EVA MONTEALEGRE-PAINTER

Spiritual author, Eckart Tolle, says the chair is the symbol of where Spirit sits. I wonder if an empty chair is like a storyteller that speaks of what has gone before. Perhaps the feeling of waiting for the next occupant is akin to the chair's dream of what is to come.

The "Haunted Heart" series of chairs is a deeply felt and personal series. It has a certain raw authenticity. They have always been well received which is encouraging for different reasons. I'm an Angeleno and I believe it may be the L.A. crime novel and the desire to piece together or even unravel the story that influences this series.

I have been shaped by an intense artistic environment and so my creative impulse is nurtured by many different expressive forms. I have a background in the theatre and I find that I am affected and seduced by the character and ambience of a room. I enjoy the intimate paintings of unoccupied bedrooms by the masters Matisse and VanGogh.

In my exploration of texture and color I want to excite the sensibilities, to engulf, saturate. Though thoughtful of unity and through-line, I seek to convey a freedom and visceral truth that is unencumbered by message or agenda. This allows me to construct the series with a joyful, adventurous energy. Of course, there are deeper meanings for me and so I hope I've created a series that allows others to discover the answer to the questions posed by the chairs with their own stories and possibilities. That would make me very happy.

 DAVID CARMICHAEL - STONE SCULPTOR

My work is primarily that of a direct stone sculptor. There are occasional figurative motifs and allusions but my work is most often abstract. I am concerned with conveying emotional response and meaning through the formal elements of line and volume and spatial perception. In this exploration of emotive evocation within an abstract work and within the medium of stone I have been influenced (in some ways) by the likes of Jean Arp, Brancussi, Barbara Hepworth and Minoro Nuzuma. In working directly on the stone my search for meaning and discovery enters into a complex relationship with the innate "intelligence" and resistance of the stone. The resultant forms are often sensuous and conceptually organic.

I am also interested in the rigors of geometric, architectonic forms along the lines of Isamu Noguchi. In my current more constructionist work my intention is to combine the iconic and atavistic with the personal and the now.