Our new art installation is now up at the Scottsdale tasting room, featuring local award-winning artist Jo Ann Allebach!
Her work will be on display, and available for purchase, from now through the end of October 2019. Come in to enjoy some art and wine every Monday – Friday between 12-8 p.m.
In the meantime, learn more about Jo Ann and her award-winning work (also featured at the Herberger Theater Center) below:
Phoenix artist, Jo Allebach, is an acrylic landscape painter even though she does paint some in oil and watercolor. She grew up in a home without art. Her parents had no interest in art nor did they encourage it. She was born in Ft Bragg, into a career Air Force family. Moving from one side of the country to the other became standard procedure. Discipline and working at chores as well as taking care of her 4 younger brothers left no time for art. All the traveling did however give her a special view of the world. It was beautiful and she wanted to be able to express the expansiveness, diversity and beauty of this country. This led her to a compelling desire to paint.
Allebach says, “Art has saved my life, has given me my life and all I want to do is keep painting to get better and better so more people can enjoy my work.”
She started painting in 2002. Her paintings draw viewers on the journey into the paintings. The essence of the smells, a breeze and the sounds can almost be felt. This is what makes an Allebach painting so extraordinary, so remarkable. Really she wants people to exclaim joyfully when they see her work. Or else be moved to tears by the beauty.
Around every bend in the road or up the stream there is a welcoming peaceful feeling. Even her succulent oranges, pears and other fruits and vegetables beg to be eaten or touched and bring on delight. The juices glisten and drop along the skins. Her figurative work has the light and colors blossoming with lifelike feeling the colorful shadows are dynamic. Her Marcie serious brings a smile to young and old.
She uses glowing colors and unique shapes to set the mood rather than the details. There is an almost spiritual connection with the viewer. This is from an unrelenting search for the perfect colors to create her precisely observed and imagined landscapes. Every painting has a story unfolding. Why is the light and shadow dappling the way it does in this particular part of the forest. What has happened to make this smooth rock glow next to its sharp edged “cousin” of granite? It is an understanding of what she sees that brings the significance to each scene, common or uncommon.
As you can imagine a lot of the painting Allebach does is not done with a paint brush in hand. It is the thought process and “looking to see”. Seeing what is there and what is not there. Even so she paints 6 to 7 days a week because of the compulsion and passion she feels for the medium. Hungering to live art is in her every thought.
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