Overlook The Undergrowth Show Statement:
Crawling vines sweep up through the cracks of damp moss, and you know you’ve entered the darkest part of the forest. You wait for your eyes to adjust before you can capture sight of the scattering creatures that hide, watching you, nestled amongst the leaves.
Overgrown weeds expand to take back the earth, creeping, crawling, sprawling, spiraling, providing shelter for all the critters nestled safely inside its earthy cocoon. You hear the crack of a dead branch, and turn in time to catch a glimpse of fur. The smell of foliage surrounds you and devours you in all of its magnitude.
What is hiding under the dew drenched leaves?
What we overlook, what we can not see, what our eyes aren’t yet trained to comprehend…it’s there beneath the undergrowth.
Join Lesley Reppeteaux and Chris Ryniak as they lead you to a place where guardians of animals, the hunters and the hunted all thrive.
Lesley Reppeteaux Bio:
Born in Nova Scotia, Canada, next to the Atlantic Ocean breeze, Lesley Reppeteaux hopped the US border to Nevada at the age of 7 and hasn’t stopped traveling since. Experiencing different lives and culture at a young age spawned a wanderlust that keeps her searching for inspiration, experiences, beauty, and adventure all over the globe.
Reppeteaux is a storyteller who is deeply affected by the marriage of art and literature. Within her work you’ll find long limbed beauties with dangerous claws, stories of sea swept sirens, and creatures from the deep lurking beneath the surface. Pouty-lipped heroines with melancholy softness permeate to create a peculiar world filled with chimera and charm – a bewitching gathering of all the cloven-hoofed vixens that prance in her head. Her female characters are strong and ethereal. The sea and its wonder appear in unexpected places, and mythology runs deep. The heart of her work lies within the concepts, each piece expanding your imagination as she takes you by the hand and leads you on a journey with her.
Reppeteaux has shown with Copro/Nason Gallery, La Luz De Jesus Gallery, DvA Gallery, M Modern, Primary Spac, Gallery 1988, as well as many other esteemed galleries internationally and her work has been collected in the various countries she has lived and traveled. She has been featured in Hi-Fructose, Art Prostitute, XFuns Magazine and Lemonade Magazine as well as BEASTS, the new hardcover book from Fantagraphics.
Artist website: www.reppeteaux.com
Chris Ryniak Bio:
Chris Ryniak was born in 1976 in the suburbs of Detroit. He spent his childhood basking in the warm glow of Saturday morning cartoons and flipping over rocks in search of insects, reptiles and ghosts.
A graduate and former instructor of the Ringling School of Art and Design, He is now a painter and sculptor of all manner of critters. Chris’ work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the US including Miami, Los Angeles, New York City as well as Hamburg, Germany. His paintings have also been published in numerous books and periodicals in the States as well as in Europe and Singapore.
Ryniak now resides in a coastal Ohio Dutch Colonial with his wife, two children, dog, cat and Venus Fly Trap. Sadly, there have been no ghost sightings yet.
Artist website: www.bigistudio.com