My work springs from the touch and smell of Texas earth. Animals. Antlers. Rocks. Bones. Figurative shapes dissolve into abstraction. Horses wrench from a black abyss. Dark human forms with antlers emerge like primal phantoms. A hoof plants firmly in rich, red soil.

These are the images conjured from my childhood. Like a tribal drum, the rhythm of the earth beats in me and reverberates in my paintings. I am an expressionist. I paint the images reflected in the bonfire of my youth.

My paintings are about people, whether fully depicted, abstracted into the implied face of a machine, or the fragmented scrap of a photo. They are the minds eye of relationships between people and their environment, visual time and space. Working with the nude, I take a layered approach. First and foremost it is a monument to the non-hero. No uniforms or medals, no pearls or fancy dress – just life. On another level it is about relationships. The relationship of artist to model, the model to the box of the canvas, and life to life. The formal elements of composition reinforce the birth to infinity relationship of humanity and boxes. The box of a room or the box of a coffin, how much space the figure element takes up or where it is placed, all important tools for creating an emotional connection to the figure. For me, realism cannot be a scale-model recreation of a visual world but rather a tool of thought and observation, a way of exploring mortality, displaced associations, relationships and the magic of humanity.

Searching for a muse, I instead found myself basking in the glow of an obnoxiously bright liquor store sign in Dallas, which led me to the realization that these dinosaurs of the art world were close to extinction. The days of runway light neon signs to attract your attention are long but forgotten with the now graphic driven monstrosities of today. Viewers receive a glimpse of the glory days, in this series that captures the essence of the seedy motels and smoke filled rooms, that once laid fame to these signs.

A renewed appreciation of the natural environment has led me to explore the landscape as a subject for painting. The undulating shapes and contours in nature are echoed in the human form, and make up the step from landscape to representation of the figure, specifically the nude, a logical one.

I paint by layering colors, one over another, to achieve a representation of light defining form. Since I see light as an additive element, i.e. a form is totally in shadow and basically formless until light delineates its form, I begin with a dark underpainting and define the form by applying layers using lighter tonal values until I reach the desired chiaroscuro effect. The fast drying qualities of the acrylic medium best facilitates this color blending technique.

“Eating, when we do it consciously, feels as serious, and even sacramental, as if our lives depended on it – which happens to be the case.” -- Peter Schjeldahl, Art Critic.

Over the past eight years, eating and other rituals surrounding food have become the major context of this ongoing body of work. We eat our meals in various states of awareness of the act and it’s significance. I find myself looking with curiosity at the space, time, and manner in which we eat, prepare, and acquire our meals. My original perception of these moments is often interrupted or distracted. I return to them with the attempt to create a curious space where questions form.

Food packaging has become an occupying image that serves as both metaphor and formal inspiration. Simple objects that unfold, contain, separate, codify, or connect may signify the invisible structures that form our daily lives. The Nature Un/Folded series is occupied with juxtaposing the artificial structure of commercial packaging with the organic structure of produce. In these I explore a curious relationship between a hidden coding in each that influences their manifestation. By re-contextualizing the familiar, these images aim to attract and provoke questions about contemporary food science, consumerism, and the mundane act of eating.

The ideas I explore are a continuing visual dialog about personal memory, longing and our emotional associations with the natural world During the past ten years my work has been conceived by the intermingling of various materials, techniques and concepts. The major portion of my studio practice is done on two-dimensional surfaces such as paper or wood panel on which I combine painting, printmaking and drawing processes. I use several techniques and materials on a single surface to imply a symbolic parallel to how memories are often multilayered. I approach image making as a metaphor for daily experience and memories as well as a yearning for a spiritual and ecological center. The time I spend in my studio in Austin inspires in my work a deeper connection to place and nature.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got about painting was “Paint what you love!” I try to do just that - paint the trees, branches, leaves, blossoms, and birds that surround my own home and make it my favorite spot. I’m not interested in painting them exactly as they appear in nature, nor do I want to simplify them to the point of total abstraction. My intent, rather, is to find a happy intersection between nature, paint, and the workings of my own mind.

I tend to see the organic elements I paint as patterns of color, light, and texture - intricate quilts whose myriad pieces of fabric are all in constant flux as day turns to night and one season follows another. My compositions evolve over time, sometimes long periods of time. Each painting develops a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, with each new piece shaped and colored by my brush. Of course, I try lots of pieces that don’t fit and have to be replaced.

When someone buys a painting from me, I feel special delight because it indicates to me that he or she sees something in this world in much the same way I do. We must have connected on a rather intimate level, even if we’re unacquainted. I paint to please myself, of course, but it is nice when others are pleased as well.

I approach painting with a simple philosophy: a successful piece of art is one that allows viewers to peek into my world of imagination and artistic aspirations. My exhibitions represent the theme of human life. My artworks combine trompe l’oiel and classical painting techniques with surreal settings of pears to express messages of revitalization and aspiration.

My pear paintings depict the abstract form of the human body. The pears are presented as characters rather than objects. Each individual pear has its own distinctive shape, yet all pears possess the same qualities and characteristics of milky smooth surfaces and off-white innards. Likewise, all human beings exhibit a genuine heart and soul on the inside, despite different outer appearances. I choose subjects that signify the realistic aspect of our lives and weave them into a surreal setting. I put them together in a way that mirrors the mysteries of intertwining human imaginations and physical manifestations. This theme has extended into consideration of human shortcomings, connection to reality, as well as issues of mortality and what is left behind.

Through my paintings, I wish to create an atmosphere of humor, fantasy, mystery, and elements of human conditions. Also, I transform everyday experiences into visual stimulation as a form of communication, to pose questions and seek answers. “Everything we see hides another thing; we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.” - Rene’ Magritte

Most of what I make falls into the category of eccentricity, because I have never admitted a clear distinction between making images and living. If in my work I have managed to disguise a participation in my circumstances, I still cannot deny the eccentricity in what I make, since I make images precisely because I am only half there, if at all, in a rational world. I work by default and dislocation, and since I work out of an interstice, that place and time between what we know, I always try and invite others to discover one of their own, to see themselves inside the figures and circumstances of my pictures. I hope that when that line is crossed, they see through my eyes my manias and fears that reside in them as well, and that they understand the frail and tenuous nature of ourselves and the ironic and often ridiculous situations that we bring on ourselves. Regardless of you or me, the monster is the same.

The primary subjects of my paintings are 21st century man's working monuments, which represent our culture's dedication to production and consumption. The essence of our way of life can be seen in our never-ending at-tempt to subdue our environment. It is not my inten-tion to either glorify or condemn this objective, but to invite contemplation and leave judgement up to the viewer. I'm always looking for places where the man-made environment inundates the natural. I paint this in a way where subtle abstraction dissociates elements from the environment, creating an oscillating view of the natural and the fabricated. The paintings are meant to be ambiguous - they can be seen as an indictment of human waste and contemporary alienation, or, simultaneously, they can be understood as silent tributes to the fundamental tools of our society that we all too often ignore. One might ask why I paint these things rather than document them with photographs -- I believe painting, because of its deliberateness, serves purposes that photography can-not. My paintings take a long time to produce and in this way they parallel and underscore the deliberate-ness with which our machinery is built into the land-scape. Thay are a culmination rather than a moment-- a "long look" at our technology and legacy.

Fascinated with European art history and painting, Sallie McIlheran came to Vienna, Austria after finishing her college degree at Sweet Briar College, Virginia. She applied for the entrance examinations and was accepted to the University of Vienna where she spent five years, until she earned her Masters of Fine Art, for painting and graphic art. She was able to study in the Master Class of Prof. Wolfgang Hutter, one of the leading members of the Austrian School of Fantastic Realism. During these years in Vienna, she learned various techniques of painting. The most important one for her, the “Alt-Meister Technik”, using a gradual buildup of white egg tempera, underpainting and layers of oil, has influenced her style of painting. Precision of line and detail as well as consideration of color are of fundamental importance. Since 1991, Sallie McIlheran works primarily on her artwork for exhibitions and participates regularly in diverse art competitions. Aside from this, she works freelance for various publishing houses, among others Breitschof in Vienna and Frieling Publishing House in Berlin as well as working on portrait commissions. Starting in 2001, she holds classes in painting and drawing for adults at the Volkshoch-schule in Friesing.

Jared is a Texas-born documentary photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Work from the show "Leaves of Grass," showing at Norwood Flynn Gallery in February 2010, premiered at FCB Gallery in New York in November 2009.

"When two elephants fight, it is only the grass that suffers." - African Proverb

This show is part of an intimate portrait of Afghanistan, a country looked at, but rarely seen. Jared Moossy is an award-winning professional photographer whose works have appeared in numerous publications, including Time Magazine, Newsweek, The London Times, and Conde Nast Traveler. We are pleased to be able to showcase Jared's work for Dallas viewers.

My work is a collection of symbols. Figures, birds, flowers, foliage and envelopes function like text to trigger responses and connections. In these paintings I invite viewers to make their own interpretations and connections with the visual clues in the images. Like moments in time, memories and dreams, the figures and images serve as starters for dialogue with the viewer.

I am interested in painting as it helps me remember. Remembering a sense of place or a feeling of color is possible when I paint, not in a literal way as in realism or photography, but rather in expressive painting, using tones and masses of paint to evoke the memories of a place. As I paint, the images evolve and recall places I know, like the Texas Coast or New Mexico or Vermont. Often, the painting will reveal a feeling that I experienced at a certain moment as I stood on the beach or walked through a field. Painting becomes, for me, a way of remembering.

The paintings in Landscapes were completed in 2006. Most of the pieces were worked in a series, painting one after another. They were painted entirely from memory and in my studio. The use of acrylic paint is new to me and I am pleased with the freshness of the color and brush strokes. The large oil paintings in this show were completed over an extended period of time and have the advantage of layers of paint and revision that is so like my own way of thinking about life.

The act of painting reveals as many challenges, discoveries and mysteries as I could ever ask for. It is within this process of making art that I find meaning and connection to life, myself and to the source of my creativity. My paintings suggest organic formations that seem familiar but remain elusive. It is within this ambiguity that I engage the viewer through harmonic color relationships, form and striking contrasts. I apply multiple layers of color and texture, which result in a quality of depth and complexity that encourages the viewer to contemplate the painting as a multi-dimensional atmosphere radiating a source of warmth and light. My paintings are environments that I invite the viewer into, to explore and investigate further.

I was born in Austin, Texas, in 1961 and I moved to Houston in 1984 to attend design school. I had a career in graphic design but decided to pursue fine art full-time in 1998. I hope to make art for the rest of my life. If my life is a long one, then I know my best work is to come.

Photography is the most intriguing handcrafted process I can imagine. From just that very moment of visualizing the object until the final printed image, I am the one measuring, metering and making the decisions about the motive in front of my eyes and the camera. Results are calculated and thought out. The camera serves its purpose for me as the instrument which facilitates my visual ideas and concepts into a picture. Thus I am a convinced Hasselblad and Leica aficionado, as they best relay my exact visual intentions and are superior in technical directness and quality... both straightforward and excellent systems which have proven their timelessness. Traditional Film materials are also important to me and I have worked together for many years with a photo lab in Munich which is responsive to my wishes as a photographer and not pressing digital results from a programmed computer. I love my Bavarian homeland and endeavor to be an attester of her natural beauty and grandness without being overly sentimental.