49 West Coffeehouse, Winebar & Gallery, is a place that brings art, music, and community together with great food and drink in an ambiance inspired by the traditional European coffeehouse.
View ArtworkJR Rapier and Keith Sullivan
Now exhibiting at 49 West through October 2, 2024
JR Rapier
Artist Bio
JR Rapier, a professional artist living in Maryland, naturally gravitated to drawing and painting as a child. Gradually through her life she grew more incumbent with her talent as a painter. JR vividly illustrates the power of spirituality through a poetic style of her own. She explores the human condition, inner child fantasies, and landscape themes by capturing the innate beauty through magnifying light, color, and structure. For as long as she can remember, JR has been enamored with the alluring landscapes in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest regions of the U. S. These vast and unique lands inspire JR with an energetic sacred voice that speaks through her work. Over the years, her work has evolved into figurative work, both surreal and realistic. She explores human conditions by evoking emotion. Her work has transformed from capturing her exterior world around her to expressing her personal interior world with conviction. JR’s earliest inspiration comes from Georgia O’Keefe. While O’Keefe is still her favorite, she is also inspired by the works of Hieronymus Bosch, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and Henri de Toulouse-Lantrec. Currently her work is represented in Austin by Wonderwall Studios. In New Mexico, she is represented by Alhambra Art Gallery in Taos and Keep Contemporary Gallery in Santa Fe. She works on commission with professional corporate art curators around the country and is commissioning work for her own private clients. JR has shown her work in National juried competitions, and in international art fairs around the world.
See her work and learn more here.
Artist Statement
My art as a whole represents a spiritual transformation and a lifelong process of self-evolution. I feel it gets richer as my artistic journey unfolds to tell my stories. I work in a dimension between realism and surrealism both with landscape and my figures. I am constantly exploring new ideas in my work, with dream-like settings and the human figure by subtly weaving in obscure symbolism that I want others to discover for themselves. These ideas want to manifest, as if entities themselves. As a conduit of my higher self, I find that my intuition and inner guidance are radically accurate expressions of what the future holds. My stories are vulnerable, thought provoking, intimate and curious states of mind that pull color and light into a reality of its own with oil and canvas. Sharing my own human experiences through my work continues to fulfill my journey and purpose as an artist.
Keith Sullivan
Artist Bio
Keith Sullivan, A.K.A. SPACEMONKEY, is a Severna Park, MD based artist born in Brooklyn. His connection to textures and surfaces began early when trips to Manhattan and the graffiti-scarred landscape were at the core of his inspiration. His Aunt, also an artist, contributed to his passion through gifted master art books where his love for the unusual began to form.
Keith is an abstract expressionist painter who works in a number of different mediums, primarily oil, acrylic, and enamel. He works with an intensity fueled by the power of improvisation. Driven by a restless subconscious, he compresses moments of emotion into ghostly configurations of color and texture. Through constant layering and stripping of pigments, he peels back the bizarre and unusual mysteries and misconceptions of visual reality. Keith works on multiple pieces simultaneously, destroying nothing. He conjoins the discarded fragments of the past into new creations.
Since 1997, Keith has participated in dozens of exhibits throughout the Eastern Shore. Notably, award-winning at Gallery 93, NY; Designer Source of Sarasota, FL; a juried exhibition at Washington Art Associates, CT; award winner at The Art Salmagundi Club, NYC; The Art Crowd Magazine Floating Gallery as well as 2 solo exhibition at The Atrium Gallery, NJ. His most recent solo show occurred at the Homme Gallery in Washington, DC.
See his work and learn more here.
Artist Statement
My work, at first glance, can look like chaos—a frenzy of movement scarred upon the surface. A closer inspection reveals a map in my mind. My work can be viewed as a rough, childlike composition. I rarely stay within the lines.
I’m very connected to the art, often having a story to coincide with the inception of the works, which is reflected in their title. My use of words and number combinations coarsely scribed into the paintings, while crossed out or erased, gives chase to their meaning.
I work upon many different surfaces at once, finding or constructing in an assemblage style of painting. Through an array of mediums and found material, I convey the tumultuous aspect of my art.
I use pallet knives and created tools to carve upon the surface a topography of textures and ghost-like imagery. This continuous struggle for clarity in my work allows me to dismiss rational thought and focus on the conflict of surface and texture.
An important lesson I’ve learned through being an artist is always to push forward. Climb that mountain, chop it down, then mold it into magic. Continue to see the world through vivacious eyes and create.
Their work is on display at 49 West located at 49 West St, Annapolis, MD 21401. Open daily.
