Art10Baltimore Exhitibition | Opening Reception

Shelley Amsel ’s paintings are about curves, color, and form. The body of work contains subject matter that portrays people participating in various common activities deriving from American life: scenes include people eating, drinking, swimming and bicycling. Amsel’s paintings are influenced by the German figurative painters and the French impressionists. Humorously calling himself an “I.D. Painter”, Amsel taps into his most primitive self - creating distorted figures evoking strong emotions and a dream-like fantasy.

Even though Amsel’s intellectual excitement of science, biology, and medicine occupied him for five decades, his passion for the visual arts has been present since childhood. He took classes and courses in drawing and painting at the Fleisher Art Memorial while simultaneously enduring a curriculum at Jefferson Medical School and Hospital in Philadelphia for six years. When Amsel moved to Baltimore in 1974, he studied privately with the MICA trained artists including Carolyn Harader Blaisdell and Glenn F. Walker.

Toni Berger is a Baltimore based artist whose artwork invites the viewer to bring their own experiences to interpret her paintings. Her art is known for its richness of color, light, and

energy rather than a precise depiction of subjects. Her paintings portray a variety of subject matter: landscapes, architecture, flowers, figures, and still lives. She creates her pieces on paper and canvas. Berger utilizes acrylics, mixed media, watercolor, and pen and ink. In recent years, her work has become more abstract and less representational as she has continued to evolve as an artist.

Painting since childhood, Berger attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, New York. After she graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. and from Syracuse University with a Masters degree in Education, she attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. She has studied painting with artists Glushakow, Ruth Pettus, and Tammra Sigler.

Berger has exhibited locally at the Myerberg Center and the Baltimore Jewish Community Center. She was selected for a juried two-woman show at the Resurgam Gallery and for juried exhibitions at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the U.S. Customs House in Baltimore. Her work is in the permanent collection at the headquarters of the PNC Bank in Pittsburgh and in various private collections throughout the country.

Jennifer Berk is drawn to abstraction and the outdoors. Her process primarily relies on instinct, resulting in a rustic and abstracted landscape. Her works usually portray a pasture or open field remembered from her childhood or her travels. She finds that abstract painting offers an almost overwhelming amount of freedom; a blank canvas with no directions, no expectations, no preconceived plan or image, keeps everything in a state of flux. Fragile and bold, a welcome departure from life’s routines, schedules, and expectations, Berk primarily focuses on process and is unconcerned with the final destination. Her paintings are a journey.

After a 25-year career in marketing, Berk began studying abstract, landscape and figurative painting with a variety of accomplished and nationally known painters. Berk is otherwise self-taught. Her work has been exhibited in a variety of juried and non-juried shows including The Waldorf School of Baltimore, Art Outside, and The Myerberg Center. Her paintings are in corporate offices and in private collections from Florence, Italy to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Claudia Cameron ’s paintings reflect her inner spirit through color, shape, and light. Inspired by nature, she explores the playfulness of her own soul, using acrylics on paper or canvas. Most of Cameron's abstract expressionistic paintings are done outside where landscape never fails to inspire.

With a master's degree in Art Therapy and Clinical Social Work, Cameron has practiced clinical social work and art therapy with children, families, and individuals for over forty years. Her lifelong passion for art shifted in the past twenty years from photography to painting and she has studied with nationally known painters such as Tamara Sigler and Ruth Pettus. Her work has been exhibited in juried and non-juried shows including the Lodge at Woodloch, The Myerberg Center, and the Gordon Center, and is in private collections from the Hague to San Francisco.

Linda L. Cichan rarely begins her paintings on a blank canvas, but instead first applies a solid color background or a loose color wash that may be an integral part of the composition, or is completely lost in the finished piece. Each painting is a journey where she never knows what will be encountered or where it will lead, but which leaves her exhilarated at its end. The bold use of saturated colors, no longer simply a means of expression; it is the essence of her paintings.

As a graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Cichan has exhibited throughout the Baltimore area and has work in several private collections on the East Coast.

Jackie Mintz is a lawyer by profession who turned to art later in life, first in photography and then to painting. She began as a painter in the Classical Realist tradition but eventually found herself drawn toward less representational art. Mintz works primarily with acrylics, oil pastels, and ink on canvas, paper, and Yupo (a synthetic waterproof paper). Her interest in the painter’s instruments has led to her to use a variety of hard-edged tools including palette knives, squeegees, and credit cards. Characterized by a limited palette and loosely geometric shapes, her work creates a feeling of a thoughtful quiet. Most recently she has turned to collage and mixed media works. She has studied with Ruth Pettus and Skip Lawrence.

Mintz has exhibited primarily in the Baltimore area. Her works are in private collections in the U.S. and in Europe.

Myrna Poirier ’s painting is about her use of color and her perception of the world. Both her parents, in different ways, taught her about color and texture. Her mother showed her how to go through clothing hanging on a rack in search of a beautiful colors and fabric. Her dad had a fine men’s clothing store and she would wander through the bolts of textiles, drawers of ties, and shelves of shirts looking at the materials and color combinations. That was the beginning. Then she studied design and architecture. Her influences are Luis Barragan, Henri Matisse, and Wolf Kahn.

More recently, Poirier began painting. She wants to catch people’s attention, make a difference in someone’s life even if it’s for a few moments or a few minutes. If she can dazzle someone then she considers that more than enough. She tries to do this primarily with color and form.

Lois Schuster ’s life changed in her early 60’s when she signed up for an art class and fell in love with painting. She has been a practicing psychologist for many years. Schuster was naturally drawn to painting the human figure. The largest portion of her work is figurative, though recently it has been more abstract. Her work often will contain a hidden figure or face. Her pastels are mostly representations of flowers, landscapes, and barns.

Schuster’s first teacher was Tammra Sigler, but she has also studied with various Baltimore artists including Deena Margolis and Ruth Pettus, and Carmelo Blandino and Cheri Dunnigan in Florida.

For Kathryn Shagas , rhythm is the most basic pattern in nature. As a former musician, she is fascinated by horses cavorting in fields, light glittering on water, starlings turning and twisting in flight. She is inspired to capture the energy and movement in the natural world.

Her series of horses was inspired by watching two horses switch from peaceful repose to a full spring in the space of seconds, leading her to paint their movements in different lights and in different seasons. She works in plein-air and in the studio with acrylic, oil stick, pencil, ink, charcoal, and water, crisscrossing the border between realism and abstraction to express the

feeling of a particular moment. Clarity appears, disappears, and reappears. She searches for what she finds moving and beautiful. She gets lost and keeps going. She will make a lot of marks and will respond, edit and delete. Finally, the forms emerge.

Shagas is a native of Montreal, where she studied music for 16 years before receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in design from the Philadelphia College of Art, now referred to as the University of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited in private and corporate collections, as well as solo and group exhibitions all throughout the United States. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Baltimore Magazine and The Palette Magazine.