Past Artists

TRUNG PHAM

Featured in the Gallery, Spring 2015.

I painted wounds to depict beauty in vulnerability and brokenness. These paintings enfold the grotesque, deformed, contorted look of wounds, yet through the ruptured and punctured appearance, the beauty of their tenderness and fragility emerges. My desire is to point one’s sensitivity to the brokenness, open the viewers’ sense of compassion and understanding, and inspire them to perceive beauty in the most unexpected and unimaginable. I believe that vulnerability has the power of transformation.

Kirsten Malcolm Berry

Featured in the Ephrathah Gallery, Winter 2015

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is drawn from the images of the New Testament. Integrated into each painting is the verse on which it is based, written in Greek. The Greek links viewers to the original form of the text and its unfamiliar script hints at God's global grace to "every tribe and language." 

The configurations of repeated shapes reflect the influence of several indigenous art forms. The daughter of Presbyterian missionaries, I grew up in the Philippines and was exposed to the decorative use of patterns on Filipino and other Southeast Asian fabrics and basketry. Geometric woolen tapestries of my Scandinavian heritage have also affected my sense of design, as have Native American weaving, Hmong reverse appliqué, traditional quilts, and Byzantine mosaics. 

The exercise of faith is difficult for those of us who long for perceptible signs of God’s presence. I paint the images of the Bible to help me translate the abstract into the tangible. Through pictures I grasp that the Word indeed became flesh, and in resurrection power is present even now in the Advocate.  And is that not him behind the glimmers of new creation we see each day?

John Terwilliger

Featured in the Gallery, Winter 2015

ARTIST STATEMENT

I grew up on a 500+ acre dairy farm in southeastern Minnesota amongst the rolling river bluffs feeding into the Mississippi. I attended the University of Minnesota after high school and received a BFA in studio arts with a focus on drawing in 1987. I showed my artwork sporadically after college until 1996 when I stopped showing publicly.

In late 2006, after a decade of no shows outside of my home, I decided to reengage the art community and began showing in group shows. Since that time I have been in numerous group shows and many solo shows around Minnesota.

The content (content being images and artists statement) of this gallery is copyright © John Terwilliger. All rights expressly reserved.

Shaun LaRose

Featured in the Gallery, December 2014

Michele Combs

Featured in the gallery, Summer 2015

Artist Statement

I’m a contemporary impressionist oil painter who loves thick paint, color, and the way light plays on leaves, water, and faces. In fact, being a painter has changed the way I view the world and I strive to capture the beauty I see onto my canvas.

Picking up a paintbrush compels me to connect emotionally with a subject in a way that a quick click of a camera doesn’t. Where is the light coming from? Where are the shadows and what is hiding there? As I am drawn into the subject I fall deeper into the mood or excitement there and it slips off the end of my brush and onto the canvas. In every painting, I leave a bit of myself.

I am inspired by blooming gardens, the sun rising or setting over a majestic landscape, playful animals, and traveling to distant lands. Everyday scenes of colorful clothes hanging on a line on washing day, a farmers’ market, or a cascading waterfall make me eager to get out my paints and translate that mood or emotion onto my canvas.

One of the greatest joys I have experienced as an artist is when my story intersects with another person’s. When someone views one of my paintings and I see they ‘connect’ with it, there is a joy that brings incredible fulfillment to me as an artist.

Ludmila Pavlova