# Arts in Milwaukee – May Klisch –
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Arts in Milwaukee

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  • “Last Year The Mediterranean, This Year The Red Sea”Last Year The Mediterranean, This Year The Red Sea

    Acrylic, 16 x 20" on canvas. In September 2020, I received a strange facetime call from my daughter living in San Francisco: "Mommy, I just had to call you to show you this." As she panned her phone around her skies, I saw a sea of red and orange from the fires near where she lived. It was apocalyptic. Later, on facebook, an image popped up of her swimming off the Amalfi Coast with her younger sister who was studying in Italy. Her joy and beauty in the calm blue waters was so clearly etched in my mind, juxtaposed against what I had just seen earlier.

  • “"The Quiet Sister"”

    Acrylic, 16 x 20". A disrupted realism style of a portrait of my mother in her youth, the most reserved person in her home. She had once likened her home environment to a Grand Central Station -- a revolving door for her boisterous siblings and friends, neighbors, relatives and others in seeking hospitality and favors from her then well-off parents. I tried to imagine how she coped with the constant bombardment of noise and activity in her quiet way.

  • “Bella”Bella

    Acrylic, 8 x 10" portrait of young Bella. A nod to the tumultuous times that our youth are living in.

  • “"Cowabunga!"”

    Acrylic, 8X8" on cradleboard of a surfer finding her joy. Abstracted realism. Amid these strange times, I sometimes find myself drawn to "normalcy" of the past. Although I have never successfully surfed in my undergrad years in Hawaii, I was lured into body surfing and boogie boarding. SOLD

  • “Resilience”Resilience

    Acrylic, 16 x 20" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a young woman and as the resilient force we know and love.

May Klisch

Support This Artist
Contact Info
May Klisch LLC
207 E Buffalo St, Suite 600
Milwaukee, WI 53202 Un

(414) 915-0322
mayklisch@gmail.com

artist bio

Born and raised in Singapore, I worked in the then burgeoning semiconductor industry in the early 70’s, followed by a stint at a local public relations firm. After a career in public relations including being the PR manager for the Singapore Zoological Gardens, I pursued a business degree in Hospitality Management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, Hawaii. After graduation, I went on stateside to work in the hotel and financial industries in San Francisco, before making Wisconsin my current home. My husband and I have two daughters. The pandemic has allowed me to indulge in my love of cooking; food writing for my local paper; growing my own edibles; observing, feeding and trying to interact with suburban wildlife; and spending more time making art.

In terms of art, I do not have advanced formal education in art. In fact, I failed art at the Cambridge "O" Levels, after which I abandoned my love for and pursuit of art. In 2016 my friend Julia Taylor had a solo watercolor show at the North Point Lighthouse which I managed. Her intrepid approach to art encouraged me to pick it up again, first with watercolors in 2017. We both enjoyed a lovely week with Carrie Gundersund (Columbia University Art Professor) at the Ox Bow University in 2017, focusing on watercolor techniques. In 2018 I took a weeklong watercolor workshop in Vermont in 2018 -- sadly, the last one from watercolorist Master Charles Reid. In November that year I did six oil painting lessons with Russian-born portrait artist Sergei Chernikov from Burlington, WI. I also did a three-day online oil portrait class with Alex J Venezia at East Oaks Studio (North Carolina) and a three-day in-person multi-media portraiture class with Igor Babilov. I was signed up to do Seth Haverkamp’s workshop at the Hudson River Valley Art School summer of 2020, but the class was cancelled due to Covid. I was admitted to Chateau Orqveaux’s summer artists residency program this year also, but again, Covid intervened; if all goes well with the Covid vaccine, I will be doing the residency in 2021. I took the 12-week Art2Life Creative Visionary Program abstract art course with Nicholas Wilton in March 2020 and then Gabriel Mark Lipper’s 10-week long “Learning To See 2020” abstracted realism workshop from July--September 2020.

artist statement

I’m a representational artist who sees the beauty in this world but also the frailty of humanity, who is impacted by and also impacts our world. I paint emotionally, and more often than not, narratively, in a variety of styles and media because I’m still myself a work in progress and evolution. Exploration is a constant driving force. Excitement is a companion in my search and approach -- I feel like a tourist in the art world. I have as yet no fixed point from which I cannot shift my perspective. In reviewing my work, I hope my audience can feel the same emotions imbued in its manifestation as those I derived and experienced in its creation.

Examples of my work can be found on:

Instagram:
https://Instagram.com/MayKlisch

Web Site:
https://mklisch.faso.com

or facebook:
https://facebook.com/MayKlischArtGallery



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