CURRENT EXHIBIT • COMMUNITY LIVING ROOM
Freedom of Expression
Art provided by artists from Onyx Fine Arts Collective.
These works challenge any misconceptions of what “Black” art is and is not.
About the Exhibit + Artists
Adrienne Matthews is a visual artist, storyteller, and design practitioner whose work is dedicated to unearthing insight and stoking collective imagination. Raised in a family of educators, advocates, and professionals who broke color barriers, Adrienne's artistic work is influenced by African American culture, intellectual labor, and family history. Utilizing training in storytelling, critical history, and research her recent works incorporate figurative, abstract, and text-based elements to explore intersectional identity, double consciousness, and Black interiority themes that are central to her expanding practice.
Ben Ruffins
Born in New York City, now a resident of Seattle since 2020. My background and education were emersed in the Arts and Design. Unfortunately, my career in the Arts was delayed. I then spent 30 years in corporate America which is now in clear view and spills out onto canvas and bent metal.
In the early days of the Covid Pandemic I signed a lease for studio space. There I was able to explore painting, sculpting and myself, in the uninterrupted beauty of silence.
Earline Alston
A Seattle resident since 1966, Alston worked as an Allied Healthcare professional in multiple healthcare facilities throughout the greater Seattle area and Everett, Washington for over 20 years. In January 2014, Alston suffered a left brain hemorrhagic stroke which lead her to discover creating art. Since 2015, Alston has become a self-taught, representational Artist. Inspired by the Pacific Northwest's terrain, Alston describes her artistic process as, 'being a creative vessel, on a journey to render the spiritual essence of nature.' The results are anthropomorphic landscapes where colors, shapes, detailed patterns, and textures continuously morph, creating movement and multiple perspectives.
Terence Smith
Terence L. Smith, a self taught artist who has been drawing and painting since he was a young child, began drawing as a means of escapism. This use of art as an escape later turned into a means of relieving stress as he built a successful career in aviation as an electrical engineer, culminating as an executive with The Boeing Co. As a self-taught artist he has accomplished all that he knows with the help of God and through a powerful passion and desire to draw and to paint. He draws and/or paints daily, and is always reading about art, studying works of others and experimenting and practicing different techniques. He paints mainly in watercolor, pen & ink, but also works with acrylics on canvas. Terence's extraordinary and bold usage of color is clearly only one of the defining elements that one might use in describing the feeling and emotion that his work evokes. Over the years he has experimented with various styles while developing his craft. Most recently Terence has focused on colorful and emotional semi abstract portraits some with bold colored garments. An important aspect of Terence's work as an adult is his strong belief that his ideas and creativity are gifts from God.
Vonnie Gaither
Vonnie Gaither’s paintings are a myriad of acrylic colors, bold lines, splashes, running drips, patterns created with water from a recycled spray bottle and occasionally figures may occur. Their tools are simple things that are handy such as, pieces of cardboard, ice scrapers, foam core, sponges, sticks and occasionally brushes. As the first drop of color hits the canvas it carries all that they are, emotions, doubts, fears, their life story and hopefully their dreams.
In "Freedom of Expression”, the Northwest African American Museum features a variety of rotating talented artists. Black art is often pigeonholed as “ethnic”. This exhibit showcases the strength and range of visual artistic expression produced by artists of African descent residing in the Pacific Northwest.