America Is…, Touchstone Gallery’s third national juried exhibition, explores the question of how we define our national identity and values during a time of divisive politics and social change. Gallery Director Ksenia Grishkova shares a behind the scenes look at the show.
Read moreSeeing Between the Lines
Thick line? Thin lines? Wavy lines? Curly lines? Plain old straight lines? Touchstone artists use all these and more to create shape, pattern, form, structure and rhythm in Lines.
Read moreTake a Slow Walk through New York and Sicily with Michael A. Lang
Street and social documentary photographer Michael A. Lang captures the humanity of people in all walks of life. His latest work invites viewers to see and feel what he saw and felt on recent excursions in New York City and Sicily.
Read morePaula Lantz Starts Out as a Docent, Discovers She’s an Artist
The brightly colored abstract acrylic paintings in Portraits Only , Paula Lantz’s May 2019 show, capture the spirituality of ordinary people made extraordinary.
Read moreMary D. Ott Prints the Forest and the Trees
Images from Branching Out, Original Prints by Mary D. Ott, May 2019, Touchstone Gallery
Intimate etchings and lithographs explore the gesture and essence of trees in May 2019 show, Branching Out.
Read moreA /glim(p)se into the Art of Lisa Tureson
Lisa Tureson, an artist of many talents, enjoys painting to solve problems and please others. Her collaborations with interior designers have won many accolades. She also paints to please herself.
Read moreMarcia Coppel Paints Communication, Isolation, Laughter, Hope and Healing
Marcia Coppel’s whimisical, colorful paintings and drawings are inspired by her keen observations of changing patterns of communication.
Read moreHarvey Kupferberg: An Artist in Living Color and Black and White
Whether printing in color or black and white, photographer Harvey Kupferberg is a master of tonal quality and light. His March 2019 show at Touchstone Gallery is a tribute to a life spent searching for the perfect scene and the perfect moment to click the shutter.
Read moreTory Cowles, Painter and Sculptor of Symphonies
Tory Cowles creates beautiful, colorful abstract paintings and raw, gritty sculptures you can dance with.
When Tory Cowles talks about her work, she is animated, joyful and full of life. It’s no surprise, then, that her paintings and sculptures are animated, joyful and full of life. She works from the heart. …
Gale 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 moreAmy Sabrin Takes A Fresh Look at the Beach
Retired attorney Amy Sabrin is a watercolor and acrylic painter who divides her time between Washington, D.C. and Bethany Beach. She is drawn to nature as subject matter. With A Fresh Look, she distills landscapes to geometric forms. She first paints in plein air, then takes a lot of photographs and finally perfects concepts in studio. Sabrin Is known for bold color, glowing light, strong patterns and shapes. She aspires to remind people of the beauty around us.
Read moreRosa Vera: Painting Narrative Paths to Peace
When hearing about immigration, the word “crisis” comes to mind. Perhaps it’s because so many people are migrating everywhere in the world now. It seems like a new humanitarian predicament, but migrations have occurred in every age and time stirring the human population pot and generating conflict as well as new traditions and cuisines. In the late 1800’s for instance, the multinational population of Peru was transformed by an huge inflow of Chinese indentured laborers.
Read moreCarol Moore: A Printmaker's Response to the Natural World
Printmaker and Touchstone Foundation for the Arts Fellow Carol Moore presents her solo exhibition during the month of May 2018. This accumulation of work reflect's Carol's long standing exploration of nature in which she searches for a personal connection with the plant specimens that she collects and manipulates. As a child she always felt at home in nature, she would spend long hours in the woods playing in trees, foraging for “natural supplies” or crushing rocks under bushes. As an adult she continues taking refuge in the natural world and reveals her encounters and imaginings in her original lithographs and intaglio prints.
Read moreSusi Cora: Art from the Earth
Susi Cora’s May 2018 show Highwire at the Touchstone Gallery at 901 New York Avenue, Washington DC is a study of the impact of memory on one’s physical presence. The show features ceramic figurative and coneptual work, and composite photography.
Read moreShelley Lowenstein Links Science and Art Through Paint
Albert Einstein said that mystery is at “the cradle of true art and true science” In her new solo show opening April 6 at Washington, DC’s Touchstone Gallery “(as far as we know),” artist Shelley Lowenstein explores the mystery and wonder of the human beta cell, a major force essential to human life, and sometimes a victim of autoimmune attack.
Read moreMeg Schaap Paints Joie de Vivre
In her first solo exhibition, Marie Antoinette, at Touchstone Gallery Meg Schaap explores the personality, beauty and power of the last Queen of France. This project began by a reading of Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser and then viewing Sophia Coppola’s 2009 movie Marie Antoinette. Both portrayed the compelling story of an Austrian teen who was forced to enter a political marriage with King Louis XVI, an introvert, pretty much her opposite. Meg’s painterly portrayals explore the quandaries Marie faced as she was swallowed up by the new French Court environment bound by outlandish rules, extravagance, and unbending traditions.
Read moreMakda Kibour: Raw Paintings
Makda Kibour, a quiet gentle woman who immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia by way of Zambia, has under gone many transformations on her way to becoming an artist. After reaching Pennsylvania, she become part of a Mennonite family for five years, learning to navigate that religion’s discipline of “the simple life." This austere Bible-based faith was quite a contrast to ancient traditional rituals of the Greek Orthodox Church she grew up knowing in Ethiopia. Her artistic sensibilities responded to the expert woodworking and hand sewn quilts pieced with deep reds, blues and other dark colors that were part of the Mennonite culture.
Read moreRosemary Luckett: exploring the terrain within
In her February 2018 solo exhibition Landscapes: the terrain within, Rosemary Luckett steps back from exploring the environmental landscape to make art about the archetypes she recognizes in her interior landscape. Over time she discovered the inner guides or archetypes portrayed in art, literature, mythology, and religion, heroes that have been with humanity everywhere since the dawn of time. Inspired by female contemporary heroes and writer Carol S. Pearson's book on the topic (Awakening the Heroes Within), she constructed collages about the twelve archetypes, putting herself into the picture. They percolated in a drawer for years until she decided to explore them further in larger format.
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.
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