Annie Clavel: Art That Bursts With Texture

Posted on by Diversions LA
Annie Clavel’s work is a swirling expansion of the visual soul, bursting with texture and triumphant with color. According to the artist, her inspiration is as diverse as her work. Currently, she says “I enjoy following the launch of new telescopes designed to explore the cosmos. There are so many unanswered questions about the true nature of the universe. Perhaps for me, this is a way to put our existence on Earth into perspective amidst the news and scenes that surround us. That’s where some of my inspiration comes from.”
But she also finds inspiration closer to earth, “I am constantly influenced by what I see in my daily life: the California light, the movement of a hummingbird outside my window, or the shouts of a homeless person near the Taco Bell [in my neighborhood.]”
And then there is a fascinating right-brain component. “Mathematics, which I have both studied and taught, plays a significant role in my art and helps me envision abstract worlds.” The depths of the cosmos, indeed.
Clavel began painting over forty years ago, she says, creating figurative watercolor work while still living in France, prior to her move to Callifornia. While still abroad, she “set out to explore abstract atmospheres using acrylics.  Upon arriving in the United States some twenty years ago, I faced several challenges: gaining a better understanding of American culture, defining what I wanted to paint, and building a network.”
As an artist, Clavel more than rose to those challenges. She describes herself as influenced by Dael Patton, an instructor at the Palos Verdes Art Center, which led her to be “truly immersed  in abstraction. I joined various art associations and participated in numerous exhibitions. I also felt that, as the years went by, figurative painting was losing the meaning I had originally attached to it, whereas abstract art was taking on profound significance for me.”
With that change, Clavel also changed her mediums. “For many years, I worked with watercolor on paper. Today, however, my preferred mediums are acrylic on canvas and watercolor on YUPO.  When painting with acrylics, I enjoy mixing fluid paints to create new colors, then applying them in free, layered strokes onto a stretched canvas.”
The artists points out that she “began using watercolor much more intensively after discovering YUPO as a new painting surface. YUPO is a non-absorbent paper that allows water to flow and colors to blend unpredictably. For me, the medium’s fluidity and watercolor’s vast color palette are major assets; they allow me to give free rein to my imagination as I explore abstract worlds and the events associated with them.”
Thematically, with her family living throughout the globe, she is exploring both her Vietnamese and French roots. “I would like to channel my inspiration into the feelings I have about the diversity of my background and the diverse environment I am now immersed in. I would like to develop a series dedicated to my ancestors and my scattered family. I think I will use a softer palette, without bright colors.”
In her current exhibition at Diversions Fine Arts Gallery, she displays an audacious and awesome mix of color, thick layers of paint, pinwheel-perfect small paper sculptures, and dreamy watercolor Rohrschachs.
She will also be participating in an open studio tour October 3rd and 4th from 1 to 5 pm, at 3101 E 2nd Street, #7C, Long Beach, and in an exhibition titled “Right Here, Right Now” on October 10th from 4-7 at Gallery Hellada at 117 Linden Ave also in Long Beach.
Regardless of where you view her lustrous work, Clavel wants her viewers to know that she lets her “instinct and intuition guide” her work in order to “capture parallel moments of time, advancing each work towards a personal resolution. I never sketch before painting. I put my present feelings directly on the surface, hoping that the viewers will find an echo in themselves.”
Clavel’s solo show in Diversions Fine Arts’ Golden Days exhibition runs through October 4th with an artist talk and closing 1-3 on that date. DFA is located at 1069 N. Aviation Blvd. in Manhattan Beach.
– Genie Davis, photos provided by the artist and Davis

Linda Stelling Paints Nature’s Portraits

Posted on by Diversions LA

Linda Stelling doesn’t paint what she sees: instead she paints what she knows, “from my childhood, from my life. Nature first; the garden, the weather, water, atmosphere, seasonal change, environmental shifts…I absorb it from experiencing it and noticing.”

She describes color as a “physical necessity for me: color is my food.” And she washes that down with a deep perception, she says.
“I’m fascinated by how differently we each see and experience the same thing.”

Stelling’s work is also steeped in memory, dreams, and the subconscious, and she lets her work lead her brush. “I respond to how the painting wants me to go. Inspiration for me can come from anywhere. I think I’m constantly collecting things without realizing I’m doing it at all.”

While the artist began making art at a young age, supported by a family that included those who were artists herself, her art creation has shifted and grown over the years. “Style has alway been difficult to identify from the inside. I’m highly responsive to my surroundings and experiences and these leaves residues which stick to my emotional cavity, affecting my choices…but I don’t think I am always aware of that.”

She notes that change is ineveitable for her, because she is always absorbing her art work. “I can’t remain the same. For me it would be horribly boring.”

Her art has an alchemic energy, whether she is creating landscapes with full moons or blazing suns, calming ocean waves, or bouquets of clouds. She creates abstract, hot pink and orange striations as seemingly effortlessly as she shapes figurative cloud and seascapes and flowers and a wide range of landscapes and emotional scales between the two.

“Place was a big change for me,” she says. Originally living in Wisconsin, coming to Los Angeles was exciting and challenging for her, she notes.  “Sensitivity and experience gave me a different way of seeing. What changed in me is what changed the work. I think what has changed most is not necessarily how I create but how much more life I bring with me when I go to the studio.”

She adds that becoming a mother changed her “internal compass. Time became more real. Time eventually asks us to choose. Wandering has given me material. I’ve taken detours, changed environments, taught, and kept making work. Time is funny thing.”

Stelling works in a wide range of mediums from painting, weaving, and wearable art, to ceramic sculpture, stained glass, and the creations of large scale installations. Her undergraduate degere in ceramic sculpture helped give her “form and dimensionality,” but painting has become her “most immediate language.”

Currently, the artist has a solo exhibition at Diversions Fine Arts in Manhattan Beach,  and a near-future goal in mind, to “develop a two or multi- women show at a large space.”

In the meantime, nature is her manifestor. “[It] is sensory for me. The changing light, a sudden warm current of air that can change all movement. I notice everything…Sound, smell , vibrations, all produce a reaction and a resonance.”

Color is a big component of that manifestation. ” It’s what drives me, excites me, feeds me on so many levels. My emotional brain goes on overload. Color is how nature reaches me. The studio which is like a giant tree house that provides me with a bird’s eye view of blue water, green trees, pink and red flowers, the bluejays flying by ( stopping for the peanuts I feed them). Color is sustenance for me.”  She attests that “Painting is mark making but color says what marks cannot.”

It is also an invitation from Stelling. “It pulls the viewer toward the painting and then asks them to enter it. Once inside, I’m not asking them to understand anything, just allow a memory or recognition. If I’m lucky, the viewer might leave with a sensation or a pleasure.

Diversions Fine Arts is located at 1069 N. Aviation Blvd. in Manhattan Beach. The exhibition runs through October 4th; there will be a curatorial walk through at 3 p.m. on October 3rd; on October 4th, an artist talk and closing reception will run from 1-3 p.m.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist and by Diversions Fine Arts