Helaine Soller
Medium: Painting Studio Location: 23-35 Bell Boulevard, Bayside, NY 11360 - Studio# 4B Phone: (718) 781-2615 Email: hsollerart@nyc.rr.com Website:: www.helainesoller.com Artist Bio: Helaine Soller is an environmental artist. Her artwork is exhibited nationally and internationally. "I seek to create awareness of the beauty and drama found in nature at a moment in time to express concern for the environment through my Water Environment and National Park series of paintings and painted collages" Her work is in the collections of the Library of Congress, the National Museum of Women in the Arts Archives, Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital and in numerous public and private collections. She received an "Individual Artist Initiative" award from the Queens Council on the Arts funded by the NEA and JP Morgan Chase Foundation. Soller's paintings premiered at the UN Conference of The Commission on the Status of Women in the video "Women Artists Consider Our World." Soller appeared on Channel 25 interviewed by Ronnie Eldridge on "Eldridge & Company." Soller's artwork is exhibited in museums, galleries, universities, and corporations. Museum exhibits: the Long Island Museum, Queens Museum, Bronx Museum, Canajoharie Museum, Museum of Anthropology of the People of New York. Solo exhibitions: The Atrium Galleries at Citigroup Center Midtown, Ceres Gallery, Berkeley College Gallery, the Joseph Addabbo Federal Building, Tower 49, Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, and Unibank. Group exhibits: the Schelfhaudt Gallery University of Bridgeport CT, NIW Gallery Tokyo Japan, Torpedo Factory VA, Arc Gallery CA, Artemisia Gallery IL, Queens College Art Center, Jeffrey Leder Gallery, Pratt Institute, Johnson & Johnson, Nabisco Brands, Schering Plough, QCC Gallery Queensborough Community College CUNY, Art Space 64 Memorial Sloan-Kettering Out Patient Center, PS 1, Exit Art, 310 Gallery NC, Dougherty Gallery, Front Door Gallery, Aurora Gallery, RVS Fine Art Gallery, Flat Iron Gallery, Lana Santorelli Gallery NJ, Fieldstone Fine Art NJ, Skidmore College, Prince Street Gallery, including 23 solo and over 200 group exhibitions. Helaine Soller a New York based artist, attended Pratt Institute (BFA in Advertising Design), and Queens College (MS in Art Education), further studying at the New School with Jacob Lawrence, and in master classes with Eric Fischl and Jerome Witkin. Soller attended several art residencies. Soller is the Executive Coordinator of WIA Women In the Arts Foundation, Inc. and originated the WIA "The Business of Art for Artists" program awarded a NEA grant. Soller is a curator, art critic and art educator. Artist Statement: Helaine Soller's series of paintings "National Parks" and "Water Environments" reflect the beauty and drama of nature found at a moment in time to create awareness of our fragile ecosystems. The sculptured forms of rock formations eroded by natural events serve as metaphor for environments continually evolving into new forms. Water plant ecosystems reflect cycles of life, endurance, and are a food source nurtured in water that is ever diminishing through global warming. "Nature challenges me to invent a personal language using lyrical and spontaneous brush strokes to capture its rhythms and forms. I work directly on canvas drawing brush lines choreographing and loosely plotting the compositions flow. Reactions to my subject matter becomes one with the developing multilayered dynamics of the composition, as in Kandinsky"s "Point and Line to Plane," infusing the paintings with a sense of freedom and discovery which supports the interpretation of nature on a personal level. I create space that is at once flat and yet suggests a third dimension." Soller's style of synthesized forms combines expressionism, realism and abstraction. These series are realized both in large scale and in intimate scale paintings in acrylic on canvas and in painted collage on paper. All images and text copyright Helaine Soller