Melanie Parke - Chicago Fine Art

Friedman Fine Art is pleased to represent the marvelous works of Chicago contemporary artist Melanie Park.

Melanie Parke’s work has been featured in several solo exhibitions, including the Modern Arts Midwest in 2008 and the Tory Folliard Gallery in 2012 at Milwaukee, WI. She studied at Herron School of Art, in Indianapolis, IN and received her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied performance, voice, philosophy, and painting.

Island Drawings oil on canvas 48″ x 52″

In her works, she shows the blend of abstraction with conceptual reasoning, combining gestural features with mathematical lines, precise shapes, or graphic forms. She sets up space with lush textures and heavily speckled marks. Building from her initial images, she chooses colors to depict temperate or extreme sensations. Her works imply interiors and landscapes, and her mark-making make her audience question if the featured places exist.

In the early 1990s, she proposed 30 artist in residence programs in the National Parks, initiating 8 programs that exist today. Her works are featured in many collections including the United States Department of Interior, and Glencoe Capital in Chicago.

Please view additional works by this and over 30 other fabulous local contemporary Chicago artists by following this link http://www.chicago-artists.com.

Rene Romero Schuler - A Local Chicago Artist

Friedman Fine Art is pleased to represent the marvelous works of Chicago contemporary artist Rene Romero Schuler. One of the most important and well-collected contemporary artists, Rene Romero Schuler has artwork on display in public collections in Chicago, including inside the Prudential Building and in the permanent archives at the Art Institute of Chicago. Schuler’s style has been described as abstract expressionism, with her own sensibility. A self-taught artist, Schuler pursued an education in interiors and started her own painting business in addition to creating her own works of art.






Alma oil on canvas 30 in. x 30 in.

Whether on canvas, paper or through sculpture her works explore femininity, spirituality, beauty and convey optimism to her audience. In her paintings, Schuler applies oil paint in layers and uses palette scratches and bold colors to create tension. René Romero Schuler: Life and Works, a book released in 2013, showcases her images and her artistic process. She has been featured in numerous exhibitions, her most recent being at St. Thomas University in Miami, Florida in April 2014.

Currently, she teaches at the Illinois Institute of Art and Chicago City Colleges and holds lectures at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. She is a board member of the Loyola University Museum of Art.

Please view additional works by Rene Romero Schuler and over 30 other fabulous local contemporary Chicago artists by following this link www.chicago-artists.com.

A Unique Talented Chicago Artist – Jay Zerbe Art Collections

Friedman Fine Art features the marvelous works of Chicago contemporary artist Jay Zerbe. Jay uses color to make the space in his pieces appear deep or shallow, overlapping and breaking up shapes. He starts each piece by drawing or painting on the canvas, using preliminary collages and drawings. He creates the first layer and then sets the drawing aside for color or composition. He adds layers, rotating the painting often.

Mud Flats oil on canvas 24 in. x 24 in.

Zerbe completed a BA from the American University of Beirut, and an MFA in printmaking from Indiana University, Bloomington. Zerbe has worked as a graphic designer for PBS, web designer and virtual world designer for IBM. As a full time artist now, he has gallery representation in Chicago IL, Grand Rapids MI, and Detroit Michigan.

His work was first shown in Chicago in the 1977 Chicago and Vicinity Exhibition at the Art Institute. In addition to Chicago, his work has also been shown in Atlanta, Lincoln, New York, New Orleans, Novato, Nacogdoches, Omaha, and Santa Fe.

Jay Zerbe married in 2011, and he and his spouse have designed and are building a new home and studio in Michigan City, Indiana, outside of Chicago. Zerbe continues to work with color and shape abstractly to create visual appealing paintings.

For more Local Chicago Artists, follow the link.

Chicago Artist: Mark Zlotkowski

IMG 4 oil on canvas 48” x 72”

Friedman Fine Art offers a stunning selection of art from local Chicago artists. Mark Zlotkowski is a Chicago based Artist, exhibiting at galleries and museums in both the United States and Internationally. Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Zlotkowski spent his childhood playing basketball and drawing. Years later, he discovered his passion for painting and received a BFA in painting from The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1987.

Zlotkowski worked several jobs in construction and engraving, which added to his experience of art and material. In 1992, Zlotkowski received MFA from Northwestern University and quickly took to teaching at DePaul University in its Department of Art and Media Design. He has taught classes in painting for over 20 years and continues to create pieces on the side.

Overall, his works have roots in symbolism and spirituality. He describes his process of painting like looking in a mirror, and seeing a reflection of what is yet to come. Recently, he is working on a series of paintings, one group with converging urban landscapes and another group inspired by his garden. Zlotkowski uses his works to encourage his audience to develop a deeper understanding of their own everyday experiences.

Zlotkowski currently lives with his two daughters on the North Side of Chicago where he paints and gardens often. He is represented at The 33 Contemporary Gallery in The Zhou B. Center, Chicago, IL. To purchase these fine contemporary works of art by local Chicago artists, contact us via our contact form.

Cathy Bruni Norris, A Local Chicago Artist

http://www.chicago-artsists.com is pleased to announce its representation of Cathy Bruni Norris on it's new website of contemporary local Chicago artists.

Cathy Bruni Norris is a prolific local Chicago contemporary artists working with acrylic paints dripped onto acrylic sheets.

Ethereal Landscape acrylic on canvas 48” x 72”

Chicago artist Cathy Bruni Norris held a demonstration on June 17 at her Wicker Park studio, showing her artwork and painting techniques to her guests, the North Shore Affiliate of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

The demonstration lasted from 10:30.to noon, starting with refreshments and continued with Norris giving the 35 members a tour of her studio. After members walked on the first floor, looking at paintings, Norris led them downstairs for her talk about art and her dripping techniques with fluid acrylic medium and paint. She paints on sheets of plexi glass, letting the sheet of glass dry for 24 hours, and reveals the new, different-looking painting on the other side. She did a similar demonstration for her guests, revealing a finished work on the other side. Then she did a demonstration of a different drip technique on a small stretched canvas.

Norris was extremely proud of the demonstration and said, “Everyone was so mesmerized by my work.”

Norris explained how she creates New Media, digital art that she is known for. She takes her own drip paintings, scans them onto her computer, and manipulates the art in Photoshop to create new images. "I am interested in the symmetry,” she said, and focuses on mirror imaging. She prints the images onto fabric, crystal, and pleather. She displayed wallets with her imagery on them at the demonstration.

One of her favorite paintings, Debussy, was featured at the studio. She said she named it after the French composer Claude Debussy, whom she listened to as she painted the work. The painting is impressionistic, containing an array of blending colors. “This painting works in harmony,” she said.

The demonstration was the first she has given for her art and technique. Norris had the event to satisfy the many art-interested groups who visit studios throughout the city, and share her techniques to the art community. She also hopes the demonstration will generate new sales.

“I work for the discoveries and art has taken me on a journey,” she said.

To view additional contemporary works of art by local Chicago artists please follow this link Chicago local art and artists.

Greg Milne – Chicago Contemporary Artist

http://www.chicago-artists.com is pleased to have Greg Milne as one of its many professional contemporary local artists included on our website.
I bought my wife with my poetry. She was the editor of the our college poetry magazine, and my submissions evidently took her by surprise, she assuming that she knew all the poets in our very small liberal arts school. But I was no longer a poet, having morphed into an undergraduate biology major. The poetry that served as the dowry I wrote between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. She published the three I submitted. But I understood, then, the power of creativity – what it could purchase and, eventually, I would learn, what it couldn’t. In any case, I committed my life ever since to the birthing of objects.

I began the information series approximately 10 years ago. More accurately, five years before that, at a dinner where I wondered out loud if this relatively new Internet might serve as just that…a net. Could it be used to gather vast amounts of information? If so, what would the results look like. Could I make a piece containing the name of every body of water on earth? The name of every movie ever released? Eventually, using spiders and other data mining software, the scientist in me succeeded in procuring the raw material. The artist in me then took over, trying to give form, poetry, and meaning to this, the detritus of our existence.


Everywhere Else

The work, Everywhere Else, was a piece conceived as part of a series dedicated to the gathering and displaying of information. If the endeavor, in this case gathering the name of literally every single place that humans inhabit on the planet, was quixotic, printing it out as a single file was literally impossible. Approximately eight years after the inception of this series, printing technology caught up, and the piece graduated from its virtual existence. Everywhere Else is composed of the approximately 6 1/2 million names of every city, town, village, and hamlet on earth. At five feet by fifteen feet the piece cannot be read without the use of a powerful magnifier. It is, perhaps, the most information ever printed on a single piece of paper.
The heart of the work lies in the manner in which it imitates its subject. The world is large, as is the piece. The elements that make up the work, the names, are tiny, just as the vast majority of human settlements are miniscule, composed of nothing more than a few abodes. A smattering of inhabitants. Every single place humans call home is contained within this work… except for one. The place the piece resides. I believe the work highlights one of the more beautiful traits of humankind, a trait that led us to inhabit every corner of this sphere. A penchant, a love, for everywhere else.


Everywhere Else (detail)

Follow this link for more fine art from our local Chicago Artists. For more information, please contact us.

Michael Finnegan - A Local Chicago Artist

Friedman Fine Art represents the marvelous works of Michael Finnegan. Mike is one of Chicago’s finest contemporary local artists executing marvelous 3 dimensional works of art.

Michael Finnegan combines meticulous craftsmanship, sharp rhythmic compositions, and the underpinnings of jazz to create visually arresting sculptures, paintings, and installations.

While a composition major at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Finnegan maintained a painting practice that soon led to exhibits at an east village gallery, the Emerging Collector, in New York city. Initially influenced by the work of Francis Bacon, Finnegan’s painterly style and focus on the figure gave way to what today may be seen as hard-edged abstraction. He acknowledges the influence of color theorists Joseph Albers and Johannes Itten and Op-art painters, such as Bridget Riley. However, while visual comparisons to their art and that of the 1960s minimalists may be apt, Finnegan isn’t concerned with furthering a particular aesthetic ideology.

Finnegan’s tightly orchestrated compositions of color and pattern evolve from a love of music and its inherent melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structures. In a recent commission for Neiman Marcus, Finnegan creates visual riffs based on the harmonic form of two jazz standards, Tune Up and The Song is You. As with his previously executed, Coltrane-inspired painting Countdown, Finnegan develops visual groupings of color and shape that correspond to key signatures and chord changes. An intuitive arrangement of these motifs, or “chords,” is played out over a solid color field that visually establishes a strong tonal center for the various hard-edged, organic graphic elements. The result is compositions that are both spontaneous and cohesive.

Finnegan’s rhythmic arrangements also recall water, waves, sound, and light. Raised in Hawai’i and on the Chesapeake Bay, Finnegan lived and worked in Seattle and on Deer Isle, Maine prior to living in Chicago. Metaphorically, tangentially, and as analogs, these motifs, born from a life spent near the water, connect him to these places.

Strengthening the visual complexity of his work is an unerring commitment to craftsmanship. Finnegan’s sculptures are meticulous owing to a fastidiousness honed by years as a carpenter of furniture, cabinets, staircases, and historic preservation projects. Today, in his Chicago studio, Finnegan uses sculptural matrixes, in lieu of canvas, for paintings that one appreciates in three-dimensions. These hybrid works—sinuous arcs, stacked trapezoids, and complex boxes devoid of right angles—are painted smoothly and with polish. Materials include furniture grade plywood, Kevlar, canvas, and velvet, adhesive vinyl, and acrylic paint. Counted among his tools are pencils, sable brushes, power tools, industrial HVLP spray guns, and a laptop.

Finnegan’s installation art includes a lobby-transforming work in the world famous Sears Tower and The Olympia Center on Michigan Avenue, Chicago. He has also created works for private collectors and corporate commissions for such clients as BMO Harris Bank, Neiman Marcus and InSite Real Estate.

If you would like to view additional works by Michael Finnegan or other contemporary local Chicago artists please follow this link. Contemporary Fine Art in Chicago.

Doug Frohman A Local Chicago Artist

Horizon Line Oil on canvas 96 in. x 72 in.

Doug Frohman is a local Chicago artist whose contemporary style has won a wide audience at home and around the country. Collaborating with Loren Friedman of Friedman Fine Art, Mr. Frohman recently placed a large 2 panel work in the lobby of the flagship Hyatt Regency Hotel, 151 E. Upper Wacker Drive Chicago, IL.   The Hyatt commission called, “BORN IN CHICAGO” is drawn from Mr. Frohman’s earlier series ABSTRACT NARRATIVES (2007-2011). In that series, sequential panels were paired in groups of 2 or 4 to suggest frames of a film. The idea was that each panel carried elements of the story that come fully to life when sequenced with the other panels in the piece.

Pandora Oil on Board 14 in. x 50 in.

 

Another piece from the series, PANDORA follows the ABSTRACT NARRATIVE formula where bold colored passages swirl and interpenetrate each other forming a narrative line that supports the “story” found in each panel, but becomes much richer when sequenced across all four panels. These pieces are all painted with a workman’s cement trowel and layered extensively to achieve the final result. Mr. Frohman has exhibited most recently in the lobby of Chicago’s iconic Prudential Building and is scheduled for a solo exhibit in New York’s Chelsea district at Kips Gallery, NY.
 Doug Frohman is a prolific contemporary Chicago artist working in oil on canvas.
To acquire follow this link, Fine Art Chicago Artists.