Linda Bankerd’s colorful abstract landscapes evoke the thrill of the road—from the perspective of a bicycle. An avid cyclist and acrylic painter, Bankerd produced these intuitive pieces from memories of rides long and short, in the Washington area, more distant reaches of the United States and abroad.
Read moreGale Wallar: An Artist Not Bound by Boundaries
Gale Wallar draws on a lifetime of traveling, living abroad and crossing borders, both geographic and artistic, to create the enchanting urban landscapes, city scenes and traditional landscapes that comprise N-S-E-W, her new show at Touchstone Gallery. A master of many art media, she matches technique to subject matter to create haunting portraits of places that have touched her heart. In a style known as contemporary realism, she paints pictures of the world not as it is, but as it should be.
Read moreElaine Florimonte: Layering and Balancing
Elaine Florimonte is drawn to the simplicity and consistency of the horizon, specifically the proportions of sky, water and ground in paintings comprising her solo exhibition, The Pursuit of Balance at Touchstone Gallery, February 2018. Through her use of acrylic media and collage, she creates landscape images in an effort to find balance in an ever shifting world.
Read moreBD Richardson: Repetition, Pattern and Form--From Intimate To Immense
In what turned out to be a prescient decision, BD Richardson, fresh from earning a master’s degree from American University, began a habit of carrying a camera everywhere she went. Beginning with a trip to China as part of a women’s press group in 1980, she captured bits and pieces of that huge country just prior to its national efforts to modernize. After that, no place in the world was exempt from her restless eye: Paris, South America, North America’s heartland with its aging buildings and big skies, and coastal villages replete with fishing boats and seamen. Lately she has focused her camera up close on plant forms turning their growth patterns into mandalas.
Read moreMary Ott: The Pull of Metallics
Mary Ott working in the Montgomery College Print Studio, Silver Spring MD
Mary Ott’s February solo exhibit “Metallics: Paintings and Prints” at Touchstone Gallery features artwork that includes copper, silver and gold-colored paints and inks. Mary’s techniques, whether on a smooth canvas base or a unique and textured paper, result in images of nature that seem influenced by the Zen of Japanese art, an art aimed at uncovering the essence of the object under scrutiny. In Mary’s work, grasses are singled out and isolated from complexities of a natural biosphere; then presented in a simplified space, elucidating the purity of seemingly simple life forms--forms often forgotten in our contemporary rough-and-tumble mechanical world.
Read moreSteve Alderton’s Fleeting Memories
Steve Alderton
Steve Alderton, in his third series “Memoryscapes: Blurry Lines III,” continues an exploration of landscape memories as viewed through the prism of time. In this final component, Alderton pushes his works until they become abstract and the focus is contemplative in nature. His acrylic paintings describe landscape qualities that are “felt” rather than defined as specific representational scenes our eyes see in the real world of land, sea or sky.
Read moreKate McConnell: Capturing Color in the Landscape
kate-portrait
How does the artist paint the landscape while, at the same time, paint from the “deeps” of the soul? Painter Emily Carr posed that question to herself as she painted alone in the forests of British Columbia sometime in the 1930’s. “What do I want to express? ... The arrangement, the design, colour, shape, depth, light, space, mood, movement, balance, not one or all of these fills the bill. There is something additional, a breath that draws your breath into its breathing, a heartbeat that pounds on yours, a recognition of the oneness of all things,” she writes in her journal.
Read moreSteven Fleming: Artist on the Move
Steven Fleming (Rosemary Luckett photo)
Steven Fleming is a runner and a cyclist, moving happily through the landscape in all seasons. A feeling of wanderlust is part of what keeps Steven moving, both physically and artistically. Maybe it's because he grew up in a Navy family that relocated every 18 months or so. Maybe it's because he has a zest for exploring new landscapes and new ways to make art. Maybe it's because he is "never content to rest in one place and repeat the formulas of the past."
Read moreBetsy Forster: The Call and the Creative Response
Betsy Forster
Responding to the call of big skies and far horizons, Betsy Forster stuffs her back pack with art supplies and camera before heading into the countryside - Wyoming and Montana in the summertime and Virginia in the cooler months. Drawing and sketching with oils, she works diligently several days a week no matter what landscape lies before her. "I need the countryside," she states emphatically, "I need a window that faces toward a distant horizon."
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