FIVE: raw 

BECCA DAY, TARA KELLEY-CRUZ, VALERIE LLOYD, JES MORAN & DIANE REEVES

Join us for an opening on Friday, April 4th, 5-9 pm. 

Artist talk: April  17th at 5:30 pm

The exhibit will be on display through April 25th.

About the Exhibit:

Surface Gallery presents Five: raw, a group exhibit featuring five local abstract expressionist women artists: Becca Day, Tara Kelley-Cruz, Jes Moran, Diane Reeves, and Valerie Lloyd.

This exhibition is a follow-up to last year’s Five, in which these artists explored the legacies of women from the book Ninth Street Women—Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, and Lee Krasner.

For Five: raw, the focus shifts from historical influence to personal process. Here, “raw” is open to interpretation but speaks more to the act of creation than the final product. The works in this show reflect each artist’s unique, unfiltered approach to abstraction—revealing movement, materiality, and the expressive potential of art.

About the Artists:

Becca Day creates nonobjective abstraction that allows room for the viewers’ own interpretation. The subject of herwork is simply the way the paint is applied to the canvas. Each painting is its own experiment. Sometimes a“meaning” of a painting will strike her after the painting is made. You are invited to find your own meaning or observe the work without deriving meaning—the enjoyment beyond language can itself be the meaning.
The act of painting for Becca, is an expression of personal freedom and resistance against perfectionism, whileat the same time, a practice of refining skill and mastery. She is interested in how intuition plays a role in art making, and paints with the intent of creating work that captures the interplay of chaos and order, which is an echo of her own experience of the world.

Tara Kelley-Cruz was born in Amarillo, Texas and currently lives and works in Colorado Springs, Colorado. With Fine-Arts background, (Tara has a BFA degree, specializing in Printmaking, from Brigham Young University), she became a Graphic Designer and has worked for 26 years with many high profile companies. In recent years, Kelley-Cruz has realized her lifelong dream of dedicating much of her time to her painting practice, in which she combines the best parts of printmaking, graphic design and the experimental nature of painting.

Tara Kelley-Cruz’s work relies heavily on form, color and texture and deals with the question of what things in our history shape who we are as individuals and as a culture. Her latest series of work contains themes of hope, isolation, fantasy, escape, seeking direction, and finding beauty in the turbulence of life.  As a mixed-media painter, her process includes creating at least 10-12 layers of paint, found ephemera, image transfers and drawings. between layers, she scrapes and sands into the painting. Earlier layers are revealed and the surface begins to take on a rich, textured life of its own with its own history. She works in an intuitive way, relying on her own discernment to guide her in the creative process.

Valerie Lloyd paints with both acrylic and oil on canvas and wood panel. She enjoys depicting still lifes into modern and simplified images, creating abstract paintings, and occasional works in an illustrative style. All three styles are often inspired by personal spiritual and metaphorical exploration. Valerie has remained a creative throughout her life, whether it be in her own work at home, as an art teacher to students of all ages, or commissioned design projects. She has a Bachelors of Arts and Education from Colorado State University and currently owns and curates Surfce Gallery. She strives to always inspire those around her in their creative endeavors and truly believes in the power of art to transform culture.

Jes Moran creates vivid and saturated abstract paintings by pouring, staining, and brushing multiple layers of acrylic paint onto raw canvas. She then cuts and stitches the canvas into different compositions. Her work explores themes such as identity, space and environments. She attended Metro State University of Denver for fine art and the Art Institute of Portland, Oregon for Apparel Design. Her work has been show along  the Front Range of Colorado.

Diane Reeves paints to make sense of things, to process thoughts, and to have a conversation with the world. She has been painting for a number of years, exploring her surroundings, finding her connections as she paints each one. She is married to a man who has begun running again, has five children each with their own extraordinary creativities, and has a modest number of close friends, all of whom she counts as her big family. She studied computers in college (which feels like a world away from now), she consults in design aesthetics, and she agrees with Wayne White that there are places and people so beautiful they hurt your feelings.