GALLERY ARTISTS

John MacManus

Local resident. Born Dublin Ireland. Came to United States in 1982.

Award winning Urban Designer. Co-founded the design studio Altamanu in Chicago with a focus on public work including the design of parks, schools, plazas, and the streets that connect them. Known for community involvement and the inclusion of major pieces of public art in his projects.

Currently experimenting with various media with a focus on Chinese and Japanese ink landscape painting.

Josephine Bellalta

Local resident. Born London, England, raised in Chile and the United States.

Award winning Landscape Architect and Urban Designer. Founded design studio Altamanu in Chicago with a focus on public work including the design of parks, schools, plazas, and the streets that connect them. Known for community involvement and the inclusion of major pieces of public art in her projects.

Recently she has returned to her work as a ceramicist.

Jeannie Lacocque

As long as I can remember I have always needed to express myself through art and dance. I wove beautiful raw yarn, I sculpted using clay, plaster, and wood. I did hand building with clay. I took some classes and generally immersed myself in photography for years. It took this meandering road to become an acrylic artist. I watched every YouTube video I could to learn different techniques in acrylic pouring. I poured paint onto canvas, tiles, and rocks often for 5 hours a day. It was so exciting to move paint around on a canvas and other materials.

Learning to mix paint, broadening my understanding of color theory, and using different mediums became my consuming passion.

I also love teaching. I love to see my students’ faces gleam with happiness when their paint moves across a canvas and they create beautiful designs. Sometimes my mistakes turned into my favorite pieces. This type of acrylic painting is not always predictable but it’s also forgiving. Sure it takes skill and knowledge but so much of this kind of painting is like “the music of what happens”. It is an adventure that is so exhilarating that I want to share it with you.

Come and paint with me!

Artists’ Statement (John MacManus)

Recently I became fascinated by Chinese and Japanese ink and wash landscape painting and the ability of artists to capture and convey a variety of landscape forms with a single color.

There is a great emphasis on the ability to capture the perceived “spirit” or “essence” of a subject over direct imitation. Features of a landscape are often reduced to a graphic symbol that conveys deep meaning.

The waterfall, a common element of these paintings, also has great meaning in most cultures. It can symbolize life, purity, fertility, abundance, and transformation.

Water is often created by leaving a white space emerging from the background color. I reversed this and tried to use a single color to capture the essence of the waterfall and to reflect on the movement of a brush in a single stroke.