2009 Festival Artists
Renee Allem, Oxnard
Born in South Africa, Renee is a fine artist with a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from Wits in South Africa, where she majored in painting and graphic printmaking. An abstract expressionist, she paints on a multitude of diverse surfaces and creates three-dimensional sculptures from a variety of metals, woods and ceramics. She has recently created an art program for hospitalized children designed as therapy.
Renee’s chair is called “Afraique”. The tribal zany-zen design is a combination of black and white African-inspired drawing, simple yet complex in composition, the zing and zang of black and white.
Copyright Ventura Music Festival 2008/2009. All rights reserved. Photography credits: Linda F. Peterson, Paul Harris, BIll Hendricks.
Rob Edwards, Ventura
A self-taught painter, Rob received a B.A. from the College of Arts & Sciences at Lehigh University with graduate level studies at UCLA and with world-renown landscape architect Ian McHarg. As executive director of the Downtown Ventura Organization, his print and radio advertising campaigns have won local, regional and international awards.
Rob’s chair is stained and upholstered to evoke a refined masculine aesthetic.
Stephanie Elise, Ventura
Stephanie is a Southern California artist who works primarily in watercolor. “Watercolor to me is like a silent language; it reaches out and touches me with the entire spectrum of emotion. This emotion is what keeps my paint brush moving,” she says. “My goal is to take the viewer on a journey of visual pleasure.” Stephanie has taught watercolor painting for the past 17 years.
Elise’s Russian Tea Party Chair is highlighted with traditional Russian symbols, including a gold leafed Russian samovar, a symbol of Russian hospitality. On the back side is a Russian red rose and draped around the chair are hand painted pearls. The seat is covered with lush faux mink fabric.
Barbara Fitzgerald, Ventura
Barbara has been involved in the arts her entire life, from The University of Connecticut to Ventura Community College. She has worked in oil, watercolor, pastels, life drawing, stained glass, pottery, needlepoint and most recently dyed silk. Her works are in private collections throughout the U.S. and internationally, and have been donated to many local nonprofit organizations.
Fitzgerald’s chair is done in a jungle theme, with an array of rich colors and animals looking out from behind.
Hilda Kilpatrick, Ventura
Raised by an artistic family in Trujillo, Peru and influenced by impressionists and the early California painters, Hilda’s palette is warm and sunny, with nature in the forefront of her work. Enhanced by her extensive travel throughout Europe and South America, Hilda’s style reflects that life should be lived as an adventure. Her paintings appear in many private collections around the world.
Inspired by Russian Impressionists, Kilpatrick created “Sunset Impression.” “They were expressing the feeling of their Russian Soul and going beyond the parameters of the conventional art and social repression.”
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