The artCentral galleries at Hyde House are vibrating with energy and with colors singing in spring. The pigments in this new collection are strong, bold and brilliant! They are bright, exciting and uplifting! They are happy, fun and inspiring!
You are in for a treat when you visit “Conversations in Color”—artCentral’s newest exhibition opening this coming Friday, April 5, 2019. Mark your calendars and motor up gentle Hyde House Hill beneath the budding canopy of statuesque trees. The Artist Reception begins at 6:00 p.m. and winds down about 8:00 p.m. There’s no charge for admission. Everyone is invited and welcome to the party at 1110 East Thirteenth Street in Carthage!
No need to dress up unless you really want to get a little fancy. Just arrive as you’re most comfortable, and you’ll find yourself having a very good time looking at art and enjoying delicious complimentary eats and libations among art lovers and art makers and all kinds of good folks who are as friendly and as casual as this elegant old foursquare farmhouse artCentral calls home.
Meet Connie Miller of Joplin the artist-creator of this house-full of vibrant paintings. She will be happy to visit, hear your responses and share with you her inspiration and her process for art-making. Connie’s smarts and her humor and her sense of unabridged whimsy shine through in her words, as well as her art works when she makes self-aware observations like, “I find color to be mysterious and magical with influence over our emotions, psyche and choices”.
Connie has an enchantingly unique way of experiencing life and translating her discoveries with paint. She’s a wizard at finding subjects to fill her picture planes. Working from photographs and printed images she discovers inspiration in people like you and me and in places. Her impulses to paint can also be triggered by our companion creatures, by plants and by whatever else turns her artistic head and gets her brushes going.
Connie’s artist-chosen exhibition title “Conversations in Color” tells us this artist sure knows how to get colors talking. A lot of the discourse in her paintings depends on color relationships and their configurations and Connie’s colorful imagination. In her words, “I never try to mimic realistic subjects but use them as a springboard for composition, form and color. If the shape representing a cat in an arrangement needs to be blue, I paint the cat blue. Trees may be purple, grass might be red and hair could be green according to placement of color in the composition. I am constantly re-imagining color to create the impact I need.”
Connie thinks of herself as a contemporary Modern Expressionist. Using intense saturations she is forever delving into the possibilities of color and taking risks with them. Beginning each artwork with a pencil line drawing broken down into abstract shapes, she then utilizes dark, bold painted outlines in the manner of admired painters Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse.
With a slight leaning toward cubism and a palette that has become stronger through the years, Connie continues to grow and learn in her expressions. Whatever Connie’s subjects are up to—whether they are dancing, walking or resting; standing, leaning or slouching; thinking, primping or gesturing; conversing with a cat or a sand crab—they are each and every one grabbing our attention and telling us “Look! Look at me! I am strong, bold and brilliant!”
Want to discover and begin a conversation with your own inner colorist? Want to learn the secrets and tricks of communicating with paints and colors? Whether you’re a practicing artist or an aspiring artist wanna-be, sign up for Connie Miller’s Draw-and-Paint Studio Workshop. Spend two delightful hours in the galleries of artCentral on Saturday, May 11, 2019, 2:00-4:00 p.m. learning from an experienced, expert practitioner.
For Connie Miller’s Draw-and-Paint Studio Workshop the fee is $20 paid in advance and includes all supplies and the promise you’ll be taking home lots of valuable instruction plus your own colorfully painted gourd birdhouse.
Take the time to explore the effect of color in your life. Go back in time to your first interactions with color and examine your personal color experiences since then. Do your color senses come from fashion? Or food? Or the natural world around us? Connie will tell you, “Everything you needed to know about color you learned in kindergarten.” She’ll review Basic Color Theory and guide you in creating a color wheel. She’ll freak you out with the science of how we see color and the effects of light. She’ll have your brain on color as you learn how color influences our emotions and even our health as you define your own color preferences and create your own personal color palette.
Spaces are limited for this terrific opportunity. Sign up asap—on Friday at the Artist Opening or call (417) 358-4404 now and make your reservations for a happy, fun and inspiring afternoon playing with colors in the company of Connie Miller and colorful others like yourself!
