Crossing Paths coming to Sveum Gallery in September

This show is a collaboration of four artists who have been exchanging information, supporting each other, and critiquing each other’s work for the past eight years. Over that time, our individual art practices have developed, expanded, and grown in ways we could not have expected. We initially came together because of our shared interest in watercolor painting, but as we have journeyed together, we have experimented with other media, techniques and materials, and encouraged each other to refine and expand our individual vision.​

Crossing Paths is a reference to that journey. While pursuing our own paths this collection honors our intersection: our Crossing Paths.  As we present our individual views of the world as expressed through our artwork, we also celebrate generous spirits, individual accomplishment and - most of all - friendship. 

Janine Bessenecker
Art in any form has always been interesting and important to me. I spent a lot of my childhood drawing and making designs with color. I received my BA in Interior Design from Iowa State University and moved to Madison where I worked for an architectural firm for several years. While my children were growing up, I started teaching art to middle and high school students in the Madison home school community. I also took classes myself, studying watercolor through MSCR and Madison College. I have participated in WRAP (Wisconsin Regional Arts Program), and am a member of Madison Watercolor Society.
For me, painting is a way to pause, reflect and take notice of what is meaningful and beautiful around me. I love the watery pigment and transparency of watercolor as a vehicle of expression. I hope that my work will cause viewers to see, pause and notice too.
 
Beth Mastin 
I have always been an artist at heart, raised in a home where art and creativity was encouraged. Still, after majoring in art, the demands of adulting left my art calling to me from the far end of my do list.  It was a time when I could doodle on conference calls, but where there was no time or place for intentional art. Over the last decade my art has moved to the top of the list, and I find that the doodles came along for the ride. 
 
I often begin with broad gestural paintings, executed in an improvisational manner, often in short bursts. Some paintings are completed in one sitting, while others are revisited or become a series over the course of months. I favor line and movement over depth in composition. My subjects range from vast open landscapes with broad backlit horizons to individual flowers. I think about portraiture when I paint flowers, trying to evoke the essence of a single flower. Both subjects allow me to bring my eye to ethereal color shifts, ideal for wet on wet washes.   
 
Marcia Smith     
I find birds fascinating to paint. In outline they have a relatively simple shape, but in texture and color they can be very intricate, sometimes demanding colors so bright that they are impossible to mix with watercolor. It intrigues me that that simple shape lends itself to so much expression of personality with a small cock of the head, or a change of position of the feet or the tail.
 
Crows are particularly interesting to me. Black birds, whose feather texture often cannot be seen because they are so dark, they are lively and engaging and individual when watched. We had a large maple tree in our backyard which was
the 5 o’clock gathering place for a murder of crows one winter. They would settle on the bare branches and gossip away until suddenly all would take to wing, soon settling again with different friends, making sure everyone was told the news. Captivating!
 
My husband and I travel extensively, and everywhere I take phone snapshots of the birds we see, a practice that doesn’t lend itself to detail. These paintings, therefore, are more about personality than realism. The birds I’m showing here are mainly from the States, Europe and Africa, and are mostly commonly known to us all: I’m not a dedicated bird watcher searching out the unusual, just an observer of these miracles, attempting to pass on my pleasure.
 
Mary Tilton
I am fortunate to live in this state of Wisconsin which has endless and quiet beauty to inspire paintings. I am drawn to the outdoors for many reasons but when I started painting, I noticed things in a new way. The open space between tree branches, a bright spot of sun, or the rolling hill are all shapes and values that make up a composition. I often paint from photos, but most recently I have begun painting on location. I usually find that the most successful paintings come from those started on site and completed from memory in my studio. I can get as lost in my studio as I can in the woods as I recall the sights, smells and sounds of a place.
 
I paint in both watercolor and oils, with oils being better behaved when outdoors. The paintings in this show are a selection painted in the past couple of years with this realization of the importance of being both physically present and lost in the moment.