Miriam's Kitchen Studio Artists are homeless individuals trying to find jobs and homes in Washington DC. During this process they participate in art activities that nurture their creative sides. Some of their works are on exhibit at Touchstone Gallery during the month of November 2015: "Handpicked: Works from Miriam's Kitchen Studio Artists."
Read moreMcCain McMurray: From Architectural Drawings to Geometric Paintings
McCain McMurray
Malleability is a relative term depending on the material a person is trying to shape. For architects, wood, metal, masonry and glass are molded as necessary to build a structure inside and out. McCain McMurray worked with these materials during his 37-year career as an architect designing a variety of residential and commercial projects. It’s no surprise that he was drawn to architecture, because he started constructing things when he was a child growing up in North Carolina. Equipped with tools and wood scraps, he built many a tree house.
Read moreRima Schulkind: Dancing With Change
Rima Schulkind2
Rima Schulkind, a native of New York City, came to Washington DC at age 15 and has remained ever since. In 1972 she obtained a sociology degree before realizing the profession was not for her. Wondering what to do next, she “almost accidently took a ceramics class with the worst teacher in the world.” Rima recalls. “But the clay felt heavenly to my hands, and I knew I wanted to make things with it.” Serendipity #1.
Read moreAleksandra Katargina: Painting the Road to Happiness
Aleksandra Katergina
The color of a bud opening in spring, dismal gray leafless trees looking slightly reddish from a distance, and the almost crass lemon yellow of blooming daffodils announce the freshness of each new spring. The transformation of dormant life into energetic green and wild color is so powerful that poets wax on about it and artists paint about it. Aleksandra Katargina, a blossoming young painter living in the DC area, is on the same path. She is the Touchstone Foundation for the Arts first Emerging Artist Fellow Winner mounting her first oil painting solo exhibition In Pursuit of Happiness.
Read moreCynthia Young: Color Field Painter
Cynthia Young
As I write this essay, I’ve got one eye on the keyboard and the other on the sunset. Glowing peach and gray clouds streak across an aqua sky. It’s the kind of color phenomenon that penetrates Cynthia Young’s eye and then transfers to canvas when she starts a painting. She begins by positioning her canvases on the floor, then pouring oil paint thinned with turpentine on to them. She watches the colors percolate and swirl around each other forming shapes. After the paint dries, the canvas goes up on the wall where she paints with a brush to finish up the composition. While observing her surroundings Cynthia learned intuitively to “see forms instead of objects.” She sees color patterns instead of tree canopies, and meditates on colors in the dark shapes forming storm clouds.
Read morePete McCutchen Wins Honorable Mention in the Monochrome Awards International Black & White Photography Contest, 2/2015
Pete McCutchen
Winning an Honorable Mention in the Monochrome Awards means a lot. I began photographing at eleven years of age, and like most of my generation I started in the black and white darkroom. (No iPhones back then.) I did black and white almost exclusively for years. With the advent of digital technology, I began exploring color. The tools of digital editing allow for precise control that isn't possible in the color darkroom and inkjet printer have a color gamut and archival qualities that far exceed any chromogenic process.
Read moreHarmon Biddle: Transforming Landscapes
Harmon Biddle
Army families and those in the diplomatic corps move around the country a lot and often get stationed “overseas.” Harmon Biddle’s family fit those service categories. She lived in many states and European posts including Germany, Japan and England. While she didn't think of herself as an artist at a young age, she was often at the side of her mother who painted pastel portraits. Perhaps some of that artistic sensibility and some of those varied landscapes seeped into her psyche only to become an active force in adulthood. Harmon always dabbled in art but this took second row seat to becoming a psychoanalyst. She currently practices psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in tandem with her art.
Read moreGail Vogels: Exploring and Transforming
Gail Vogels
It's not surprising that Gail Vogels was inspired by the novel All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr when she set out to construct her new multi-media art works. She's been interested in literature most of her life, studying it in college and coming away with a bachelor's degree in the field. "That book was a launching point for me. I wanted to explore micro and macro themes happening simultaneously--those natural forces and choices that make us human beings. Using mixed media elements -instead of painting - I tried to figure out how to make various themes intersect on a picture plane. Plus, using scissors and glue is fun. The process is old school and the experience evokes your childhood."
Read morePat Williams: Coaxing Abstracts From Reality
Pat Williams
"I enjoy painting more than anything else I’ve ever done, and I’ve done quite a few things," says Pat Williams, a native of North Carolina who now lives in Falls Church, Virginia. This is quite a remarkable statement coming from a person who majored in engineering and spent most of her career working for electrical cooperatives and other energy companies.
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