Valentine’s Day Special: How many shades of love can you name?

by Maria Doubrovskaia and Andra Bilici

The moment you are certain that you are in love with the person who will become your significant other—this moment has a special feel to it. Your love is of a slightly different shade when, for example, you open the door to your home and discover your loved one already there, waiting for you. When you and your special person are having dinner with friends, and you observe them enjoying themselves in good company, you love them in a particular way. When you are driving and you look over and catch them looking at you, when they are packing for a business trip, when you wake up and coffee is ready—the list goes on and on. Love’s shades and colors are so inexhaustible that it is difficult to capture them all with just roses, champagne, and chocolate.qqqqqq

Montauk Beach Sundown | Photograph on Aluminum | 19.5″ x 55.5″ | Limited Edition of 20 | $1100 by Gottfried Roemer. This Valentine’s Day, why not scrap these standard gifts and look for an equally nuanced offering for your beloved? If anything out there has as many shades as love, it’s art. At Agora Gallery we have put together a guide of our Valentine’s Day favorites, to help you choose among so many wonderful artworks and simplify your search. Members of our staff have selected some pieces for up to $1200. If you’re looking for something else, maybe in a different price range, visit ARTmine for more options.

“The motifs in my work are uncharacteristic, everyday things. They are the things that we see every day with joy, agony, or a neutral mind. I want to represent these figures in a simplified manner, evoking the layers of emotion that are embedded in myself and the viewer” — Akihito Izumi.

“Ever since I can remember, I was particularly interested in creativity and using color, words, tunes and movement to produce artworks. My development as an artist was partly self-taught, partly with the help of specific training” — Claudia Mini.

The British artist Laura Menzies creates paintings that strive to reveal what is not immediately visible and cannot be put into words. To engage with her artwork is to enter the space of delicate, understated abstractions that ask the viewer to slow down and pay attention.

Maggie G. Moran is an abstract painter who focuses on the continuation of line and patterns in space, translated onto a two-dimensional surface. Moran describes herself as an intuitive painter of invisible forces and vibrations that, in their repetition, dictate our individual reality.

Mireille Pizzo’s wide-angle landscapes vibrate with color as she captures nature’s riches from an entirely unique perspective. The photographer’s compositions reflect the fundamental values that define and unite us as humans: innocence, creativity, peace, love, and balance.

“As an artist, I have always chosen to incorporate people, animals or some unique structure in my paintings; they provide visual design interest and help capture the moment” — Nancy Holleran.

Recreating historical and geographical distance within the formal demands of her preferred medium (watercolors) lends Nancy Holleran’s work an intimate quality, as though she were struggling to pronounce words spoken to her in a foreign voice.

Pia Sjölin’s powerful compositions are often almost minimalist. The simplicity and monumental grandeur of works such as Fall in New England serve to heighten the powerful effect of this artist’s color pallet. Bold, vibrant color is the main subject of her work.

Utilizing handmade paper and various printmaking techniques, Japanese artist Satoco Yamamoto creates compositions that capture universal emotions and memories. Combining processes such as woodblock, monotype, etching, and silkscreen, Sato’s works invoke the tradition of Ukiyo-e.

Working across a range of mediums, artist Sheetal Shaw is known for her use of the Indo-Persian design motif known as boteh, a teardrop-like shape with a curved end, creating patterns that seem to go on for eternity.

Stephanie Pitoy’s collage-based work are designed to express aspects of the human condition impossible to access by language alone. Nevertheless, her works are often constructed in such a way that one can analyze them from the whole into parts, just like the words of a sentence.

“My works are the product of a set of rules that change as the game develops. In this game, there is the paradox of playing with very strict rules that are diluted and changed. It is a game that allows rules to be modified – one that modifies the game itself and the player” — Susana Bergero.

Wallace recontextualizes vintage photographs to elaborate on how historicized materials can still speak to the present moment. Allowing her works, as well as her person, to engage what can happen only spontaneously, the invigorating sense of newness with which her work is possessed often translates into a vital reading of a culture’s legacy.

Celebrate Valentine’s Day with us and view our entire collection of exceptional works on ARTmine.

Have more questions? Ask us in the comments below or write to us at [email protected].

Maria Doubrovskaia is a visual artist and scholar. She moved to New York from St. Petersburg, Russia, when she was a kid. The Chelsea Hotel was seedy, and the Limelight was still a club back then. Maria loves cities and prefers slightly dangerous cities to glossy shiny ones. Some favorites are Naples, Palermo, Dakar, and Brooklyn before 9/11. If Maria was not a visual artist and a scholar, she would be an anthropologist.