artsy forager

God bless Lesley Frenz...aka 'the artsy forager'...for her thoughtful blog post about our work last week.  I think artists are sometimes too close to their own work to properly describe it, and Lesley has probably topped me here in her understanding of our motives and goals.  It's truly a thrill to have someone so beautifully describe what we do.

Lesley is also doing a beautiful job forging connections in the art world.  I heard from several prospective clients and one gallery shortly after this blog posted.  One of the clients, a lovely lady on the west coast who would probably never have known of us otherwise, purchased a small painting.  We've been having a nice little email correspondence since, the last installment of which included pictures of our painting amongst it's new neighbors in her collection.  The piece hanging directly above ours caught my eye and turned out to be by one of our collectors and new friends Ruth Fiege who will be our booth neighbor at the Cherry Creek Festival in Denver this fall.  Small world!  

Thank you, thank you, thank you Lesley!

It's all much prettier on Lesley's page, but I'm inserting her text here just to make sure I can always find it!

Every family has an unofficial photographer.  That one person you can always count on to be there, camera in hand, to capture milestones, special gatherings and stolen moments.  My maternal grandmother played the role in my family.  She filled album after album of memories to leave behind and those photographs are among my most treasured possessions.  They are a visual storybook of our family history.  Greenville, South Carolina artists Signe and Genna Grushovenko find the precious memories of strangers and translate them into paint.

Though the source photographs themselves have been abandoned by their owners, whether by choice or loss, the artists capture the moments and further anonymize them, erasing faces of features and expressions.  Thus they become instantly relatable.  The faces could be you.. your brothers.. your mother.. your grandmother.

The husband and wife painting duo collaborate on each canvas, husband Genna supplies the underlying layers of color, pattern and texture onto which wife Signe applies the inspired composition of color blocked figures and settings.  The use of a vibrant, limited palette allows the eye to focus on form and depth– and there is plenty of it to be had!

We always tend to look back on “the good ol’ days” with fondness.  Whether or not the days were really good is debatable, I suppose.  But I think there is much we can learn by looking back on the imagery of our past.  How to be content.  Living with less but living more.  Enjoying simple moments with family and friends.

I hope your weekend was filled with simple, blissful living!  To see more of Signe & Genna Grushovenko’s work, please visit their website.  Oh and be sure to check out one of their gorgeous pieces hanging in the 2012 HGTV Green Home!  PS– My hubby is convinced that we’re going to win one of the dream homes.

-Lesley Frenz, the Artsy Forager