The Salon artists comprise spring show at St. Paul’s gallery

Santa Fe Series: Mountain Walk with Road by Tom Roese, graphite, acrylic and colored pencil on acid-free board.

View Image Gallery

The Nicholson B. White Gallery at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 2747 Fairmount Blvd., announces its spring show, The Salon Shows at St. Paul’s. The exhibition opens with an artists’ reception on Friday, March 10, 5–7 p.m., where participating artists will greet guests and discuss their creative processes. The show runs through June 4.

Featured artists are Bonnie Dolin (oils and pastels), Jennifer Leach (woodcut prints), Leslye Discont Arian (mixed media and clay) and Tom Roese (acrylics and graphite).

Last year, these four artists formed an art group called “The Salon” for the purpose of sharing new work, giving and receiving critiques and encouragement, and enjoying the company of other artists. While the work of each artist is unique, the struggles are universal, and the monthly input the members of the Salon receive from one another creates a sense of renewal, connection and determination to continue making art. This is the Salon’s first show as a group.

Bonnie Dolan works in pastel and oil. Many of her paintings are based on photographs and then greatly altered as she shapes the work. Some paintings are not realistic images of a real place, but are an expressionistic vision of the idea of landscape. Her main concern in those works is how to use color to good effect and to create a mood.

Jennifer Leach works primarily in woodblock and linoleum relief techniques. Printmaking has been integral to her career in graphic design, illustration and K–12 art education, and she is currently focusing on printmaking as art. An interest in people, motivations, interactions, identity and emotional conditions are the inspiration for the images Leach creates. She makes prints to distill the complex mix of emotion, social pressures and conflicting messages people experience every day into a manageable visual object. The expressiveness of the cut wood and texture of the wood grain on paper match and enhance the mood she is looking to create.

Leslye Discont Arian draws with paint, pastel, charcoal and gesso. Her surfaces are sometimes collaged with recycled drawings and the media are layered. “My tools are my fingers, the back of a brush or sandpaper," she said. "I work in a gestural and post-modernist style. Trained as a ceramicist, being hands-on with material allows me complete freedom from the material world. My clay bowls pay homage to the Japanese Edo period and the figures honor the wish to mother.”

Tom Roese is known for his architectural paintings of industrial Cleveland in which he realistically details rust and grit. In contrast, his Santa Fe series, started after a trip there in November, eliminates detail to create the scene and uses natural colors—a completely different palette from his Cleveland works. Roese’s art starts with his true love: drawing with pencil. “The musical sounds I hear of a pencil traveling over a paper surface are, to me, like a symphonic rhapsody,” he said. After using light or colored pencil to highlight or find the path to a temperature, he applies localized color with thinned acrylic paint to translate his black-and-white drawing to a color image.

Everyone is welcome at the opening reception. The gallery is open weekdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on weekends, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The artists receive all proceeds from the sale of their work.