On Friday, August 5th, Houska Gallery will be celebrating the opening of their newest exhibitions with Renée Raub-Ayers and Jessica Bremehr. Stop by anytime from 5-8 pm to enjoy the show with us, drink some wine, and chat with the artists!
Renée Raub-Ayers is a self-taught artist based in central Illinois. She works primarily in acrylic and ink, and is inspired by mythology, nursery rhymes, and poetry. Preferring simple, bold lines, Renee focuses on portraiture with allegorical and often whimsical themes.
“In This Moment”
”In this moment, a child cries for its mother in the rubble of a shelled shopping mall.
In this moment, women march in the streets demanding the rights to their own bodies.
In this moment, my garden is dappled in sun, and filled with bird calls.
Many artists process the world through their medium, and I am no different. I use my brushes and paints to cut what I’m seeing and hearing into moments, into stories, into a piece of time my soul needs space to process more fully. My little studio, set in a garden, becomes a place for me to touch all of what I see and hear. I fumblingly try to comfort a young soldier by painting his mother to sit beside him in the moment of his death, or I take the time to enjoy the dappled sun playing across my vining plants. In this moment there is both beauty, and horror, and hope, and I explore it all with a brush in hand.”
Jessica Bremehr is a visual artist working in St.Louis, Missouri. Through painting, sculpture, and installation, she offers an escape into fantastical realms where themes of gender, environmentalism, and science fiction intersect. She received her MFA in Visual Arts from Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St.Louis in 2021 and was recently featured in New American Paintings.
“Second Nature”
“I am simply an Earthling using my eyeballs as a vacuum, sucking up any inspiration that floats by and spitting it out through my hands. On an average day, I meditate on the gestures of plant life within my home and along the sidewalks in my neighborhood. Through these meditations, I imagine the alternate possibilities of the human body. If I were anything but human, I would be a plant; a long appendage who wiggles their way from dirt toward maturity and shifts daily with the direction of the sun. I translate these daydreams through painting, sculpture, and installation, which offers an escape into a fantastical realm where science fiction, the environment, and sensuality intertwine to explore our innate connection to the world we inhabit. The vivid colors vibrate the senses in the way a flower uses visual cues to attract a pollinator. The repetitive designs and interwoven abstract and figural forms prompt meditative states to contemplate our own bodies in space, while promoting reverence for the microscopic and commonplace natural wonders of the world around us.”
