DREAMSCAPE
September 1-16, 2023
We are thrilled to bring you Dreamscape in the gallery, opening during our September First Friday event on Friday, September 1st, 5-9pm. This colorful show features acrylic, oil and encaustic paintings by Colorado artists Kristen Ross, Richelle Cripe, Sarah Starling and Shannon Mello.
KRISTEN ROSS is a contemporary landscape painter based in Boulder, Colorado. She paints the places she loves to explore, celebrating the complexity of the West’s wild spaces with vivid color and intricate detail.
Kristen’s fascination with art and the outdoors began in early childhood, but moving to Colorado from Atlanta in 2015 sparked a desire to express her passion through painting. After a hike, Kristen returns to her studio with sketches and reference photos for inspiration. She seeks to capture the essence of time spent in nature, highlighting what makes each place unique. Her interest in ecology, geology, and history drives her to learn about the places she paints so that she can tell their stories in new and unique ways. Out of appreciation for the wild places we all share, she donates a portion of all proceeds from the sale of her work to the National Park Foundation.
RICHELLE CRIPE is a painter in all mediums living and working in Longmont, Colorado. Her paintings explore color theory through the use of restrained palettes and the worlds of possibility that exist when we tune into the choice of imagination and allow our own perspective to be changed in the process. She received dual BA degrees in Art History and Fine and Studio Arts from the University of Kentucky and was a PhD student in the University of Colorado’s ATLAS program. She is a software engineer by trade.
Prior to 2020 Richelle was an abstract artist, exploring process-based intuitive painting with a strong emphasis on color relationships. During lockdown, she created a series of desert landscapes on a whim and has been building a body of dreamy vistas ever since. Her current work is a deeply feminine, colorist’s take on the historical tradition of western landscape painting.
SARAH STARLING is a Denver-based artist originally from the Chicagoland area. She received a Bachelor’s of Fine Art with an emphasis in painting from Carthage College in 2011 and continued experimenting with various mediums including oils, acrylics, and watercolor while maintaining a full-time corporate position. Sarah moved to Colorado in 2016 and began working with encaustic. The process of working with wax, fire, and different tools allowed Sarah to push herself creatively and she has been working with this medium primarily for the past 7 years. She draws much of her inspiration from her environment, often working in series of a specific memory or place she has visited. Her current work reflects an abstracted version of landscape—some inspired by the places I have been and some imagined. She strives to create worlds that feel familiar, yet are open to interpretation for the viewer.
Sarah has exhibited in various galleries in Colorado, Illinois, and Wisconsin. She has work in private and public collections around the country.
SHANNON MELLO
I’ve been creating art my whole life. I’ve also always been a lover of nature and the great outdoors since I can remember. The artwork I create, whether it is the materials or the subject matter itself, will almost always have a connection to nature. Encaustic is made from beeswax and tree resin, which naturally creates a layered atmosphere of color and texture.
Watercolors create ethereal lands, usually complemented by the use of gold or copper leafing. My cold wax & oil paintings usually depict an abstracted landscape with subtle earth tones, contrasted by small bits of breaking light. No matter the media, an atmospheric landscape emphasizing a glint of light and contrasting textures seem to be what inspires me the most.