Artists in the Neighborhood

We are neighbors who came to Saint Louis from far away parts of the country. We all found community, creativity, and inspiration in our Benton Park neighborhood. The sights, colors, textures and architecture around us are often reflected in our artwork.

The 4 Artists

Leisa Collins

Architectural Painting

Interaction with people and the environment is my artistic inspiration and stimulation. It’s about getting across a message, an emotion, or envisioning a better tomorrow.  Art for me is something that goes far beyond the studio and gallery walls. It’s about being intensely interested in the beauty and ugliness of everything surrounding one.

Scott Bean

Oil and watercolor painting

As a representational painter I always paint the world I find myself in. Lucky for me I find myself in a truly visually interesting city. I love the old red brick architecture both residential and commercial. The city has great parks and corner bars and stores and interesting old industrial structures - so lots to look at and paint. I don’t imagine ever running out of imagery. This is a good place to paint.

Don Morgan

Photography, Paintingraphs

I often notice little things on sidewalks or building walls, in yards, junk piles, or the woods. I photograph them and make big prints that I call “paintingraphs”- photography that looks like painted art. My other extended series of works include The Rorschach Series and StreetArt, both featuring abstractions found in nature and the built world.

I have often said that I would not mind if there were no film [or digital card] in the camera… I just enjoy walking around, looking. I’ve been a longtime practitioner of the Buddhist dharma, and I resonate strongly with Eastern and Western “minimalist” art.   I embrace the perspective of that great champion of minimalism, John Cage, who would often give his Zen critique of artists’ work - “There is not enough nothing in it…” 

Phyllis Terry Friedman

Assemblage - wood, metal, paint, minerals, found objects

I create pieces that center on wood, including rare wood: African padauk, katalox, yellowheart, purpleheart, ebony, pink ivory wood, spalted maple. I present the wood as a standalone abstraction, designed, colored and developed by nature.  By putting wood pieces in the context of abstract art, I invite the viewer to see wood outside of the usual utilitarian building material, but instead as a conveyer of the transcendent, something that invokes a spiritual experience of the natural world.