Experiencing a deep friendship is a creative act, through which vulnerable persons transform each other as they open themselves to influence. Great friends share themselves, and receive from within. "Flight Of The Internal Compass" looks at the creative act as found in relationship (Spring 2015, Familius Publishing). 

Rebecca Meredith works can be found in children's books, magazine content, surface pattern designs, licensed content, and in individual, gallery and corporate fine art collections. Her work engages the mind and beatifies the eyes, thus providing lasting interest and satisfaction for the viewer. The sociological orientation at the heart of the work aims to synthesize both the shaping factors of an experience and the symbolic content derived therein. She also engages her work and that of others through her classes and lectures in art foundations, history and theory. Awards include Top 100 Artists by Paint for America, a teaching fellowship at Mission 17, Museum purchase by Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, numerous artist residencies around the world, and a grant from The Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the implementation of an arts program at an orphanage in Jalisco, Mexico. Rebecca Meredith currently resides in the California Bay Area.

I love painting portraits, whether they be humans or animals.  I feel like so much of our spirit is transmitted through our faces, and it gives me complete joy when I'm able to capture and translate this onto my canvas.  For my first collection, I followed my love of nature and wildlife to create what I call my "Beautiful Beast Suite".   Hope to see you at SF Open Studios this Fall.  

Art is a VERB for me. It is an action word and not a statement, nor an object. The most important part of artist's life has always been feedback, either positive or negative. Feedback is the result of vital functions of art since any feedback is an evidence of existence, presence and growth.

Anna Seven

The purpose of this series is to highlight the beauty in the ignored and disregarded elements that surround us in city life. Although this series was inspired by my surroundings in San Francisco, the paintings are intended to transcend a specific time or place. Since moving to San Francisco, I have completely fallen in love with city living. I walk along the city streets for my daily commute. I travel everywhere from the Haight to the Castro to the Mission to Civic Center to the Financial District to SOMA to Chinatown and all the way to North Beach. I am always immensely focused on the textures, patina, grunge, decay, bumps and curves that emphasize the history of the architectural structures surrounding us.  And yet, many city dwellers seem not to notice the beauty in the decay surrounding them. Another prime element that surrounds me on every step of my walks in the city are pigeons. Unlike us, pigeons seem to be very in touch and aware of their environment. Pigeons inhabit every city in the world, hiding in plain sight on lamp posts, in building alcoves, on fountains and even on parking meters. These throwaway birds that are likewise ignored and disregarded, find refuge on these taken for granted structures that surround us. By utilizing the city as their personal playground, these “rats of the sky” cause even more damage, decay and wear on the city that provides them their only shelter.  But alternatively, one could argue by utilizing these structures, pigeons honor the architecture more than we do. This series of paintings is the study of the dichotomy between these disparate views.

Autobiographical in its nature, my artwork is the tangible result of emotional responses to philosophical investigations.  The images arise as I challenge myself to gain a better understanding of myself through addressing and re-evaluating core values and beliefs.  While seeking out personal truths I confront the unanswerable questions of human existence and attempt to come to terms with the reality of life's impermanence.

As I sifted through piles of old sketch books, I came across a watercolor of Hulk Hogan I painted when I was nine years old. This crude painting had me thinking about my childhood, and my childhood heroes. It reminded me of dressing up in a cape, building a ring out of a mattress and pillows, and pretending I was the Macho Man himself. These memories led to my recent purchase of Wrestlemania III, which sparked my current obsession and the beginning of my new series of paintings. 

Viewing wrestling videos and documentaries first inspired me to celebrate and monumentalize those icons of my childhood in paint, but as I actually started painting more was exposed. Those characters of low brow entertainment were being painted into a world of high brow art stroke by stroke. The ideas of nostalgia, pop culture, and investigating subcultures fascinated me. I realized Wrestlemania may have been one of the first reality TV shows ever. An engineered drama that one does not watch for sport, but for the spectacle. Each character from the 1980's WWF plays a role, has a guise, and a unique persona. These actors were the players in my childhood drama, one which coincidentally is a perfect marriage of personal experience and my current artistic sensibilities.    

Photography allows for the exploration and alternate perception of our daily environment. What touches me most, is seeing the transformation of a priori insignificant objects into meaningful and beautiful ones. My pictures are the result of a wandering and wondering state of mind. My interest expanded to other visual art practices: collages and paintings. In the collages that can be “classic” (paper and glue) or digital, I can pick colors, shapes, models, objects, sceneries. This allows me to use the images made by other artists and incorporate them into mine. This is a common artistic approach, in which the art of someone else resonates in us and can be revisited. I also started painting, experimenting with different types of paints: water color, acrylics, oil paints, inks. My paintings represent sceneries inspired by cities and seashores or ideas summarized by symbols. As I view photography as creating a picture from multiple “outsides”, I view painting as creating one from multiple “insides”. While most of my work is photography, some images are the results of several ones. Combining photography, sometimes images from magazines and paintings through digital processing allows to apply and discover in a fast way various changes a picture can go through, and the different meanings it can convey. By assembling several images, I summarize in one, emotions, stories inspired by personal events.