'Art with Emotion' Opens at Mainstream Commons

From My Own Little Cornor: Discover the highly expressive ways three artists interpret the human face and figure—mystical, realistic, and abstract—in “Art with Emotion: Faces and Figures,” a new exhibit May 27- (end date), at My Own Little Gallery, at Mainstream Commons (formerly Franklyn Antiques Center), 142 Main Street in Nyack, New York. (A free opening public reception takes place Saturday, May 27 from 4 to 7 p.m.)

Among the artists:

Lauren Rudolph

Lauren Rudolph’s vivid and realistic mixed media portraits are suffused with planetary swirls and mystical symbols, giving them a hypnotic, otherworldly atmosphere. The former owner of a mural and faux painting in Florida, Rudolph now lives in upstate New York where she devotes herself to painting and has opened an art studio for young children called Little Light Art Studio.

Says Rudoph, “I have been drawing and painting portraits since I was a little girl. I have always been pulled to the face and I now know that comes from a desire to connect. I feel a purpose in connection to the subject, connection to the process and connection to the viewer. While I paint I am in communication with my subject. We are in our own world together. This is my vehicle for self expression and story telling.”

Charis J. Carmichael Braun

Whether painting a figure from the chin down, cringing in a corner, or from the waist up, floating blissfully in a bathtub, Charis J. Carmichael Braun’s representative paintings of nudes are charged with strong emotions.

Braun says she draws the painting out of intimately personal sources, applying multiple layers on each canvas with “anxious compulsion.” With each approach to the canvas she negotiates divergent applications of the paint to embody tension throughout the image. Researching, redrawing, repainting through spirited color and active brushwork, she covers "mistakes" and reasserts forms which result in passages of acute focus contrasted with less-developed space. Presenting emphatic solitary figures, she finds release when she paints flesh explicitly.

Braun received a Juror's Award for her work in Representational Art in the 21st Century, University of Hawaii at Hilo, HI in 2015 and was chosen as a Sing for Hope Piano Artist in 2016. She has been published in Poets Artists, Huffington Post, and LINEA: The Artist's Voice.
Elaine Schloss

Elaine Schloss, owner of My Little Gallery, contributes her own powerful acrylic, semi-abstract nudes to the mix. Always drawn from the model, her sure lines and brilliant color create a counterpoint to the work of Rudolph and Braun—different in its open, quick capture of a moment in time, but similar in its intention to contain the spirit and emotion of the model.

Says Schloss, “I have been an artist all of my life. I am also an actor/singer and musical theater writer, which is why, perhaps, I love the drama of color and line. Sometimes I work in realistic, sometimes in semi-abstract forms but it has always been about the face and the figure, the emotion and—and color.

Her work has been represented in many venues among them the Manhattan Arts and Antiques Center in NY, the Franklin Antiques Center in Nyack, NY and the Helen Hayes Theater benefit auction in Nyack, NY. She has had one woman shows at The Turning Point restaurant in Piermont, NY; the Nyack Art Walk at Café Barcel; and the Valley Cottage Library and Nyack Library.

She is also recipient in 2014 of a full scholarship to the Art Student’s League Artist-In-Residency program at the League’s Vytlacil campus, and won a second full scholarship at Vytlacil in 2017.

My Own Little Gallery shares space with My Own Little Corner Antiques, one of Nyack’s oldest antique shops. Combining the two galleries allows art lovers the chance to browse among a changing gallery of original works of art while also enjoying a huge array of affordable collectibles, vintage jewelry and toys games and dolls.

Admission is free. Gallery hours: Wednesday - Sunday 1:30 to 5:00 PM .

Photos courtesy of My Own Little Cornor