April is the month when we celebrate art in The Woodlands with The Waterway Arts Festival, this year we welcome back our favorite artists and enjoy introductions to many new talents.
Houston based artist Summer Lydick will be returning to The Waterway Arts Festival for 2024. Her floral paintings are bold, bright and beautiful, and when you meet the artist, you’ll see that this is a natural extension of her energy and personality. Using every color of the rainbow, Lydick paints with acrylics and inks to achieve an organic fusion of movement and delight. Her work is instantly cheer inspiring without being overwhelming. The initial impact of her stylish pop expressionist paintings is the strong patterns and shapes of her signature sunflowers. When we look closer, we see the rendering of drawing, brushstrokes, creative effects, layering techniques and textures all of which keep our eyes moving around the canvas, discovering new areas of interest every time.
Lydick has always been in touch with nature – she tells me “My garden is my biggest inspiration, I grow sunflowers! The sunflower is like an incarnation of myself as a flower. Also, it is the perfect vehicle to explore color and texture and pattern, because it's set up circularly, I can use it as a color wheel. My Mom is a gardener, my great grandmother was a gardener, it was always readily available as something to sketch and draw as I was growing up and it always resets me. I never get tired of the shapes of flowers, and plant life…. People generally have positive connotations with flowers.”
Lydick tells me that the expressive techniques used in her backgrounds include accidents and happenstance, “nature is messy… and I like to have that in my work” she says. These free-spirited backgrounds are complemented by the controlled lines of her drawings and well considered colors on the foreground. “It has to be a dialogue of what I want to do, and the canvas and the paint make their suggestions”.
Represented by Ardest Gallery in The Woodlands, Lydick’s work comes in many different sizes, from small trinket trays to huge show stopping pieces perfect for homes and business spaces. A recent commission with RoKi Design Silk Scarves benefitted the Memorial Hermann Bobetta Lindig Breast Care Center in Houston. Lydick’s painting was auctioned at the event and all 100 scarves printed were sold out for this worthwhile cause.
You can visit The 19th Annual The Woodlands Waterway Arts Festival at Town Green Park and along The Woodlands Waterway on April 12, 13, and 14, 2024. Produced by local arts non-profit The Woodlands Arts Council, proceeds from the festival directly benefit microgrant and student art scholarship programs. The Woodlands Waterway Arts Festival is made possible by volunteers and generous community sponsors.
This year's featured artist is Los Angeles painter Regina Lyubovnaya, an oil painter who works in the traditional style, her technique explores light and depth through color and emotion.
Both artists have donated paintings to the infamous Art Dash Party, presented by The Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy, which takes place on April 12, 2024!
The Woodlands Arts Council is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit that provides regional, cultural, and educational enrichment opportunities that encourage, support, and promote the visual and performing arts in our community. From the award-winning Woodlands Waterway Arts Festival to public art installations and the year-round community and educational outreach programs of Because Art Matters, the council has one primary goal … making our community better … Because Art Matters!
Tickets to The Waterway Arts Festival and The Art Dash Party are available on The Woodlands Arts Council website,
www.thewoodlandsartscouncil.org
www.summerlydick.com
www.reginalyubovnaya.com