After many years of working in mezzotint, an engraving technique that requires precision and forethought, I am now exploring the realms of wax painting and abstract imagery.  Each image starts as a simple shape, assuming different permutations until the final image is achieved.  The encaustic process introduces me to a spontaneity that does not exist in my mezzotints.  The new work represents a passage both toward a new way of working, and perhaps more importantly, toward a new way of seeing.

Narrative storytelling and mythology inform my work. I am so grateful to my teachers who gave me the skills to communicate in this way. Making art is the birthright of all humans.

I moved from Ann Arbor to San Francisco in 1976 to continue work on my MFA. I have been working in my studio at Hunters Point Shipyard since 1999. My primary media are sculpture and painting.

In 2009 and 2011, in response to an invitation to The Florence Biennale I began a body of American Artwork. I call this series AMERICAN TOTEM. I wanted to create work that gave some refection of the American experience. I began by collecting cast off American artifacts with the goal of repurposing them into large scale Totem Poles. I create these totems by welding steel armatures and stacking the discarded artifacts into AMERICAN TOTEMS. This series has been unfolding for the last two years.          

I see each TOTEM as an archeological slice of American life; a snapshot of what has been occurring in our everyday lives. That which was once abandoned and deemed irrelevant and peripheral has a new found focus and second life. I am looking at color, form and conceptually interesting combinations of objects, while recreating a new story about these bits of detritus. I use my own lens to recreate each of these works as a unique historical log of our culture, society and country.

Exhibitions include MEXICO BIENNAL 2008, Hayes Valley Market Gallery, Glen Arbor Arts Commission Gallery, Haley Martin Gallery, Somarts Gallery, Ampersand International Arts Gallery, Southern Exposure Gallery, Dakota Arts Gallery, Velcrow Gallery and Artist in Residence Glen Arbor, MI. San Francisco Travel, ARC Gallery, San Francisco. Publications include ARTWEEK, BANG, SAN FRANCISCO MAGAZINE, the books ART of NORTHERN CALIFORNIA and AMERICAN ART COLLECTOR. My work is held in collections in the United States, Europe, Mexico, and China. Installations include a major sculptural work in the THEMIS CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS and two major sculpture commissions for the Moore Foundation in Palo Alto. My original art book Samantha Ray is in the permanent library of The Brooklyn Museum of Art.

My recent series of works on paper combines several different ingredients:  the leaves and flowers in my garden and nearby, abstract compositions which sometimes  incorporate objects lying around the house, and monotype prints.  I use a mixed-media and layered technique starting with a background wash of acrylics, followed by a stenciled layer, then a final layer of color pencils and/or Prismacolor art stix to render the leaves and other motifs.  

Aaron Vonk is a Canadian-American who lives and works in San Francisco. Aaron's art reflects his current outlook on life--sometimes it's dark and sometimes it's joyful and full of light. Aaron sees art as a way of life and has been drawing and sculpting since he was a child. He thinks in terms of images: Whenever he wants to describe or explain something, he grabs a pen and starts drawing to illustrate his meaning.

Through Passages, I explore moments of transcendence that happen against the intense chatter of everyday contemporary life. Using found textiles, paper ephemera and wax paint I witness the apparently mundane nature of my days as a mother and grownup, much like traditional quilters used fabric and thread to do. Stepping back to see the rhythm of repetition in my days, I wonder, “Is there beauty here?”

I often start with a pieced layer of shopping and to do lists, receipts, article clippings, calendars and maps— fragments of my daily infrastructure. After painting a foundation of transparent color over the collage, I layer fabric netting which leaves impressions in the encaustic. Then I look for the hundreds of pathways that are left to slowly refine and carve into the surface. I scrape through layers of field color, excavating words and deeds, once important, that got buried in my race to the next thing.

The title Passages refers to time marked through these repetitive gestures, and echoes traditional stitch work.  It also refers to text and storytelling as seen in rows of through lines that appear to flow from left to right. Patterns emerge and suggest a sonorous, calm hum rising out of the hectic daily buzz. And, yes, there is unexpected beauty in these long days and short years.

I am most drawn to narrative painting that looks at fact, fiction and fable to explore the parallel realms of reality in our everyday lives.

In my series, "Рудий ліс" (Red Forest in Ukranian), I explore a nuclear accident 25 years after the fact, looking at the fate of the flora and fauna surrounding it. In essence, I paint a contemporary Fairy Tale lived out loud of an ancient Forest. One day a happy forest blossoming into spring, the next, a dead forest turned ginger red from radiation poisoning.

Рудий ліс is my visual tale of a woods (the size of Yosemite) that was once buried alive in fact, fiction and fable, by a frightened government. It's a tale of how Рудий ліс has rallied into a new forest. A radiated Russian Eden, filled with an astonishing array of trees, flowers, birds, wolves, deer, insects, wild boar and more. All radiated! So radiated that no humans dare to disturb them...

My work focuses on bringing forth experiences of the inner world of dreams, symbols, archetypes:

the interpenetration of ordinary and non-ordinary reality.

 Beryl Landau calls her work “symbolic landscape”. The acrylic paintings depict geographical locations but evoke inner feelings. Each landscape draws the viewer into a particular space and mood. Landau’s clear colors range from high contrasts to subtle gradations. The subjects vary from familiar California scenes and cityscapes to more exotic settings from her travels. Some of the images are close-ups while others show more farsighted views.                                   Beryl Landau lives in San Francisco and teaches art at Holy Names University in Oakland. She received BFA and MFA degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her teachers included Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff and Joan Brown.