On a snowy winter afternoon, this January, I painted a small, three-hour work of a woman reclining.

Were you influenced by someone special (other artist(s), teachers, a family member, friend, etc.)?
My father, Allen Steely, has always been interested in photography as a hobby and he influenced me by seeing and pointing out the beauty in the world around me.  In college, my painting professor, Kevin Sparks, greatly influenced how I look at painting and communicate through metaphor.  I have been influenced by a variety of great artists from the past including and not limited to the following: Caspar David Friedrich, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Kathe Kollwitz, Lucian Freud.   Recently I have been influenced by local Indiana artists Caroline Mecklin and Jim Gerard.

What do you generally try to achieve with your art?
Through painting and drawing, I attempt to create subtle metaphors layer by layer in order that I might achieve a greater understanding of the natural world.  I work with natural objects juxtaposed with transitions in time. I try to walk the line between abstraction and realism and create a composition that speaks to a viewer on several levels.

What were you trying to communicate with the piece Black & White Herd?
The current work begins with butterflies as a reference point and then takes flight into an examination of speed, pattern, and the imagination.

Do you feel you were successful?
Yes, to some extent.  I am always looking ways to improve, and better visually present, and communicate.

What medium or media do you prefer and why?
I prefer oils, because I am interested in how the process parallels my thought process.  Also, I like the way that the finished oil painting looks.  I enjoy the depth and variation of colors, tones, and light.  I recently have been interested in using watercolor focusing on the transparency of the colors.  I also enjoy working in black and white charcoal, conte, and digital photography.

How would you describe your artistic process?
For this past series:  I carefully consider my subject matter and different implications that the viewer might generate when they encounter the subject matter.  Then I decide on a composition that is dynamic.  I pick a canvas shape and size that will enhance the dynamic, moving, living nature of the piece.  Then, I begin to block out the basic shapes of the butterfly wings so that they open or close.  I decide which wings I want to hide during the opening and closing process.  I begin by looking at an actual butterfly (or an image I took with my camera (I prefer not to use the camera, but with butterflies, I sometimes have to in order to figure out the patterns on the wings).  Then I put away the picture and develop the painting layer by layer adding a light source with shadows, and developing the colors so that the painting is unified.  I try to keep the initial ideas of time, motion, life, struggle, overcoming, etc. in front of me during the process so that I do not become lost in the process.

Has your art changed substantially during your career? If so, how?
The unifying theme of my major series has been animation and an interest in the metaphysical ideas of speed and time as seen in joints of bones, flowers, and butterflies.  (I call my paintings “dynamic still life”) As I move ahead, I intend to keep that theme, but am open to other ideas as I grow as an artist.

My alma mater, Asbury University (formerly Asbury College) has asked me to show my butterfly series, Patterns in Flight. The show will be on view from January 15 until March 25. The twelve-piece series is located in the Kenyon Room of the Morrison-Kenyon Student Center.

The hours of the center are:
Mon-Thu. 7:30 a.m. – 12:30 a.m.
Fri. 7:30 a.m. – 1 a.m.
Sat. 10 a.m. – 1 a.m.
Sun. 1:30 p.m. – 12:30 a.m.

I have also been asked to give a presentation about my series to faculty, students and the public on Friday, March 4. The location has yet to be announced. Please contact me for the specific location and time.

Patterns in Flight
January 15 – March 25, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011 – Series presentation and discussion
Morrison-Kenyon Student Center
Asbury University
1 Macklem Dr.
Wilmore, Kentucky 40390

Patterns in Flight is a twelve-piece oil painting series that provokes thoughts on time, refined beauty, and overcoming struggles. It contains a variety of butterfly species: painted ladies, a blue morpho, malachites, a citris swallowtail, postmans, a variable cracker and a zebra longwing.

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Rachel Steely (James) has always been drawn to natural, organic objects and chooses to portray them with oil on textured surfaces. Often, she presents her subject in “dynamic still life” with a shift of time through movement or growth-decay. Steely is originally from the rust-belt city of Rockford, Illinois. She left the manufacturing town to study fine art at Asbury College and find inspiration among the rolling hills and forests of rural Kentucky. Although consistently representational, she strives to create subtlety layered visual and philosophical metaphors. In 2005, Steely returned to the country’s heartland where she is active in the local art community of Indianapolis, Indiana. Next to oil painting, her greatest passion is helping others appreciate art by teaching private classes. She leads and inspires students of all ages from her studio.

If you were unable to make it in August, you have another chance to view the Patterns in Flight butterfly paintings art show. This Friday the butterfly series, Patterns in Flight, will be on display at Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage. The series opening will be September 3, 2010 at 6pm-10pm during the IDADA’s August First Friday and the series will show through September 25. Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage is located at 1125 Brookside Ave #C7 Indianapolis, Indiana.

If you cannot make it to the opening, Wug’s gallery hours are 12-4pm Friday and Saturday or by appointment. To make an appointment, call Wug Laku at 317-270-8258.

From the gallery owner:

This exhibit is a spectacular display of freedom in motion. Spend enough time in the room with these paintings and you’ll feel the air begin to vibrate and move about you. Although the nominal subject is butterflies, the real subject of these paintings is how powerfully color, line and composition can combine into patterns to create a vibrant, dynamic, even explosive viewing experience, thereby introducing us to a new experience of our everyday world.

The painting series is about journeys: the journey of each butterfly, but also my journey. Patterns in Flight provokes thoughts on time, refined beauty, and overcoming struggles. It contains a variety of butterfly species: painted ladies, a blue morpho, malachites, a citris swallowtail, postmans, a variable cracker and a zebra longwing.

RVSP today at the Facebook event: Patterns in Flight at Wug Laku’s

"Unwound", oil on Fiberboard

I spent an hour today taking in the show, A Working History of Things to Come, works by Eric Hudgins in Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage.  The show is aptly titled, as the paintings build upon themselves and foreshadow his current work.  Overall, Hudgin creates pieces that have interweaving patterns, ideas, and colors.  His work explores the relationship between technology and nature.  The older pieces in the main part of the gallery contain a dichotomy of nature and technology.  They relate, yet remain separate.  In the “red” room, one finds abstract paintings that seem to contain something somewhere between the extremes.  All of the pieces are painted with care.  The surface of the paintings are smooth and therefore do not obstruct the viewer from the content of the painting.

Among the earlier works on display, Cecoprian and Convergence caught my eye and mind.  These works are surreal in nature and representational in execution.  The work is presented in black frames that add to the formal, traditional feeling of this earlier work.  Eric Hudgins sums up his ideas when he states, “I believe there may come a day when technology is viewed as being just as natural as nature itself.”

"Cecoprian", oil, acrylic, ink, graphite on paper

In Cecoprian, the viewer is presented with a moth.  Half of the moth is natural.  The other part is created with intricate designs and patterns, melded with nature.  There is a combination of nature and technology, yet they stand as separate elements.  In Convergence, the dialogue between nature and technology takes on a different dimension as an alligator hatches out of a light bulb and an apple split in half reveals half of a white natural apple and half of a mechanical object.

"Convergence", detail

"Convergence", detail

The larger, newer, abstract works in the red room are displayed as frame-less, wrapped canvases.  These works are narrative, containing forms interacting with light in space and time.  The subject, although abstract, is the result of natural and mechanical influences.  It is a combination of the two separate ideas that Hudgins was previously working with.  A detail from Divine Turbulence shows how one of the planes in the picture, painted like a sky, is transposed next to a mechanical shaped plane.

Symmetry is the element that seems to hold both Running a Finger Along the Edge of Madness and The Rise of Fall together.  The paintings have energy and motion, but are stabilized by vertical symmetry.  In the first of these two paintings, it is symmetrical to the point of having a different light source for each half.  In the latter painting, there is a single light source which opens the space of the painting up to include a singular, symmetrical object.

Running a Finger along the Edge of Madness

The Rise of Fall

The show will be up through May 29.  Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage is open 12-4 on Fridays and Saturdays or by appointment.

My three latest butterfly works, After Thistles, Fluttering Cosmopolitan, and Cynthesis will be on display this Saturday, October 19th from 8pm to 2am at Oranje, a contemporary art & music event. Wug Laku of Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage is representing my work at booth 17.

Wug will be displaying his drawings, digital art prints, light boxes, and furniture along with the jewelry of Nancy Lee (I’m sure she’ll be there, too!) and the mixed media of Cagney King –among others. They will be recreating the feel of his gallery in their 22′ x 24′ mega-booth for an intimate discussion with the artists. This past weekend, they were practically living there getting the space ready.

Tickets to the event are $20 and is only open to 21 and older.

Oranje
Wug Laku / Booth 17
2323 North Illinois
Indianapolis, IN 46208

The Dreamer sits on a window ledge of a ruin.  He is not inside the ruin nor is he outside the ruin.  Inside the ruin are dead trees, while outside life thrives.  The dreamer looks sideways, neither out of the ruin nor into the ruin.  Is this not true of a dreamer, of someone who lives half in the metaphysical realm and half in the physical world.  It is a delicate balance.

Morning in the Mountains, completed in 1821-1823, speaks of a misty, grand expanse.

In The Giant Mountains, 1835, Friedrich uses the mist in the mountains to separate the mountains and fall into the river that weaves a winding path through the scene.

Sunset (Brothers), a physically tiny piece that is powerful on a sensory and psychological level.  The landscape is simple in detail, yet has an amazing light created by reflection off of water.

Seashore (Nets) has a warm, glowing horizon line that draws the viewer into the lonely scene void of humans.  The scene is quiet, created with subdued, complimentary purple and yellow.  Birds create slight movement toward the sun or moon in the sky.

A mist creates a different kind of depth in Night in Harbour (Sisters).  A church and the masts of boats is all we see.  Why is there a Jewish star at the top?

I have three of my butterfly paintings in the 2009 IndyFringe Festival. Thistles, Fluttering Cosmopolitan, and Cynthesis were mentioned in my prior post, Trio of Painted Lady Butterflies. You can see thumbnails in that post. These works can be seen at Henry’s on East, 627 East Street, Friday, August 7, 5 – 9 pm.  Cafes, theaters and spaces along Mass Ave. have been transformed into art galleries for the IndyFringe Festival. Add it to your usual IDADA First Friday Art Walk on August 7th. I hope to see you there, but if you can’t make that Friday, then the work will be on display until August 30th.

You can vote

Make sure to stop by the temporary galleries to vote for your favorite piece of art to become one of those “Be Indypendent” stickers you have seen on your neighbors’ cars. Complimentary Barefoot Bubbly champagne cocktails will be served at each Fringe gallery, too.

The 2009 VisualFringe galleries are: Mass Ave Wine Shoppe, Theatre on the Square, Franklin Barry Gallery, Henry’s on East, Hoaglin To Go Café, Herron School of Art and Design at The Earth House, and the Fringe Gallery. Visit IndyFringe for more info and full gallery addresses.

Opening Quick Facts

August 7, 5 – 9 pm
Henry’s on East
627 East Street