Blue Moon Gallery announces collective artists for 2024

GRAYSLAKE – Blue Moon Gallery announced its new lineup of Collective Artists for 2024.

Juli Janovicz, Kendra Kett and John Kirkpatrick Jr. are returning to the gallery this year and will be joined by newcomers Ginny Krueger and Matthew Padilla. All five artists will show their artwork year-round in the gallery. All are professional fine artists from Northern Illinois and Southeastern Wisconsin with distinctive careers in the visual arts.

The gallery, located at 18620 Belvidere Road in Grayslake, hosts monthly artist receptions from 6 to 9 p.m. on the fourth Saturday of the month. The first reception of the year is March 23. It will showcase a juried exhibition of art featuring the world of birds as well as new art from the gallery’s collective artists.

Returning collective artist Janovicz of Kenosha, Wisconsin, arrived at painting from other art forms. She has a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in library and information science. Janovicz immersed herself in cottage gardening for more than 25 years, studying garden design, color theory, antique flowers and historic gardens. She took classes in expressive botanical arts at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe. She specializes in floral watercolors.

“I search for the poetry between what is seen and what can’t be explained,” Janovicz said in a news release. “I draw and paint the flowers and the colors as they feel.”

Collective artist Kendra Kett is also the gallery’s founder, director and owner. She lives in Gurnee and creates vibrant, color-saturated, highly detailed painted drawings using watercolor pencil, colored pencil and acrylic paint. Her abstract “cellular” drawings focus on healing and recovery after loss and grief.

Kirkpatrick Jr. is an award-winning painter specializing in figurative expressionism. He has a bachelor of arts in painting from Northeastern Illinois University. Kirkpatrick is drawn to a strong use of color, thick and dramatic brushstrokes, and texture to create visual and emotional stories in the human face and body.

Kirkpatrick of Libertyville is unveiling a new line of paintings called The Butterflies & Birds Collection. These new paintings will feature his distinctive style of color-soaked dramatic canvases filled with birds and butterflies.

Award-winning encaustic and water media artist Krueger of Grayslake has a master’s of fine art in painting and drawing and is known for combining “the gritty with the sublime” in her colorful, textural and sculptural artwork.

“I am driven to make art that is elemental and evocative,” Krueger said in the release. “I paint on wood panels using the encaustic medium, which is a mixture of beeswax, damar crystals and pigment. I envision each piece of artwork I create as a medley, a melded place.”

Oil painter Padilla of Grayslake is originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Padilla graduated from the University of Chicago and established himself professionally in the world of computer coding and software design. However, fine art was his true calling and he got formal education at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

“I am interested primarily in geometry, the human form and the human form’s capacity for abstraction. I am drawn toward larger canvases and I enjoy the effect produced by vibrant color,” Padilla said in the release.

The gallery’s 2024 affiliate artists are Kristin Ashley, Marcia Biasiello, Joan Bredendick, Darlene Bock, Matt Darst, Maureen Ivy Fisher, Frank Fitzgerald, Christine Graf, Michael Litewski, Terry Luc, Mary Neely, Bob Nonnemacher, Laura O’Connor, Paul Pinzarrone, Jaynanne Ridder, Les Scott, William Weidner and Sally Wille.

Regular gallery hours of 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday will begin March 24.

For more information, visit the gallery’s website at www.thebluemoongallery.com.