Local artists light up the internet with their work

Tracy Ellyn, ever friend, smart lady and all around sweet human being has a piece in The Healing Power of Color 2025. This is an exhibition shared with grateful folks like us by The Healing Power of ART & ARTISTS, an organization which runs an online gallery and promotes art managed by Renee Phillips. The exhibition runs from April 20 through June 20 of this year.

Ellyn’s watercolor Magic Soul Ride 2 is displayed virtually alongside works by Michael Amrose, Barbara Brown, Rahit Shah and others. The painting hypnotized me with its purplish center and extra circles radiating outwards in varying shades. Gary noticed that the purplish circle is in the perfect center of the painting. It was not a restive hypnotic trance, however, as the slices of blue, green and orange created conflict in me. On the left side of the watercolor deep, intense blues gather, while on the right, the blues are washed out and pale, as a line cuts through the middle of the painting in a downward diagonal. Ellyn mentions that “cool colors provide inwardly spiraling peace,” but set against the hot pink and orange, they gave me a feeling of anxiety. But the anxiety that the painting gave me was that which I get when I jump into a cool pool of water. It is exhilarating. Gary also liked it and commented on “the balance of the piece and its combination of warm and cool tones.” To see her work and the others’, visit the site at The Healing Power of Art and select “exhibitions” in the menu. Tracy Ellyn has her own site and can be found at Recent Works.

Marcelle Zanetti, a dear friend of Gary and me, is developing her stellar website. She has placed photographs of her paintings on her site. “My work spans realism to abstraction,” she said. The exactness of her work makes the ultra-realistic depictions of leaves, tree trunks and flower petals pop out of the canvas before the viewer’s eyes. Each leaf or vein in the tree trunk becomes its own separate organism. Plus, she creates in the large, giving the subjects even more power.

In an early piece, We Are Being Manipulated produced in 2023, Zanetti shows us the interior of what could be a room with some flowers on tabletops in crystal vases. The colors are vibrant but their shapes are indistinct, yet not fuzzy. It seems as if you’re looking at them through a wall of water, making them otherworldly and fantastical. The title of the work makes me think of a science fiction thriller, while the painting, as innocent as its subject seems, evokes a hidden anxiety as the blurred contours remind the viewer that all is not always as it seems.  Gary liked the piece a lot. Meanwhile, another work, Bougainvillea of 2024 is also evocative of dreamlife and trance which shows the Zanetti’s range. This painting like We Are Being Manipulated is very different from her work with lily ponds. They show a satisfying shift in her technique and her versatility. Gary loved the color. For more info about her paintings, see Marcellezanetti.com.