Art from “The Healing Power of Color” 2025 Invitational Exhibition
April 20 – June 20, 2025
This exhibition originally included more than 60 artists who are members of one or more of our online galleries — Manhattan Arts International and The Healing Power of ART & ARTISTS — and/or from our Art Review series. For a complete list of all exhibiting artists visit this page.
The artists in this exhibition approach their use of color to express their deepest feelings, share their beliefs, convey meaningful messages, and transform viewers and themselves on many levels. Savor each work of art and let it speak to you visually and viscerally. Return often and share this with your loved ones, friends and associates.
In this presentation you will view art by several historical master artists who influenced contemporary artists through their use of color. You will also find historical facts about colorsand links to more of our exhibitions and articles devoted to the healing power of color.
The Importance of “The Healing Power of Color” 2025 Exhibition
The power of color has been documented in many scientific studies to bring healing energy when you are ailing. It is a fact that color has the ability to soothe your frazzled nerves when you feel agitated, restore your energy, motivate and empower you to take action when you are in a state of lethargy, provide hope during challenging times, and so much more.
~ Renee Phillips, Curator, Founder & Director, Manhattan Arts International and The Healing Power of ART & ARTISTS
All rights reserved. Do not reproduce images without the artists’ permission.
Please also visit the artists’ websites to view more of their art.
Contact them directly regarding making a purchase.
Michael Amrose
Color, form, shape, and line become my subject speaking to the viewer with a new, independent voice. I consider the semiotic, psychological, and cultural impact on the viewer of specific colors, shapes, lines, and form used when designing my subject. The application of unorthodox photographic and lighting techniques to capture my subject, which incorporates various art types, enables me to move beyond representational images and allows me to explore photography’s capacity to create an abstract experience unencumbered by reality. amroseartphotography.com
Bren Sibilsky
Sculptures start out as clay, some made into molds to take on different mediums. The last journey to finish sculpture is color. Color choices change the energy of sculpture. The shadows and depth of the 3-D form can be adjusted to new intensities from high brilliance to chromatic harmonies. Most people do not realize that much of the classical Greek and Roman works of sculpture in history were not white, but were once painted with powerful colors of their day. brensculpture.com
Rohit Shah
These are colors of my dream of a young Nebula. As an artist, I am captivated by clouds packed with intriguing features — vibrant and surreal colors only experienced in dreams. I enjoy painting the cosmos — our universe. For me it is a visual tour through an infinite spectrum of colors. Color is life. Color is poetry. Color is a beauty of chemistry. Color is the single most important element in the universe. rohitshahdesign.com
Nancy Reyner
I chose this image of water and an overall blue palette, to add to its emotional and spiritual appeal. Healing can occur through a variety of ways yet mostly is an inside job. Color evokes emotion, and paired with design and form, may invite a viewer towards insights from a higher or more spiritual point of view. This is my intent for all my work. nancyreyner.com
Kari Bienert
My color field oil paintings celebrate color in a way that uplifts and inspires. Each work takes many weeks of mixing oils together to create palettes of new colors that are placed intuitively on the linen. I am fascinated by the infinite possibilities of mixing new colors and the spectrum of feelings color can convey to create harmony within and make our everyday lives make glorious sense. karibienert.com
Anne Morrison Rabe
My eye is always drawn to color – and the uplift to the spirit that our beautiful colorful world can bring. I find joy knowing that my photography resonates with others, bringing a touch of beauty and introspection into their lives. In a world filled with noise, my images whisper quiet truths, inviting viewers to pause, reflect, and find peace in the beauty that surrounds us. annemorrisonrabe.photography
Rajul Shah
My work is a fusion of the spiritual teachings of the Chakras and Japanese Art of Kintsugi. The Chakras (energy centers) align the nervous system with aspects of the human psyche. Using the aura color of each chakra, I paint meditative abstract expressions of color. Kintsugi is metaphor for the human journey. Like cracks in pottery mended with gold, mending scars keeps our chakras in balance, leading to free flow of energy in our body for well-being. rajulshahart.com
Barbara Brown
My inspiration comes from the forest where I live, so I paint mostly in greens and browns. I never tire of these colours. With their infinite variety I’m always finding new combinations and new exciting challenges in how to best to bring forward the foreground while creating the rich depth of the background to draw you in deep into the woods. The greens and browns of nature are so very healing. They settle the soul. They ground us. barbarabrownart.com
Guimond
My vibrant palette—infused with purples, blues, and sunlit oranges—invites contemplation and calm. Each painting is a breath, an inner clearing. Through the structure of shapes and the intensity of color, I seek to soothe, to awaken, to open a space of light. For both myself and the viewer, color becomes a refuge, a healing energy, a way to re-enchant the world. guimondstudio.com
Karen H. Salup
Color and I have been acquainted through my entire career. Color for me is everything. The sun rising in the east and setting in the west, is mezmerising for me. Color comes to me in landscapes, the trees changing with the seasons, the flowers that bloom, and a simple orchard. Visiting museums and seeing colorful works by other artists are creative ideas and influences for me. I have also been told that many of the colors I wear can been reflected in my paintings. karenhs.com
Peter N. Van Giesen
“Evening Promise” captures the end of a beautiful day… a majestic seascape bathed in the warm and dynamic hues of a sunset. A striking interplay of colors and textures. The after storm clouds danced in an expressive, swirling vibrancy of oranges, yellows, and blues. Storms do pass, this I know, yet they have a powerful grip on my soul. The golden lining is they create the most beautiful memories, once past. The sea kisses the horizon creating a sense of infinite, interconnected sensation of tranquility, easily countering the atmospheric dynamics. peternvangiesen.com
Dick and Rosanne
Color is a universal language that has the power to calm, delight, heal, and soothe. As artists, we immerse ourselves in nature’s vibrant tapestry, studying its hues and textures. We create mandala-like images of our photos amplifying the inherent colors to evoke the profound sense of peace and harmony of nature’s own artistry. Our ultimate aspiration is for our work to serve as a conduit, allowing others to immerse themselves in the healing and transformative power of color. dickandrosanne.com
Barbara Rachko
For more than 30 years I have been devoted to soft pastel on sandpaper. I believe my ‘science of color’ is unique. The acid-free sandpaper allows me to slowly and meticulously build up 25 to 30 layers of pastel. In addition to the thousands of pastels that I have to choose from, I make new colors directly on the paper. Regardless of size, each pastel painting takes hundreds of hours and about four months to complete. barbararachko.art
Elliot Appel
Color transforms the sometimes drab, everyday world of city life into something vibrant, exciting, new and enriching. I try to capture details of everyday life that people may not notice or take for granted as they rush from place to place. elliotappelpaints.com
Poul Nielsen
My current work continues my infatuation with prairie light and its unique colouration. Furthermore, I am concerned with an expansive space rather than compressed, which of course connects with my prairie environment. I love working high keyed, saturated hues and my colouration is influenced by the exceptional colour of the Indigenous Blackfeet and the Peruvian, Quechuan mountain people, where I spend my winters. I believe colour has an inherent healing power, which we are only beginning to understand. psnielsen.com
Sandra Belitza-Vazquez
The combination of colors and textures of objects attracts my attention and invites me to raise my camera and capture the essence of those objects. How colors flow together or complement one another and highlight textures intrigues me. Observing and exploring my surroundings makes me slow down my often-hectic pace. I am more grounded when I give myself time to contemplate and appreciate what nature offers and what man uses to express feelings and states of mind. sbvaz.com
Yvonne Welman
My paintings are based on ideas, social issues and general opinions about art, gender equality and overall generalisation in roll patterns. The symbolic use of the color red in this painting in the flowers and figure conveys power in different pespectives. I want the viewer to bring their own thoughts and emotions to interpret my work. I also want to inspire the viewer to pose the ‘why’ question. yvonne-welman.com
Famous Artists Who Contributed to Color in Art
Georgia O’Keeffe
I found I could say things with colors that I could not say in any other way, things for which I had no words… I know I can not paint a flower. I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time… All the earth colors of the painter’s palette are out there in the many miles of badlands. The light Naples yellow through the ochres – orange and red and purple earth – even the soft earth greens.
Wassily Kandinsky
Kandinsky was part of “Der Blaue Reiter” (The Blue Rider) Group.
He believed the color blue was the most spiritual color.
I applied streaks and blobs of colors onto the canvas with a palette knife, and I made them sing with all the intensity I could… Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul… Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body… The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural…
Henri Matisse
Matisse was one of the pioneers of “Fauvism”. Artists in this movement used pure, brilliant colour often applied straight from the paint tubes. Matisse’s use of flat areas of bold colors and patterns enhances space and volume.
Colour helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist’s brain. The chief aim of color should be to serve expression as well as possible… Purer colors… have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them… A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful… With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.
Sonia Delaunay
Sonia Delaunay was one of the founders of “Orphism”, also known as “Simultaneism”. This important art movement focused on pure abstraction and bright colors.
I live color, I love it and I know it… I have lived my art, I have always changed everything around me. One who knows how to appreciate color relationships, the influence of one color with another, their contrasts and dissonances, is promised an infinite variety of images.
Claude Monet
Color is my day long obsession, joy and torment… When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape.
Pablo Picasso
Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions. Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No. Just as one can never learn how to paint… They’ll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like; but that particular green, never.
Hilma af Klint
Hilma af Klint created art with colorful, biomorphic shapes, vigorous lines and intricate patterns. Her work reflects themes of duality, cosmic energies, and the connection between the spiritual and the physical worlds. Her paintings are not simply a visual representation of her ideas, but rather portals into another realm. She wrote “Art is a bridge between the visible and the invisible.”
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall’s stated, “All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites”. In other words, “Friends” are the analogous colors — those that are side by side on a 12-part color wheel. The “lovers” Chagall refers to are complementary colors — those hues that are directly opposite each other on the color wheel.
Vincent van Gogh
Van Gogh earned a reputation as the father of “Expressionism”. He inspired artists in this movement with his use of pure, bright colors, emphatic brushwork, and contrasting color combinations.
Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully. To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone’s passion by the radiance of the setting sun… There is no blue without yellow and without orange…. The painter of the future will be a colourist the like of which has never yet been seen.
Paul Gauguin
Color! What a deep and mysterious language. It is the language of dreams… Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power… If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue…
Mark Rothko
Color Field painting was a movement that emerged in the 1940’s-1950’s. It placed a new emphasis on color as a means of expression. The style of abstract painting is characterized primarily by pouring, staining, spraying, or painting large fields of flat solid thinned paint onto raw canvas to create vast chromatic expanses. In this movement color becomes the subject in itself.
Mark Rothko was a leading Color Field painter. Surprisingly, he stated “I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”
More Facts About Healing with Color
Chromotherapy
Several ancient cultures, including the Egyptians and Chinese, practiced chromotherapy — using colors to heal. Chromotherapy is sometimes referred to as light therapy or colourology and is still used today as a holistic or alternative treatment.
Coloring Reduces Stress!
Elena Santos wrote an article on Huffington Post that emphasizes coloring is a great way to lower our stress levels. The reason is when we are involved in this type of activity we activate different areas of our two cerebral hemispheres. She quotes psychologist Gloria Martínez Ayala: “The action involves both logic, by which we color forms, and creativity, when mixing and matching colors. This incorporates the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in vision and fine motor skills [coordination necessary to make small, precise movements]. The relaxation that it provides lowers the activity of the amygdala, a basic part of our brain involved in controlling emotion that is affected by stress.”
Color in Design
In the design world, we can observe how marketing and branding experts spend vast amounts of money and time in using color psychology to influence your emotions and perceptions of their products and services. The color blue is used by services to evoke our trust while the color green is abundant in natural, eco-friendly, organic products. Website designers make use of the laws of color combinations when creating websites for their clients.
Renee,
this is such an impressive exhibition !
I love how you have famous artists along with your artists.
They each shine each in their on way and help me understand their point of view.
I have felt deeply and appreciated viewing all.
You have shown the upmost respect for each artist in how you have planned and placed each work.
I shall be back ! Sharron
Thank you Sharron! I enjoyed visiting your website and viewing your beautiful “Abstract paintings and realistic photography depicting the glories of nature.”
Wishing you continued creative bliss and a colorful future!
Congratulations Renee!
You’ve done it again! Another spectacular exhibition packed with a wide variety of styles, subjects, and creative color choices. Renee, I love that you ask the artists to write a statement about their inspiration and use of color, that you include master artists and facts about colors in art and healing. You are providing a learning experience for the artists and your viewers.
You go beyond the curatorial norm. It is clear you spend a lot of time and attention on curating your exhibitions.
There is so much to enjoy here. I will definitely revisit and share the link with others.
Congratulations to all the artists!
Thank you Mark! It’s wonderful that you accepted my invitation to view the exhibition. I appreciate you kind remarks. Thank you for planning to revisit and for sharing this exhibition with others.