Donna K. McGee painted as she lived life—fully and largely.

Long-time Touchstone Gallery member Tim Johnson was a talented artist whose knowledge and quirky sense of humor infused his paintings. His passing in December 2020 was a loss to his family, his many friends and the artistic community.

Despite growing up in the Jim Crow era, Malley was unaware of the racial divide between herself and her tenant farmer and migrant playmates. As an adult, she addresses racial inequality through compelling figurative paintings. As a child, she was immersed in nature on her grandparents’ farm. Today, she expresses her concerns for the environment through intriguing abstracts and advocating for climate change legislation.

Comic, cartoonist, writer and artist, Roberts explores feminiist iconography in multiple media and genres with humor and panache.

Influenced by Native American and Catholic traditions, Haggerty uses found objects and often circles to create mixed media artworks that explore spirituality.

Working in cold wax and oil as well as acrylics, Perkins uses texture to explore the complexities of relationships, nature and current events.

There are no words eloquent enough to describe the havoc wrought by the pandemic or the severity of the challenges faced by so many people. In the face of widespread adversity, Touchstone artists are still doing what artists do—creating, interpreting, expressing, contemplating, sharing.

Cover image by Maureen Squires

Touchstone Gallery is open online and still bringing the finest contemporary art to the community through 3-D virtual exhibits. Now showing: Landscape as Metaphor, abstract acrylic landscapes by Elaine Florimonte, August 1-August 31, and All-Member Artists’ Exhibit, July 10-August 25, featuring works by 44 Touchstone member-artists.

As a child, Anna Katalkina lived in one of the world’s most beautiful cities and experienced some of the world’s greatest art. As an adult, she combines an eye for detail, a penchant for precision, an international perspective and the skill of a Dutch master to produce engaging and thought-provoking still life paintings that make the viewer smile.

Patricia Williams says that the works in Glimpses, her new series of abstract-ish stilllifes, are very personal. But they are also the result of collaboration.

The abstract artist did not let a successful career in journalism get in the way of her true passion, art. Or is it that she doesn’t let art get in the way of her writing?

With Fables of Decapitation: I knew I would die long ago, Timothy Johnson depicts scenes from famous biblical, mythical and historical beheadings with wit and imagination. But it’s not the gore he’s after. It’s foreshortening.

Claudia Samper explores our relationships with each other in the urban community and the urban community’s relationship with nature in Urban Nest, her October 2019 mixed-media show. The delightful hide-and-seek images challenge the viewer to consider modern issues, such as gentrification and isolation.