SERENITY: I am Calm
The Serenity series art exhibit at the UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women's Health
San Francisco Women Artists (SFWA), curator for the art exhibitions for the UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women's Health, selects works by SFWA Member Artists throughout the Bay Area. SFWA's artists are creating and exhibiting work that will enhance the healing environment of the Women's Health Center, engaging and uplifting visitors, practitioners and staff. The exhibit changes three times a year and is displayed on five floors of the Women's Health Center. Each of the selected artists display a body of work related to the exhibition themes on their respective floors.
Now in it's 15th year, the "Serenity" series continues to provided opportunities for local artists working in all mediums - with a focus on positive, healing and uplifting artwork. Since 2007 more than 180 Bay Area artists have participated in this show.
A presence in the San Francisco art community for over a century, SFWA supports, empowers, and expands the representation of women artists. They continue their commitment to diversity and encourage aspiring artists at all stages of their careers. "With the understanding that wellness is a holistic ideal, we acknowledge the transformative power of art as a core belief of SFWA. Art inspires, produces profound insights, and can serve as a healing force." - San Francisco Women Artists
Pamela Mooney
BIOGRAPHY
Pamela Mooney, born in Southern California, has been painting and drawing since a young child. She graduated from University of California at Los Angeles where she earned a BA in Philosophy. She studied painting and drawing at The Art Students League in New York City, the San Francisco Institute of Art and the California College of the Arts. Her work has appeared in numerous group shows in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York. She currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
When painting I am always looking for ways to simplify. I start with photographs found online, or photographs taken by family and friends. For one painting I usually use multiple reference photographs, taking the parts I need as a reference point for the painting. My work is usually painted in a scale larger than life, a scale that encourages simplification and exaggeration. Saturated colors often stand in for dark values. Different hues of the same color and colors that don’t belong create visual interest and emotional associations. In the process of painting it is usually the unplanned marks that generate new approaches, pushing the work in a new direction.
www.pmlamooney.com
Jean Brodie
BIOGRAPHY
Making images was always part of Jean’s being. Even as a child, she was drawing and creating. Jean’s formal art training began at the University of Northern Iowa, where she earned a BA Degree in Fine Art. After graduation in 1971, the beauty of the Colorado mountains called to her. In Colorado she followed her interest in clay, working as a clay artist for several years. Concurrently, she pursued an Art Education Degree at the University of Northern Colorado. With that Graduate Degree, Jean taught art for 26 years in Jefferson County R-1 School District. Upon retiring in 2003, Jean worked in her Colorado studio with watercolor and acrylic, showing in various regional art shows, and further pursuing her art education at the Art Students League, Denver, Colorado.
In 2019 Jean moved to San Francisco where she continues her passion to create “Visual Adventures”. She is a member of ArtSpan and the San Francisco Women Artists Gallery.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I have always loved seeing. What I remember most is the visible world around me. Sounds and smells and textures are there also, but my strongest sensory input is visual. From this, it flows naturally, that what I want to create are images and visual adventures. When working objectively, what I create is portrayed in various degrees of abstraction. On the other hand, a portion of my work is on the totally abstract end of the abstraction continuum. Each way of creating presents challenges: one to render the world as it is seen; and the other, to create visual adventures without identifiable objects, using only the visual elements of shape, value, color, line, and texture.
www.jeanbrodie.com
Susan Sweet
BIOGRAPHY
Susan Sweet is a mixed media and watercolor painter working in the North Bay Area. She has been creating art since childhood and graduated from the Academy of Art in San Francisco in 1984. Her current series of large watercolor florals were inspired during the pandemic while taking forays into her gardens and hiking. She finds respite and beauty in the color and forms of nature. She is currently represented by the Healdsburg Center for the Arts Gallery and has been in numerous group and solo shows since 1986.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
UCSF has always held a special place in my heart. After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009 I received wonderful care at UCSF. The physicians, staff and nurses were skilled and compassionate. In recovery after surgery, I remember hearing a violinist play to soothe patients and was so happy to know that UCSF was bringing in adjunctive, wholistic modalities to aide in their patients’ comfort. When I heard of an opportunity to show work based on the theme “Serenity” at UCSF I was all in! It felt like a “full circle” moment to be able to bring images of nature and solace to patients, families and staff.
The pandemic allowed me to spend a lot of time outdoors in my garden or wandering through botanical gardens. I found exploring florals to be very soothing and uplifting. Getting lost in both the curves and colors of flowers – and the fluidity of watercolors – sustains me. It has been such a tough road for most (thank you dedicated doctors, nurses and staff!) and we are especially in need of solace and beauty in these trying times. I hope that my paintings give you a moment of respite.
www.susansweetartist.com
Debbie Cain
BIOGRAPHY
Debbie Cain is an award winning and published photographic artist born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She fell in love with photography at the age of eight, when her mother gave her an old instamatic camera. When she took her first photography class in high school, she was instantly hooked on the printing process. At San Jose State University, she received a minor in Fine Art Photography and a B.A. in Magazine Journalism. After college, she was able to really hone her printing skills working at a custom photography lab for five years as a black and white printer and she continued to shoot film exclusively for many years. In 2010, she was gifted a digital camera and now enjoys the creative freedom it allows her to incorporate into her work. She also loves working in alternative processes like emulsion transfers, platinum palladium printing and recently has started working with the Mordançage process.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Photography is my tool for capturing moments I see in the world. It is a way for me to instantly relive an emotion that I experienced at the moment I clicked the shutter. It allows me to share that moment and emotion with others. The world has a myriad of subjects I find beautiful, interesting and amazing. It is my perspective of the world that I want to capture and share with my viewers. Today, with digital technology, I am able to take it one step further and create a more artistic perspective with my images in post-production as reflected in my new series “Kaleidoscope.”
DebbieCain.com | Instagram: Debbie_Cain_Photography
Tiffany Conway
BIOGRAPHY
Tiffany’s paintings represent a break from generational curses and a doorway to beautiful beginnings. She overcame stereotypes, an absent mother (due to addiction, and began speaking life to herself first. Raised in the Bay Area by her father and stepmother, her creativity grew out of life her experiences. She studied at the Academy of Art University (San Francisco) and the Peralta Colleges (Alameda County) but her college education came to a halt due to life events outside of her control. Yet the setback birthed a purpose that changed the trajectory of Tiffany’s life.
Seeing the beauty and struggle of the human experience was the driving force behind a new declaration: to see and make visual the beauty and struggle of her experiences. Using adversity as a creative mechanism, Tiffany cultivated “Project Get Free, the Coloring Book for Navigating the Diaspora” in 2016. This was a response to song lyrics transformed into a visual journal, and the beginning of her journey toward restoration, finding her voice, and her purpose. These visual conversations became a motivating force to showcase her art in several exhibitions including "Right Here, Right Now Richmond" at the Richmond Art Center and the "Black Brilliance” at Macy's Union Square in San Francisco.
While using color as her primary vehicle in terms of language, her work displays the beauty of others, but what lies behind that initial layer are elements of her personal evolution. Her mission is to heal women through her paintings by portraying them as she sees them – soft and resilient. Tiffany recently won an Artistic Achievement Award for the 2020 exhibition entitled, “The Art of the African Diaspora” at The Richmond Art Center. She continues to stimulate conversations and awakenings through her work.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Art has provided me with the tools to communicate in a way that I was not able to do before. And for that, I am forever grateful for my art practice, which allows me to retreat, restore, and express all that I have learned from moving through the world as an African American woman. Art connects me to the power that lives within me but that I’m not always able to see.
www.projectgetfree.com