Reception March 21, 6-9 p.m.

Show runs 3/19 - 5/10

Valerie Freeman
Valerie Freeman, an Ojai Studio Artist, is inspired by life and nature. Freeman has explored multiple creative mediums to create her expressive style that is filled with organic movement and emotion. Her equine series is the focus for this show, which begins with large subliminal washes on canvases until suggestions of equine appear. Influenced by Chinese brush painting, Freeman enhances the gesture or anatomy with simple brushstrokes, leaving the canvas fresh with the opportunity for the viewer to use their own imagination to interpret the gestures.

Freeman, from Long Island, New York, earned her Bachelor of Fine Art from the Pratt Institute, New York on scholarship. Her prestigious awards and commissions include those from the New York City’s Municipal Arts Society, the Ford Foundation and first place at the Ojai Museum of Art. Freeman has been a curator, gallery director, art instructor and cruise consultant for artistic programs.

Linda Taylor
Linda Taylor, an Ojai Studio Artist, has been fascinated with printmaking since college because it is repeatable and variable, and allows for the combination of drawing, painting and other media. For Taylor, with her extensive travels and observation of people and natural events, her art feels similar to a ballad. Colors and shapes tell a story, and it is open to interpretation.

Taylor graduated with Distinction in Art from San Diego State University and received her Masters of Fine Art in Printmaking and Drawing from the University of California, Santa Barbara. An award-winning artist, and an art instructor at the high school and community college level for 33 years, she founded in 2004 an instructional printmaking facility called the Spotted Dog Studio.

Taylor’s works in the show are monotypes. A monotype is an original print that is created on an etching press, using a matrix such as Plexiglas or a copper plate, and transfered onto a piece of printmaking paper. The image can be painted onto the matrix before transferring it or created using stencils, resulting in a unique image that cannot be repeated. Taylor often uses chine colle, a technique invented in the late middle ages, attaching a variety of papers to the print paper before the image is printed. The papers are underneath the ink, becoming an integral part of the image.