Everything In Between
Everything In Between features work by Philadelphia-based painters Diane Lachman, Stephanie Rogers, and John Howell White. These artists pull their inspiration from nature and the colors around us, exploring how we experience colorways and what lingers behind in our periphery.
Diane Lachman pulls from color theory to create visual soundscapes, building her pigment in layers much like a musician would find the perfect pitch in a chord.
Stephanie Rogers finds inspiration from nature, and uses intuitive gestures and bright color accents to bring joy into her canvases. Starting with a simple form, she lets the paint and colors guide her through the composition, gathering inspiration from contrasting colors and movement.
John Howell White illustrates the space between color, the ghost image that is left over after looking away. He lets the color hold a space usually occupied by something intangible. Lachman, Rogers, and White implore us to think about color around us, not just in front of us.
About the Artists
Diane Lachman
Diane Lachman's inventive abstract paintings and photographs emphasize the expressive power of color. She studied at RISD and earned her BFA and MFA from the School of Design at University of Pennsylvania, where she taught Color Theory and Drawing from 1993 to 2014. Her work has been the subject of fourteen solo shows. In 2024, she had her second solo photography exhibit, “Kaleidoscope,” at Muse Gallery in Philadelphia. Her vibrant photographs capture the refraction of natural light through prisms.
Lachman’s work is widely exhibited in museums, galleries, and juried exhibitions.
Recent highlights include (re)FOCUS at Muse Gallery, In The Umbra at Chimaera Gallery, The Annual 81st Juried Exhibition at the Woodmere, Betsy Meyer Memorial Exhibition at the Main Line Art Center, PhotoEx Photography Exhibit at Media Arts Council, Changelings at Powell Lane Arts, University City Science Center in Unprecedented Times: A Socially Distanced Art Project, Delaware Contemporary, Wilmington, DE and at the Susanna Gold Gallery on Artsy.net.
She is a member Muse Gallery and was the director from 2019 through 2022. Her paintings are represented in numerous private and corporate collections including New York Presbyterian Hospital, The Student Center at Temple University, Park Towne Place in Philadelphia, and Lankenau Hospital.
Artist's Statement
In my abstract paintings and photographs, I search for a way to reconcile opposing forces in life and nature: light and shadow, rhythm and order, control and surprise, clarity and mystery. I discover equilibrium by making connections between color, form, and meaning.
Although, I am influenced by my observations, Bauhaus teachings, ancient architecture, textile design, and the places I have traveled, color remains my primary source of inspiration. My years of experience studying and teaching color theory complements my intuitive approach to visual communication in my painting.
My photographic pandemic project began in March 2020, when we were sheltering at home. Looking through the lens of the camera inspired me to escape the painful reality and isolation of the pandemic. Reflection is a property of light, but it is also time to question and examine my thoughts and surroundings. Changing my viewpoint completely changes the reflections of what I see.
As I continued to paint in my studio after this intense technical experience, I see a change in my point of view. Color and light remain my source of inspiration, and I have a new freedom and awareness about how to communicate personal feelings and reactions to world events with the colors, lines, and shapes in my work.
Stephanie Rogers
Artist's Statement
As an artist who works primarily in abstraction, my process is generally intuitive and spontaneous. I often begin with a loose idea or concept, and then let the painting evolve organically as I work. This approach allows me to create pieces that are both dynamic and harmonious, reflecting the balance and complexity of the natural word and the wildness of the imagination, freeing me to tap into the energy and vitality of nature and the joy I feel while creating the work.
I find bliss in exploring various painting surfaces, techniques, and color and shape relationships. My paintings, often informed by memories of a garden, a cloud, or the lightness of a warm embrace, begin with a gesture and end in a rhythmic contemplation of shapes and hues – a meditation in optimistic colorful motion. I hope to impart the joy of mindfully surrendering to intuition while maintaining the essence of balance and playfulness in the finished piece. When the painting flows from the heart I am always pleased with the result.
John Howell White
John Howell White has been a practicing artist for over 50 years. This sampling was produced in his Philadelphia studio in 2023-24, where he benefited from the interplay of cognition, sensation, materiality, faith, and imagery.
He has most recently shown at Honickman Center, 2024; The Shape of Tomorrow (2021), Parktown Place, Philadelphia; Incubations (2021), Scotts Mills Gallery; Ghost Stories, The Works Gallery (2019), NYC & Archer Law Gallery 35 (2019), Philadelphia, PA; and Related Visions, Provincetown Art Association and Museum (2018), Provincetown, MA, The Cotuit Center for the Arts (2016), Cotuit, MA; and Maryland Hall (2014), Annapolis, MD.
John attended a three-week artist residency at Jentel in Banner, WY, in 2024. He is an Emeritus Professor of Art Education at Kutztown University. He earned an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute and a Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University. His textbook, Experience Painting, is published by Davis Press. In 2012, John was named the NAEA Higher Education Art Educator of the Year.
Artist's Statement
Paintings hover about, unattached to their referents. They differ, in time, reference, and ambience, from film and photography. They welcome their viewers through their visual impact and, like ghosts, haunt them through their visual omissions. They conjure an absence, which ferments attachments and invites future visitations.
These works are placeholders, solid forms that contain the residue of the immanence that comes from the search for a future. They invite contemplation.
Paint is ubiquitous, simple, and infinitely fascinating. It allows for a rhythmic oscillation between the permanent and the timeless; the material and the virtual; and the private and the public.
