After being highlighted as one of 50 Memorable Painters in 2015 by curators John Seed and Didi Menendez, PoetsArtists published a follow-up: “What the 50 Memorable Painters from 2015 Painted in 2016.” This is a copy-paste and selected-screenshot (and condensed) record of the webpage that was originally published: http://www.poetsandartists.com/magazine/2016/12/27/what-some-of-the-50-memorable-painters-from-2015-painted-in-2016
We revisited with some of our 50 Most Memorable Painters from 2015 to see what they have been up to. From the sampling of the artwork you see here, they are still as memorable as ever. It has been a tough year for many. As publisher, I thought it best to not bring you another list this year. Instead let's treasure what we already have and hang on to it for little longer. I think Ron Francis' painting cumulates how most of us feel about 2016. Please read the statements of each artist's recap of their year and take a look at last year's edition here.
For next year we are going to publish a 100 Great Figurative Artworks anthology. Notice that we are focusing on the amount of artwork and not the number of artists. Steven DaLuz will be selecting the works. Information is coming to us from everywhere and I think it is important to have some sort of anthology to offer our readers, galleries, art enthusiasts and collectors so they may have a starting point and then they may take it further from there.
For me, I already have 2017 firmly planted in our calendar with group shows in New York, Denver, Chicago, and Los Angeles with a possible one still in the works in Florida. We are also now publishing heavily on our blog which is feeding information about our community of artists and poets to Apple News. Lorena Kloosterboer one of our staff writers will continue to publish articles about our artist in our blog but more importantly I have given her the position of the head writer. Take a look at her introduction and blurbs about the art in FORMATION at Bernarducci.Meisel.
I already have my eyes set past 2017 but first let's reflect on the art we created in 2016 and see where where our hard work will take us next.
— Didi Menendez
In early spring of 2016, the loss of my full-time arts-admin work destabilized me. I set myself to see this situation (with the subsequent searching and interviewing for, and finally securing two part-time jobs) as a fertile place to grow my body of work which I intended to bloom into a robust studio practice. But every session in my studio was hard-won as my mental energy was spent sorting out What This Is Now rather than focusing my vision on my work. The work started to bog down as I floundered in the chaos between schedules/projects/responsibilities. I am grateful for the life jacket that was thrown to me in autumn, when I was included in “Point of Origin” at The Lodge Gallery. This show kept me afloat and I’ve since been able to secure lines to other exhibitions. Despite the instability, this year saw my paintings grow more bigger, more gutsy, more tenacious than they have been before. Even when I feel like I’m underwater!
— Charis J. Carmichael Braun
