Elder Gallery
presents

New Artists 2008

During the month of June, Elder Gallery will present four new painters who have joined the gallery’s registry of artists. David Benson, Gage Opdenbrouw, Sheri Skeahan and Angelita Surmon will participate in the exhibition which opens on Friday, June 6, 2008.

David Benson is a native South Carolinian who has significantly contributed to the Carolina art scene over his career of painting and teaching. He has captured numerous prizes for his work while participating in the Spartanburg Artist Guild and the Guild of South Carolina artists. He incorporates whimsy into his work and his painting style is unmistakably unique. His influence on students, aspiring artists as well as established artists, has been immeasurable.

A San Francisco Bay Area artist, Gage Opdenbrouw was born and raised in San Jose, California, and has lived in San Francisco for 10 years. He is a painter who works on the edge between representation and abstraction. His aim is to distill his images to a point where there is a powerful emotional resonance, while maintaining a deep sense of mystery.

In addition to his studio work, he also teaches painting & drawing in a private capacity. In 2001, he received an award as “Best Emerging Artist, Painting”, from the Academy of Art College, at the time the largest school of art & design in the nation. Opdenbrouw was an Artist-In Residence at the Vermont Studio Center in December of 2005, and focused there largely on figurative work.

The paintings of Angelita Surmon have been displayed in galleries and group exhibitions around the nation. A native of Oregon, Surmon’s work has been greatly influenced by the northwest landscape and her current body of work addresses human physical interaction and emotional response to the environment. Many of her paintings are of the Wildwood Trail in Portland’s Forest Park.

Of her current work Surmon states “the images illuminate current conditions, the vitality of the landscape and act as a metaphor provoking examination of internal states. I seek to create something thoughtful, enduring and beautiful.”

North Carolina artist Sheri Skeahan was born in the Bronx, New York, and grew up in the Catskill Mountains. She studied under a student of Han Hoffman and has developed her own style of abstract painting. Skeahan states “my process of creation demands that I express the truth. I am deeply involved with the profound and intense nature of visual experience and the relationship of one thing to another. Progress is made only through many phases of development, following certain fundamental laws. A work is finished only when I have the spiritual synthesis of all of the above. As a result of hard work and choosing to have faith, I return to the painting with a full heart and palette knife in hand.”

The exhibition at Elder Gallery opens with a reception and runs through July 1, 2008.

Scroll down to view partial list of painting in exhibition.