TSKW ARTIST STUDIO TOURS SATURDAY MARCH 4, 2023 from 11am-3pm

Visual Artist interviews by Ennid Berger aka EB

Next Saturday, March 4, you can follow TSKW’s tour stop map and visit some of Key Wests’ most creative artists.  I did a preview tour and spoke with each of the visual artist in their studios.  

Tour Stop #1 is painter Meggi Siegert – her beautiful figurative paintings adorn the walls of her house and studio.  Meggi’s art career began 17 years ago when she moved from Germany to the US, and she so missed her friends from home that she began to draw their portraits.  Since then, she’s taken art classes at Carnegie Mellon and here in Key West, and spent time studying artists she admires including Modigliani, Degas, and Egon Schiele. 

Meggi has long been fascinated with women as the subject of portraits and figures.  Originally using printed catalogues as a reference; today she sources her models online, purchasing images that are artistically and emotionally inspirational.  Her resultant paintings, mainly in oil on linen, are rendered in beautiful brush strokes and resonate with color and emotion.  Meggi’s goal is to combine the traditional and modern approach to painting women, highlighting their strengths and vulnerabilities.  She succeeds.

Stop 2  – Susan Sugar’s Studio at the “Turtle House” Is a sanctuary tucked away in a beautiful garden off a Key West lane.  It’s a fitting setting for someone who creates magical light filled work.  She studied art at the New York Studio School and still maintains a residence and studio near the Flatiron Building in NYC.  When in Key West, Susan frequents Reynold’s Pier to observe the weather and clouds, especially loving the summer skies. Her work is a visual journal of this perpetually moving and changing subject. She has an intuitive tyle of painting, and the sky provides her palette to paint the colors and the forms that take her on her artistic voyage.  

Susan’s cloud paintings include beautifully observed, small watercolors on paper and large luminous oils on canvas.  She is an alchemist – she takes air and water from the sky and the ocean and converts these elements into luminous watercolors and oil paintings.  When painting, she uses sea water as the aqueous medium that underlies her paintings.  A practical bonus is that salt acts as a preservative for the colors!  Susan Sugar exhibits her cloud-filled artworks all over Key West, including most recently, Williams Hall’s Unity Table dining room and the walls of the Salt Gallery. 

Stop 3 – Scott Gruppé’s house/studio, is on a hidden lane in Key West. As he says, “it’s hard to find but worth getting lost – because once you get there it’s worth it.”  I would have to agree with Scott. Scott is both a musician and a painter, working only in oils, painting only with a palette knife.  He started as a musician, although he is descended from a long line (7 precede him) of well-known artists.  Scott began painting in Key West and sold out his first show at the old CD store on Truman. Things have continued in the same vein since with his abstracted figurative paintings telling their stories on canvas and plexiglass.  Scott estimates he’s sold 30,000 large and small paintings so far in his lifetime, Currently, he has art at Salt Gallery, Island Books and the Roost Cocktail bar.  His next exhibit will be at Stone Soup Gallery.   

Stop 4 is the Writers and Artists House on Grinnell Street contains the studios of painter Rebecca Bennet and accomplished writers Rosalind Brackenbury and Jessica Argyle.  

Rebecca addresses the landscape and softens the structure she sees, until her paintings are compelling statements of color and space.  In her own words, “In my work, I attempt to create the interplay between abstraction and nature. Because nature is endless in its material for invention, and abstraction brings a personal interpretation and emotion into a painting.” Her beautifully painted landscapes reflect this sensibility. They glow with color and Rebecca’s take on the strong light and shadow of Key West. She studied art in college and her painterly influences range from Cezanne to Monet to Morandi to early plein aire Corots.  In addition to her shows at the Gingerbread Gallery, Rebecca’s most recent exhibition was titled “Silence,” and hung at TSKW in January of 2023.  

Stop 5  at Mimi Hein’s Margaret Street studio is full of surprises.  Self-taught artist Mimi Hein, an accomplished painter and collage artist, has extended her practice and installed a collection of mannequins, photos and collages that come to life in her Key West studio. The works are based on a very personal story, ranging from heartbreak to joy.  Mimi wanted to create and start a new life both symbolically and experientially. In this exhibit, she has combined her love of writing and her love of imagery, with fragments of stories written on the mostly black and white artwork.  You can currently see more of Mimi’s collage work at Salt Gallery across the street from her studio space.  

Tickets for the Artist Studio Tour ($30/$25 for members) can be purchased online at tskw.org 

by phone at 305-296-0458 or in person at Stop 1 at 718 Olivia Street.

[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]