Clarfield Newman “The Butterfly Project: Cross Pollination”

Viridian Artists, Inc.

[Image: Clarfield Newman "New Multitudes" hand painted, handmade paper collage on Rives Paper 30 x 42 in.]

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Viridian presents the exhibition “The Butterfly Project: cross pollination” mixed media collages by Stacey Clarfield Newman.

With past exhibition titles “Mindscapes”, “New Beginnings”, “Life’s Pages” and “Renewal” its clear that the inspiration for Stacey Clarfield Newman’s art now at Viridian Artists comes both from within and from the ongoing experiences of life that are constantly changing and moving our lives forward.

Critics have called Stacey Clarfield Newman’s art “ethereal and painterly … lyrically evoking surreal dreamscapes, drawing the viewer in…,” and “richly suggest(ing) an organic landscape of the mind,” but her complex & intricate artworks encompass much more.

A life-long visual artist, musician and dancer, Stacey has been teaching and working in the arts for over 25 years. No stranger to the tragedy and the drama of life, she uses her work to conquer all that life encompasses and explores colors and symbols to transform the negative into the positive. Influenced by music, her love affair with color, life’s events and her deep reverence for nature, she feels that her purpose is to share her art with the world by creating and teaching - empowering people to recognize their self worth within - to discover their authentic selves. Newman does this in so many ways beyond her artmaking.

“My work is a cross pollination of media,” states the artist. “Color has music, music has color. Nature is my cathedral. “Inner Child”, the title of a mixed media work of intense color that utilizes her unique painterly approach to mixed media collage, suggests the experience of being able to dance with abandon- like a child- dancing that brings her back to “my most sacred and authentic self, tapping into my spirituality”. The phrase “cross pollination” in the exhibition title, refers to how music and dance have fed her art and how her art has fed her dance. This new body of work expresses more than ever that sense of the connectedness of all we do in life. The cross pollination of life’s experiences & joys- dance- music- art- the joy of being alive is what Newman’s art is about.

This will be Newman’s first solo exhibition since returning from India, and she feels a shift has occurred - a “pollination”. The butterfly is not a new symbol in her work, but a symbol that exemplifies in a greater sense, the journey that artmaking is, especially for the creator.

“Stacey Paints India”, is a book the artist created about time she spent living and working in Kolkata, India at the Udayan School, a welfare and rehabilitation school for children of leprosy patients. There she taught techniques of “painting with paper”, her unique collage media, living with the students and crossing cultural and language barriers through art.

The works in this exhibition display a vibrancy of color that is new and fresh. Too, in the photography that she is including for the first time, there is a sense of visualization that goes beyond reality. Newman’s unique form of visualization in both her photography and her collage/paintings, her unique approach to imagery created from hand-painted papers and her conviction that artist have a responsibility to open a dialog with the viewer about life issues, were all incorporated into a mural commission for the Albert Einstein Medical Outpatient AIDS wing, entitled “the Powers of Healing”. Stacey Clarfield Newman’spainting “Tree of Life” was selected as one of fewer than 75 artists for publication in ArtQuench Magazine’s (AQM) Best International Creatives 2016.

In addition to teaching in India, Stacey is a former faculty member of the private art enrichment program for children “Young At Art”, incorporating music and movement, in Westchester as well as the Scarsdale Continuing Education Art Program and artist in residence at the Green Chimneys School in Brewster, NY. The artist attended Franklin & Marshall College, SVA, Purchase College at SYUNY and studied privately with the artists Richard Miller, Leo Manso and the sculptor Caryl Stone.

Clarfield Newman has exhibited widely both in the United States and abroad, most recently showing in Chicago and Colorado. Her art is in numerous private and public collections, including the White Plains Hospital Center; Bridgepoint Capitol, Inc., The Aesthetic Surgery Center, Darien, CT, The Toberoff Collection and the law firms of Latham and Watkins; Berle, Kass and Case in New York City.