Donna W. Radcliffe

Thank you for all of your support at the HFAS! This was the first year that the Harlem Fine Art Show has been in Chicago. For years it was a staple event in New York. Five years ago, it changed its venue to a traveling show and has had trailblazing revues from all of its tours in Harlem, Atlanta, ans Marthas Vineyard. 

It was a fun filled weekend marked with celebrities, fine art and food! People from around the globe came to join the festivites as the Chicagoland finance and publishing community came out for the opening reception. The artwork represented at the show was spectacular. Thank you for coming out. Looking forward to next year!

DuSable Museum, African Festival of the Arts
South Shore Cultural Center
ETA Creative Arts Foundation
Around The Coyote
33 Collective Gallery
Hyde Park Art Center
Three Arts Club
Museum of Science and Industry - Black Creativity
Chicago Theological Seminary
WomanMade Art Gallery
Tallgrass Art Gallery
RAW - Real Art Works Chicago
Old Town Art Center
The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago
UIC - African American Cultural Center (2012)
Gallery Guichard
Chicago Lights Foundation
Union Street Art Gallery

National Venues have included the following;
National Black Fine Art Show - New York, NY
Embrace National Art Exhibition - Atlanta
Private and Solo Showings in Little Rock, AR, Seattle, WA and Houston, TX

Donna Radcliffe’s work has been exhibited nationally in New York, Seattle, Houston, Little Rock and Atlanta. She has also exhibited widely in the Chicago area in such places as the 3Arts Club, South Shore Cultural Center, the Museum of Science and Industry, the DuSable Museum, 33 Collective, Gallery Guichard, WomanMade Art Gallery, Tallgrass Art Gallery, Union Street Art Gallery, Hyde Park Art Center, the UIC African American Cultural Center, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the Chicago Theological Seminary.

Donna works with several venues, using various media to reflect the life and notion at hand. She believes that each subject has a story to tell and is best represented by a particular medium. Like music using certain instruments for effect, her work uses different mediums to represent the various subjects. Layers of color, light and texture, represent the moods and revelations she encounters though the muse’ of nature, culture, history and spirituality. She uses her art to feel the words, tell the story and sometimes to ...just breathe.

Her most noted pieces include collections of stylized landscapes, and representational images using her unique expression of mixed media. Her love of music is felt in many of her compositions by the sense of rhythm and movement. The techniques she exhibits in her paintings have been said to add a certain depth and “other-worldliness” to her work.

Please feel free to copy and paste these links to your browser to see articles about me.

hfas.org

http://www.chicagogallerynews.com/calendar/natural-woman

events/insider-art-bb679b6d

http://aavad.com/artistbibliog.cfm?id=7839

entertainment/events/6717902-421/verity-envisioned-introduces-newly-juried-tall-grass-artists.html

exhibitions/emnot-just-another-pretty-face-part-ivem

http://www.womanmade.org/show.html?type=group&gallery=africandiaspora2005&pic=1

pdf/towernews/TowerNews-Fall2005.pdf

Artist Statement

“I have always found my spiritual balance while creating. Whether through music or painting the rules were similar and the outcome sure....Peace.”


My work is a reflection of my interactions with the world around me. It’s ideas represent the past, in the form of relationships and community, the present as I experience the earth through nature, and the future as the spirit of it all. That spirit I seek contains the ideas of dreams, visions and imaginings of a hopeful life, free, unbound and transcendent.

I tend to work through reflections of something for a specific period of time. A thematic approach helps me work through what I'm trying to say, or to complete a thought, or tell a story. The subjects I choose have their own reflections, so I select a medium which seems to project the “feelings” I have, not necessarily those which help me make markings for a likeness. Sometimes my paintings are highly textured, imperfect or rough to go with an unbridled subject, free, natural. Sometimes the portrayal is very precise or tailored, to create the image of something that needs to be understood exactly, representational. In those times, I may use a pure material, in a simple way, to bring forth clarity. You see?

I’ve been told that my nature themes which are highly textured have a breathless quality at the same time. My relation to them is loosely based on the connection I feel to the universe. The dichotomy is the reality verses the dream, the fact verses the feeling and the form verses the space. Communing with nature through art has a nostalgic feeling from my history. But, it also evokes this very spiritual response. Depending on the day I create something, the entire painting may have become a prayer for me. Within it, I’m trying to "say something" that will remove me from the details and involve my soul in the experience of it’s muse. In those times and to truly reach another level, the spirit of what I'm saying has to be more pronounced than the technique. My art is an invitation and I hope you will join me.

Donna W. Radcliffe