Dani Jones

Dani Jones uses light, texture, great compositions and confident drawing in her lively children's and comic book images. Dramatic light often is the focusing element in each image, sometimes used interestingly from behind the characters, creating an almost silhouette effect, or used as a welcoming glow from a window.

Compositions on a slanted horizon are either used for fun (in the Mariachi image) or emphasizing disorientation (in the dark blue school girls image.) I especially like the witches image for its many hands and great fore-, middle- and background.

Each image has its own unifying color 'story' that feels complete; warms and cools feel balanced, sometimes very subtly so (as in the pie baking image).

Kelly Murphy

This Massachusetts native creates beautiful textured illustrations for children's books, editorial and educational clients. Her rich color palette is toned back and adds to the thoughtful, humble feeling in her work. Sweet characters with oversized heads and pointed toes fit well into lyrical environments and situations. Her gesso-stroked surfaces give the images a lively base to start from and use; color gets caught in the texture and gives the whole picture a rustic and shopworn look that is charming. A translucent paint layering technique, I believe, gives a beautiful glowing effect to the paintings. (Kelly Murphy's website)

Ilene Richard

Ilene Richard is an artist and illustrator working at Western Avenue Studios in Lowell, MA. She has published many children's books through book giants like Houghton Mifflin, McGraw Hill and Macmillan. She has also had numerous group and solo shows of her paintings.

Her illustrations are tight and careful in execution, her figurative fine art paintings are loose and free, and both have high energy and bold color. The paintings have a little cartoon and a little (yes, again) Alice Neel in them, and are vibrant and almost singing with energy. The shapes she uses are flat and appealing, the compositions leave great negative shapes around the figures which she fills with big colors and funky landscape items.

The females in her paintings have a self presence that reminds me of Mary Cassatt females. Even if posed in classically female surroundings, dress, or situations, sometimes uncomfortable in some way, the women all seem inhabited by someone smart, solid and THINKING. So many paintings that are of women lack this sense of being inhabited, and I always love when I see it.

Ilene's artist biography on her site is an inspiring story of perseverance and hard work.

Debra Bretton Robinson

Debra Bretton Robinson is a painter in Lowell, MA at the Western Avenue Studios. Her landscape paintings use vibrant color and big chunky shapes to transform her subjects into venues filled with life, depth and energy. Using analagous colors, complimentary colors, tertiary triads, her bold color combinations make the paintings hum and sing.
She uses a strong, satisfying balance of warm and cool tones, which make paintings feel solid and substantial. Her compositions and color together create large abstract designs out of realistic views.
She reminds me of Alice Neel in her confident use of paint and color and shape.

Anne Lyman Powers

I just saw that Childs Gallery in Boston is having a show of Anne Lyman Powers work. All I know about her so far is that she was born in 1922, started her work in post-world war II, and is considered a representational expressionist.

Lori Ann Levy-Holm

Lori Ann Levy-Holm is a teacher, artist, author and graduate of the Hartford University MFA in Illustration program. Her site is focused on a book she wrote and illustrated, "Courage is Contagious," about a girl who led a school walkout in Virginia in 1961. These three illustrations are from the book. I love the dramatic points of view disappearing into white backgrounds, intriguing compositions, and sense of calm and determination.

Michal Truelsen

I love Michal Truelsen's new prints outside her Western Ave. Studio. They seem both outer space and storm related, the compositions are dynamic, and to me they are another portrait of outer events describing an inner experience.