Harrison Public Library Presents “Shapes & Shadows” by Marion Schneider and Mitchell Visoky

Exhibition is on display April 2 to May 5, 2023.
Gallery is open to the public during regular library hours.

Artist’s Statements:

Marion Schneider
People walking, sitting, visiting museums, crossing the street, going to work….all based on ordinary moments in the lives of New Yorkers, but unique in the eyes of this artist. I am interested in the visual relationships of strangers passing while crossing the street, the way the light creates shadows forming graphic patterns that dance on the pavement, and the way the city itself becomes an abstract backdrop for the movements of its people.

These subjects, combined with my love of painting, bold design, vivid color, and New York City, are the core of my work. I worked as a Senior Art Director in Advertising in New York City and then at Pepsi for more than 30 years and have been focusing on my painting and pastel work for the last 25 years. Bold design and color are always at the core of everything I do and form the structure of my work.

Mitchell Visoky
Whether working with printmaking, collage, painting, or using a variety of materials, my goal is to capture timeless images that reflect both the past and the present.

In a world that holds many contradictions, I explore the interplay of congruent and disparate relationships while delving into concepts of layering colors and translucency of imagery.

Inspiration comes from a reflection of nature and man-made forms that include land formations, patterns, textural objects, and surfaces and spatial barriers.

My process involves an intuitive dialog between the intentional and unplanned marks, giving way to developing relationships between the conscious and accidental.

This work in mixed media and collage uses layered paper, printed images, and vellum photographs representing the memories of locations and times in my everyday experiences. The images give way to the concepts of consciousness, loss, and a dreamlike state of mind. The layers allow me to create a time frame of images-some past, some present.

Throughout the process I remain attentive to editing, reducing and simplifying forms to their most powerful essences.  In the end, each composition functions like a conversation or a musical fugue. I strive to achieve tension and correlation between forms by balancing opposites: motion vs. stillness, depth vs. surface, concealing vs. revealing, and positive vs. negative spaces.

About the Artists:

Marion Schneider is a graduate of Syracuse University School of Art with a major in Advertising Design and Illustration graduating Magna Cum Laude. She studied ‑lmmaking at San Francisco Art Institute after graduation. Her artistic career began as a freelance illustrator in New York before working in Advertising for many years and then at Pepsico as a Sr. Art Director for 20 years. In 1995 she began studying painting at SUNY Purchase and Pastel at the Silvermine Guild in CT which continued for many years.

Marion’s strong design background has had a tremendous in­fluence on her painting and pastel work. It has formed a basic structure and way of seeing the world that dominates her work with bold design, a strong passion for color and unique space arrangement. Her intense love of color, pattern, edge playfulness, and extreme light and shadow are strong themes that are always evident in her paintings. The city continues to be her main inspiration for her paintings and pastels, in addition she also explores abstract, landscape, ­oral subjects, and still life.

Marion is a member and past President of the Mamaroneck Artists Guild, a member of the Rye Art Center, The Greenwich Arts Council, and the Westchester Arts Council. She has exhibited in all of these venues in addition to Lever House Gallery in NY, the Catherine Lorillard Show in NY, and many other galleries in the Connecticut, New York area. Her award winning work is in many private collections in Westchester, New York City, the Hamptons, San Francisco, and Florence, Italy.

She also is available for and has done many commissions.

Mitchell Visoky is NY based contemporary artist working in variety of media and techniques choreographing composition, color, shape and space. With nature and the environment as his sources of inspiration, he offers the viewer a new sense of interpreting various segments of the natural and built worlds.

His award-winning images have been exhibited at regional solo and group venues. In New York at Chroma Fine Art Gallery, Flat Iron Gallery, Bethany Arts Center, Pelham Art Center, Orazio Salati Gallery, Rockland Center for the Arts, Vanderbilt Museum, Castle Gallery, Hammond Museum, Upstream Gallery, Garrison Art Center, Edward Hopper House Gallery, and Westchester Community College. In Connecticut he exhibited at Silvermine Guild Galleries, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Carriage Barn Arts Center, and the Cartus Corporation. In New Jersey at Watchung Art Center and in Massachusetts Cape Code at the Truro Art Center, Kobalt Gallery, Adam Peck Gallery, and the A Gallery.

Visoky holds a B.S. in Art Education from Buffalo State College and a M.S. in Studio Art from the College of New Rochelle.

His studio is in Port Chester, NY. Please contact him to schedule a studio visit.