Celebrating Roseville

Here’s my latest painting: Rosevillle

I created it for the Celebrating Roseville: A Centennial Exhibit at the Blue Line Gallery in Roseville CA. The city is celebrating its one hundredth year and the Blue Line Gallery is celebrating with the city 🙂

The painting is large (for me anyway), it’s 2′ x 3′ and very detailed. I had one month to complete it and I worked an incredible amount of hours on it. But alas it is complete!

The exhibit opens Saturday night with live music by Gypsy Standard Time and snacks from Kelli’s cookies. Should be fun!

Here is the exhibit postcard. For more about the exhibit, click here.

Shop Sale!

I’m having a sale in my etsy shop! Please have a look-see! 🙂

All prints are on sale: buy 3 and get one of equal or lesser value FREE! You’ll save on shipping as well because I bundle ship items.  Sale ends Jan 31.

Layers & Detail in Art

Over the weekend I visited a few galleries in Sacramento and found some really great art.  I want to mention 2 artists in particular: Patricia Gillespie and Kim Squaglia.  Both artists create amazing & detail oriented art that utilizes layered materials – however in most other respects are very different.

Patricia’s work is currently exhibited at the Verge Gallery, Sacramento:

Her work reminds me of pop art but she presents it in a very fresh and unique way. I love the way she juxtaposes the soft quilted textiles with hard wood and and intense colors to create her work. She  balances the detail of the quilting with simple stylized figures in a very beautiful way. Each piece contains a clever word or phrase (also wood cut-outs) that adds social commentary in a whimsical way.  If you get a chance – her work is definitely worth a peek! For more about Patricia Gillespie click here.

Kim’s work can be seen at Jay Jay Gallery, Sacramento:

I’m not generally a huge fan of abstract art unless it’s something really innovative and unique. Kim’s oil and resin creations are both and absolutely beautiful! Unfortunately photographs don’t do her work justice – you must see it in person and up close to truly appreciate it.  Her work contains numerous layers, which give it a lot of dimension and interest.  She is also a wizard with color and creates the most beautiful color combinations using her daintly, yet expressive strokes.  Her creations (some quite large) contain an incredible amount of detail — I can only imagine the time they must take to create.

The process she uses is fascinating as well.  Though I did not get a chance to talk to her, it seems she paints a layer in oil then covers in with a layer of resin, and so on for at least 20 layers.  If you have the opportunity to see her work in person, I highly recommend it. For more about Kim Squaglia and her art, click here.

I hope you enjoy these talented artists’ work!

Storybook Show

Hello! The opening of the Storybook exhibit at 20th Street Art Gallery was tonight.  There will be another 2nd Saturday reception in December and the show ends December 20.

The exhibit looks great and I enjoyed the opening.  There are 50 artists in the show.  Each artist was given one sentence of Debra Keller’s short story titled “The Gift” and were asked to create 3 different representations of it. The gallery is showing the 3 paintings by each artist and selling books containing the story and one artwork by each artist. The book is nicely done and I think they did a good job selecting the pieces for the book.  I am very excited; this is the first time my work was published in a book! 🙂 The opening was really fun because many of the artists and the author were there to sign the books and chat.

My three paintings (the middle one made it in the book):

“I glided across the top of the fence careful not to stab my slippers.”

Roadside Scholar and Blue Line Gift Shop

The Roadside Scholar is a wonderful blog I’ve been reading regularly for some time now.  It’s written by Gigi, a photographer and fellow etsian.  She writes about art and designs she comes across on etsy and elsewhere on the internet. It’s a great resource for discovering some really interesting artwork, designs, etc.  She recently purchased one of my prints and wrote a blog post about me.  So please check it out!

http://www.roadsidescholar.com/2008/09/18/the-art-of-veronika-nagy/

In other news: The Blue Line Gallery opened it’s long awaited Gift Shop.  I have some of my small original painting and prints on consignment there.  I was pleased to find out that I sold 2 items (1 painting and 1 print) on the very first day! 🙂

Printmaking

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! 🙂

Thanks to Diane Bell – a wonderful artist and person – I had the opportunity to print some of my old favorite etchings. She has a beautiful, spacious printmaking studio and a good-sized etching press. I spend about 5.5 hours in her studio today, printing and talking to her about printmaking techniques. She had some great tips and suggestions to share and I can’t wait to go back and print more.

So the popular “Monks” is now available in my shop once again and I will list the “Grand Oak” soon.

We also had an opening at the gallery for the Sea, Sand and Sun and Urban Art exhibits. After printing with Diane, I went down to say hello. It was a nice opening and my little painting sold already -so that is exciting. I know who purchased it – so thank you Bruce and Barbara! 🙂

Sand Castle

I just framed one of my 50 miniature paintings titled “Sand Castle”. The Blue Line Gallery in Roseville is having a summer themed exhibit called “Sea, Sand and Sun” starting this Saturday. My painting will be part of the exhibit.

Please excuse the poor photo (lighting conditions were terrible). Anyway – you get the idea – white frame with the image floating on top of the mat. I think it goes really well with the image.

New Illustration

Here’s my new mixed media drawing I’ve been working on. And it is available in the shop.

And a detail:

Portrait of me

Hello – It’s embarrassing how long it’s been since my last post. The puppies have been keeping me busy and I haven’t had many chances to create new art. I do have something in the works and many ideas floating around in my head.

In the meantime, I’m listing originals and prints of my 50-50 paintings in the etsy shop. Please have a look!

The owner of the 20th Street Art Gallery,  Jim Ferry and artist Ernie Olson did some very nice portraits of the participating artists in the 50-50 show. Jim created the portrait of me (below) and I think he did a really nice job! To see more of Jim’s art, please click here.

Receptions

Here are a few photos from the 50-50 artist reception and 2nd Saturday reception. Both events were extremely well attended, almost too well. There were so many people in the gallery, it was difficult to walk around.

The front of the gallery teeming with people on Saturday evening.

There I am in front of my work. I was fortunate because they placed my paintings by the front entrance of the gallery.

Channel 3 came out and interviewed an artist. And I believe one of my paintings made it on the News. Unfortunately, I did not see the broadcast.

As I mentioned earlier, the gallery was absolutely packed with people.

All in all, the opening went well. I hope some of my artwork is selling. 🙂 I would like to go back and check out the show one more time before it comes down. There are a lot of talented artists and I would like to go in when it isn’t so crowded so that I can actually enjoy the art and read some of the artist statements.