Illustrator

Tierney Baumstark

Tierney Baumstark

There are two quotes that I feel describe where I am as an artist. 

Creativity takes courage.” - Henri Matisse

 Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” - Salvador Dali

Art makes me happy.  It gives me an outlet to be creative and relax.  I enjoy drawing and painting mostly.  I also work with fiber and clay. 

I believe that being an artist and showing your creativity to others takes courage, which is why I chose a quote from artist Henri Matisse.   I also believe that as a young artist, still learning and growing, that it’s important to admire the works of other artists.   I try new techniques and develop my own abilities by learning about and emulating other artists.  My very first painting was inspired by the works of Salvador Dali. 

I hope you enjoy my art as much as I enjoy creating it. 

You can also find my works on Instagram @catalogue_raisonne_baumstark


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Jennifer Slouha

Jennifer Slouha

Jennifer Slouha is a self-taught artist living in Holts Summit, Missouri.  Her preferred mediums are professional grade colored pencils, graphite pencils and acrylic paint.  These media allow her to pursue a passion for realism and fine detail.  Her process involves the use of rich tonality and perspective.  Jennifer starts with researching the subject and begins forming the composition.  Then she creates a simple line drawing and begins building depth until the image takes form. Each colored pencil drawing requires from 30 to 100 hours to complete.

Jennifer enjoys creating highly technical pieces and continually works on improving her skills.  She specializes in commissioned photorealistic automotive artwork but also creates art in many other subjects such as pets, wildlife, cityscapes, and portraits

She is a member of the Columbia Art League in Columbia, Missouri and participates in the Community Exhibit Program, exhibiting her artwork throughout the city on a rotating basis.  She has also been accepted into Capital Arts Gallery in Jefferson City, Missouri, the Art House Gallery of Fulton, Missouri, and the Lake Fine Art Academy & Galleria in Osage Beach, Missouri for representation.  She was commissioned to create a series of automotive artwork for Missouri Auto Auction in Columbia, MO.  Her artwork has won awards and been published numerous times.  She has also been the sketch artist for an episode of the Travel Channel’s television series “The Dead Files”.

contact:
T: 573-397-3573
W:www.jenniferslouha.com


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Eric Seat

Eric Seat

by Lindsey Howald
with permission of the Columbia Daily Tribune

Eric Seat is a different kind of illustrator.

In a career field increasingly populated by graphic designers toting Macbooks, he works with traditional media - acrylics, oils, board. He holds texture and stylistic exaggerations to be as important and inspiring as the meaning of the text his work is meant to highlight.

And while the great illustrator Norman Rockwell created warm and fuzzy family scenes, Seat's portraits are delightfully eerie.

"I would like to think of it as more of a fine art," Seat said of his work.

The 27-year-old earned his bachelor's degree in communication arts and design from Virginia Commonwealth University. After attending the Illustration Academy, a workshop that features, among others, Kansas City's Mark English, Seat came away inspired by illustrators who had moved the genre from magazine pages to art gallery walls.

That's why, when Seat moved to Columbia from Leesburg, Va., he landed in an art gallery. This is his fourth month in the city, and he recently joined Columbia Art League and staffs the gallery once a week.

His portrait of Michael Moore, the filmmaker who made a name bashing President George W. Bush in films like Fahrenheit 9/11, also appeared in CAL's "Politically Speaking" exhibition. "It was a little portrait I did for my portfolio," he said. Asked if it lends some insight into his own political leanings, Seat stepped around a firm answer.

"I don't necessarily do portraits of people I like," he said. "I just thought I'd do it for my portfolio since he's in the public eye a lot. I was definitely interested in having political beliefs" portrayed in my artwork "a while ago, but not so much now."

While he might be hopeful about linking illustration with fine art, Seat depends on assignments from publications. Therefore his portfolio is ultimately designed to market his drawing talents. Inspired by the exaggerated caricatures of Philip Burke and grotesque figures of Lucian Freud, Seat's portfolio contains recognizable subjects such as Moore, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Kurt Vonnegut.

"For illustration work, it definitely needs to be an image that fits the needs for the publication," he said. He must be doing something right: His work has received awards from the Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts magazine and Print magazine.

He moved away from the busy sprawl of the Washington, D.C., bedroom community with his retired parents. Talented but shy, he's still struggling to find his footing.

"You know, finding work in illustration is certainly a slow progression for me," Seat said. In Virginia, he produced work for Military History magazine and taught occasional illustration workshops while working part time in a frame store. He's currently working on a series of illustrations for Read magazine, depicting George Orwell's Animal Farm for middle school-age readers.

Eric Seat selected for international
illustration competition
in New York City

(Feb. 2010)

contact:
W: www.ericseat.com
Tel: 703-727-5372


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Nancy DeClue

Nancy DeClue

declue.jpg

by Lindsey Howald

Although her content can vary from meditations on religious texts to vibrant abstracts from nature, Nancy DeClue’s work is consistently alive. The beauty of her painting is that while deeply influenced by the innate ebb and flow of nature’s energy, it seldom depicts the very landscape that inspired her. Rather, it is the fuel of conceptualism that drives her work, and the way it is translated onto the canvas often seems completely separate from the moment that inspired it.

“The work takes on its own life,” she says. “Like going from air to a molecule, it’s an evolution.”

DeClue, born in 1954 in Jefferson City, originally came to the University of Missouri to get her art history degree: “I was going to be the best damn curator ever,” she laughs. However, practicality called, and DeClue put this dream aside to begin what would be a lifelong, devoted career in nursing. Currently a nurse at the Missouri Cancer Associates, DeClue admits, “It has turned out that I do love it. But it’s not my passion.”

Like all true artists, DeClue cannot remember a time in her life she wasn’t creating. She began to pursue her work in earnest in 2002, when complications from a neck surgery forced her to slow down life’s obligations, allowing her art to flood in. In 2005, she was selected for an intensive period of study at the prestigious Santa Fe Art Institute. For two months, DeClue lived and worked in community with other artists in art-infused New Mexico, which helped her develop her own personal style.

“I didn’t realize until several years ago that all people didn’t see the world the way I did,” she says. “It was like an epiphany – I realized that what I do is truly different.”

DeClue’s lack of formal art training has both its advantages and disadvantages. Though she admits she sometimes gets in over her head with a project, never having learned the limitations of certain media allows her to work purely from the visions that appear in her head. As with Small Wonders (upper right), the 2005 work to thank for her acceptance to the Santa Fe Art Institute, DeClue had never been warned a 48”x54” linoleum block print would be an ambitious project, and therefore didn’t think to shy away from it. Small Wonders, which is a cry for this culture to reverse its de-mystification of Nature, now hangs in DeClue’s downtown coffee haunt, Lakota.

Rather than settling for representation, DeClue entreats viewers to enter her state of mind. In a recent multi-media collage series she has nicknamed The Word (bottom right), she writes or pastes text from altar prayers, a German Bible and other cultural religious influences, creating chaos from structural antiquity. By forcing these concepts to collide, she disrupts the mutual exclusivity these old religions have claimed.

“The concept is, God is God,” she explains. “What is the difference between religions? Why are we pointing the finger and damning one another? There is a universality here.”

Freed from the burden of defining her work in art historical terms, DeClue allows her art, simply, to be what it is. When asked about her influences, she shakes her head firmly. “I look at all other work, and there’s nothing I find that I don’t like. I take every opportunity to see every piece of art I can.”


Artist Statement

‘the image chooses the artist’, Evri Kwong to myself, 2005.

The ‘image’ has always chosen me. It can be triggered by a dream, a concept, an event, a social reality, a tiny bloom, an insect with gossamer wings-something touches my soul.

The ‘image’ or idea stays with me. It gestates. It then chooses a medium. It grows in intensity until I have to let it out. The resulting work or works often take on a life of their own. Almost self determined.

This is how a series or large piece is conceived. This is my motivation-love colored with passion.

My thirty plus years as a nurse, and especially my years in oncology, place these constructs within my unique life experience and philosophy.

Deep respect and acute appreciation for all forms of life are interwoven with spirituality. Often a statement of society and its ‘norms’ or direction (especially when childishly self-serving) are veiled in my pieces. It is what drives my production.

Sometimes-sheer breathtaking beauty is the muse.

Sometimes-the attempt to grasp quantum mechanics. Perhaps-music, or the laugh of a child.

ART IS THE REPRESENTATION OF PASSION.

Contact:
T: 573-590-0162


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