirations and creations. He enjoys advocating for the arts and promoting the arts as a means of youth and social expression. Jack lives with his partner (Brent), dog (Edie), and cockatoo (Coco).
Yui Aono
Yui Aono is in the 9th grade. They moved from Japan to US in 2017. Their favorite saying is “No art no life” and states that pencil drawings have always helped them in life.
“I’m currently working on digital art, I’m not good enough but I would not like to end my dream, I will do my best on working hard. I want to live with art in the future. Thank you for this opportunity!”
Lisa Manion
LRManionArt
Internationally known as an Artist and Poet, Lisa R Manion has been creating vivid glimpses into the many facets of life from her time spent in Asia, Europe, and abroad. Much of her work has focused on children, from happy moments to traumatic events. Her portraits are highly emotive, bringing the audience’s interpretation inward to explore their own consciousness of societal norms.
Frank Wesley
| Frank Wesley is an Abstract Expressionist painter living and working in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Paintings are semi-automatic where impasto mediums, plaster and/or sand are used in his art making process. Gestural brushwork bring about forms from habit and chance that can be felt as a sort of psychic inner landscape. The paintings are indebted to many French modern art movements from Matisse and Fauvism, to Picabia and Cubism, and to Soutine and the School of Paris. Mixtures of these art movements were used by Arshille Gorky who used biomorphism in improvised works. This then led into Abstract Expressionism . Frank Wesley studied at W.K.U. and S.A.I.C. in Chicago. |
Robert Ellis
Modern Tribal Primitive
I am Rob Ellis, a self-taught, independent artist born in Upstate New York and raised in Kentucky. Heavy influences in my artistic techniques include Picasso, Basquiat, Thoreau and artists within my personal collective. I sell art under the title of Modern Tribal Primitive, work in many different mediums and am always looking to expand my knowledge and capabilities.
Suzanne Menck
As a watercolorist, I try to let the medium tell me what it wants to do. Not forcing the paint to follow my wishes, I think of the process as a dance, where I give guidelines to the paint and let it do what it wants within those parameters. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it is always an interesting journey.
More recently I have branched out into oils and acrylics, using these mediums to play and experiment with color and texture, making more of the decisions and having more control over the work. I’m not entirely sure control is a good thing, which challenges me to find interesting ways to balance control and chaos.
As an artist, I like to experiment, not restricting my creativity by limiting the mediums I use, or the subject matter. Anything I see is fair game to paint and play with to create an interesting piece of art. Enjoy the journey of creativity, rather than being focused on creating a “masterpiece”.
BJ Jordan
BJ Jordan Images
I am BJ Jordan, a lifelong resident of Bowling Green and have been drawing and painting all of my life. I graduated WKU with a degree in Technical Illustration, but professionally I have been a graphic artist for over 23 years. When the COVID quarantines began in spring of 2020, I started watching one of my favorite artist, Roger Dean live streaming while he painted the cover for the latest Yes album cover and influenced me to pick up my brushes, pull out some canvas and jump back into acrylics. I have painted over 14 pieces since, with 11 shown here including “Pinting”, my latest as the cultural entry with Irish influence. I am primarily into photography and love shooting live music events, but have covered sports, weddings, astrophotography, wildlife, flowers, and just about anything that appeals to me. I shot photos of the last BG International Festival and have been asked to shoot, again, this year. This is one reason I went with “Images” versus “Photography” as I also do computer graphics, illustrations, and fine art.