ART from HEART is excited to announce the Winners of the Artist of the Month - April 2021 celebrating EARTH Month!
4 Artists, 2 Mediums, 3 Countries:
Teresa Bontà - Photography - Italy
Rory Brooke - Printmaking- UK
Christina Lag-Schröckenstein - Photography - Austria
Mara Cozzolino - 'Mokuhanga' Printmaking - Italy
The competition is open to multimedia artists worldwide and created to showcase, promote and raised the visibility of the work of emerging and mid-career artists. The winners are featured on our website and social media platforms and considered for any upcoming curatorial projects by ART from HEART. Artworks are selected based on creativity, originality, quality of work, and overall artistic ability.
Apply NOW to be featured in May 2021!
Teresa Bontà - Photography - Venezia, Italy
© Teresa Bontà, All Rights Reserved.
From Left to Right: Images 1-3 from the Series 'It's all gone'. Images 4-5 Untitled.
Teresa Letizia Bontà (b. 1981 in Licata, Agrigento) approached the world of photography as a self-taught photographer from a very young age. The first subject that stimulated her curiosity was her environment, the artistic beauty and the landscapes of her country, Italy. Among her favourite themes is people, women, and their surrounding reality. Her photographs tell stories about who she is and where she has been.
My past has been troubled but at the same time fundamental for my creativity. The first time I started to “photograph” I did it with my own eyes, like kids do when they see wonderful images hidden between the clouds, or on the shape of the stones or among the branches of the trees. I started to look beyond the things and I really wanted to show everyone what I was seeing.
I remember that, back in the days, I couldn’t afford to purchase a camera so I traded a bag full of clothes to buy it and that’s how I started my journey as a photographer.
I’ve always trusted my eyes and my instinct because I didn’t know the techniques and I’ve never taken any photography course. The streets, people’s emotions, the passion that always brought me to experiment and to be the better version of myself, have been the things that taught me the art of photography.
Teresa has exhibited in Italy and Internationally and has been featured in art galleries and magazines, including: Creative Spaces (art home), PassepARTout Unconventional Gallery, Queenartstudio Gallery, Artabout Magazine, 12th Anniversary Group Exhibition 2 – Fraction Magazine, Art Curator Artetra Art Associates (exhibition and E-book), Emirates Art Connection.
Lens Magazine International has awarded Teresa as one of the ten big names in black and white photography.
In 2020 Teresa begins to show in her work the continuous artistic evolution of her practice, while been core to her roots. She is a simple photographer, but attentive to details. She begins to experiment with new ideas, bringing in her photos current and previous themes. She plays with colours, with contrasts, with the lines of bodies to tell emotions in everyday's life.
In 2020, her first photographic book entitled “La mia Sicilia è fimmina” was published, and it will be the first part of a larger project that will bring her back to shooting in the streets of her land to narrate another very strong part of Sicily.
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Rory Brooke - Printmaking - London, UK
© Rory Brooke. All Rights Reserved.
From left to right: Eype Beach, Chideock Garden, St Agnes View, Climate Change Unravelling
I am the founder of East London Printmakers. I was inspired by Birmingham Print Workshop and sought out fellow printmaker artists in East London with a common interest in promoting printmaking and developing resources for artists and the community to use.
In my work I search to illustrate the issues, lives and actions behind images – the hidden histories and thought processes behind things. I am particularly interested in climate change, the environment, development and our urban and rural landscapes and how these things interact.
I love screenprinting because I love contrasting the blocks of colour with the more intricate elements of the composition.
I have exhibited in group and solo shows in locations including London, Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff and venues including: Royal West of England Academy Annual Open; London City Hall; Woolwich Print Fair; and the Princes Foundation.
I was selected to take part in Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year and was shortlisted to the last three in my heat.
I love the flatness of the colours, and the way the pigment goes down is very beautiful... It’s quite magical. -Tai-Shan Schierenberg, Painter.
I think his colour palette is great. He's a very sophisticated artist. -Kate Bryan, British art historian, curator and arts broadcaster.
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Christina Lag-Schröckenstein - Photography - Vienna, Austria
© Christina Lag-Schröckenstein. Untitled from the 'Tone on Tone Red' Series. All Rights Reserved.
Artist Christina Lag-Schröckenstein thriving in an artistic family environment, displayed a multi - faceted expression of creative talent and passion for art and music from an early age. True to her multidisciplinary nature, Lag-Schröckenstein’s also discovered great potential in the genre of Contemporary Art with a focus on photography and sound art.
The essence of Lag-Schröckenstein’s oeuvre lies in the constant search for diversity, the conquering of the unknown and the exploration of creational boundaries. Not only her inner musical landscapes, but also visual shapes and forms need to be brought into physical form via photography and uniquely conceptualized spaces - and sound installations.
With time, my vocational essence emerged as a creative cosmos of music, photography, installation art and performance - a circle closed.
A combination of various artistic perspectives provides her with creative flexibility: photography, installation, performance and music fuse into perfect artistic symbiosis. She focuses on the concept of interdisciplinarity with emphasis on a piece’s multidimensional meaning and its rich possibilities of interpretation.
Christina fervently explores new elements of artistic expression, creates fresh latitudes of combination, audaciously experiments in the creation of exceptional audiovisual experiences.
After almost a year of living and working in New York City, she relocated to her main place of residence in Burgenland, Austria, a new point of origin for creative work. She got a Diploma in Photography from the Robert Pichler, Lightbox Academy. She also got involved in painting and installation art. She is the founder of Soundscapes, a venue for exhibitions, installations and audiovisual performances.
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Mara Cozzolino - 'Mokuhanga' Printmaking - Avigliana (Turin), Italy
© Mara Cozzolino. All Rights Reserved.
From left to right: A New Life, Awakening, Star Whisperer, Whisper from the Woods
Artist Mara Cozzolino was born in Italy in 1975. She has been fascinated by printmaking from a very young age. She made her first relief print at 11 and started working with intaglio at 19. After graduating from hight school, she started experimenting with many painting mediums, before finally returning to etching techniques. Following a holiday trip to Japan, in 2011 she became interested in Japanese Waterbased Woodlblock Printing, also known as “Mokuhanga”, and fell in love with the technique.
The following year she was invited to take part to an artistic residency at Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory in Kawaguchi-ko, Japan. Since then she has been exclusively working with Mokuhanga.
I was troubled by working with acids and solvents: my goal to live an environmentally friendly life didn't go well with my favourite medium. This is why I was immediately drawn to the Mokuhanga technique, the manual labour and the incredibly low environmental impact.
Using woodcut also changed the idea of what I wanted to represent with my art, since I find this is the perfect medium to represent nature.
My work for the past 7 years has been focused mostly on a stylised representation of nature, from places I live nearby or I’ve visited.
Artist Mara Cozzolino attended both First and Second Mokuhanga International Conferences in Japan, in Kyoto 2011 and Tokyo 2015 respectively, and the last one in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2017. Since 2018 she is part of the International Mokuhanga Association Board and helps organising the next International Mokuhanga Conference which will be held in Nara, Japan in 2021. Her prints have been exhibited in Italy, England, Scotland, Japan, Spain, Cyprus and the United Stated.
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Apply NOW for an opportunity to be featured in May 2021!