From Life

Each of the artists in this collection work from observation, drawing, painting, and sculpting what is in front of them.Charles Ritchie has spent more than forty years rendering his suburban Maryland neighborhood and home in intimate, detailed mixed media drawings.Samantha Haring and Sydney Licht paint the mundane objects of their lives and studios in vastly different styles. Monica Banks sculpts porcelain flowers to scale, making several versions of one bloom to trace it from bud to decay. Katie DeGroot paints tree branches gathered near her home, treating each one as an individual portrait. Stanley Bielen’s still lives are lush and intimate, straddling the line between classic and contemporary. Josette Urso’s abstract paintings are a response to her surroundings, observing the energy and movement of New York. Frances Campani, a painter and architect, distills what she observes into layered compositions of light and space. These are the things that surround the artists every day, and the works are the result of time spent looking. They ask the viewer to slow down and do the same.