FAQ | 2021 Gallery

Clouds Over Monument Valley SHARON K. HERNLY Retirement from private practice as a Nurse Practitioner has provided Sharon time to paint the beauty of her surroundings and travels with her husband around the West. Sharon's art embodies the essence of the West. Her art brings a visual perspective of the Southwest to viewers and collectors they will remember forever. Sharon's artworks can be found in private collections around the country and Europe.

The art I paint embodies essence of the West. Color, light, adroit composition, depiction of different surface textures are used to create unique paintings. My wish with this painting is to have you, the viewer, experience the beauty and history of our Southwest.

Squirtle Turtle DOMINIK KOSCINSKI

Dominik is an aspiring character artist with a passion for storytelling through appealing and engaging characters. Having studied computer animation at The School of Visual Arts, Dominik co-directed his own animated short 'The Misadventures of Chubzilla'. Ever since, Dominik has challenged himself to learn new skills so that he might be able to push his craft and create more likeable characters that convey a story with personality.

Eye Cinema KYNA LESKI I explore, witness, and practice the creative process through my work and my teaching. As a child, I was reprimanded for “getting bored easily,” and now I see that weakness, like all “weaknesses,” as a strength. (Getting bored keeps me moving ahead.) I live in a city whose name, (“pro-videre”) signifies what creativity is: a process of “seeing ahead.” We "see ahead" when we make designs that are materialized in the future, when we write problems that anticipate solutions, when we link one step to another in navigating our lives and the way through anything, especially the empty page, writer’s block, confusion, chaos, needs, and questions. The creative process is the story of this passage and speaks for the author, to the user, the reader, inhabitant, audience or viewer. I have listened and observed these workings as a teacher, a student, a maker, a writer and an architect myself. As an educator I am dedicated to embodied learning, to the precision of mind that comes from measured making and to the clarity of abstraction. As a student, an aspiring/practicing actor and witness I seek to learn something, to be surprised by the author/director's soul voice and to find coherence where there wasn’t any. As a maker of things, designer, and writer, I dwell in uncertainty, follow poetry as a process, reason with material, construct, deconstruct and reconstruct—conceptual clarity appearing as a guide. I watch the sunrise almost everyday from a rowing shell, am moved to tears by honesty, and take dreams very seriously.

A dream: The image projected inside my eye onto my retina while sitting in an eye looking at the image projected onto the retina of an eye looking into a mirror.

My Little Pony VICTORIA BROOKE VALIQUETTE

Hi! I am 10 years old and in 5th grade. I am a competitive figure skater and have been skating since I was 21 months old. I started riding horses in December 2020 and now spend almost as much time at the barn as I do at the rink. I discovered my passion for art during the COVID-19 quarantine and find it very relaxing to draw. I love to draw pictures of my pets, which include a pony, a dog, 3 birds, 2 guinea pigs, and a fish. When I grow up, I would like to be a lawyer.

How Eye See It MAYTAR SHAPIRA

Meetoosh, also known as Maytar Shapira, aspires to successfully portray the intimacy between faces and the words that come out of them. In 2016, Maytar Shapira began her journey as an independent artist and has successfully created Murals, Commissions, and Merchandise in multiple different fields
across the state. Meetoosh aspires to grow her brand to an international level,
leaving her imprint on as many different communities as possible.
This piece by Meetoosh was done digitally, it was the first digital piece to be done by the artist, challenging her to portray her own ideas onto a screen.
Posters of the print are now being sold on her website.

Spirit Bear MARYANN GILMARTIN

I am in my senior years and upon retirement began to enjoy traveling, painting, gardening. My husband, John, began to lose his eyesight to glaucoma about 12 years ago and our traveling and interest in golf and tennis became limited. He does put a lot of effort in our gardens in Vermont where we live from May-October. I have spent time learning how to paint with pastels by attending workshops led by professional and well known artists. These workshops were within driving distance from home to New York and New England. I also attended workshops out West in New Mexico and Arizona. I feel when I am at may easel that I am on a journey which will continue for a long time with a good deal of learning and experimenting on the way. And now I have the opportunity to use art to raise funds for glaucoma research.
I paint in pastels on sanded paper. I find this medium easy to store and travel with. I mostly paint landscapes of places I have visited on my travels abroad or in the U.S. In this case the painting is from a reference photo taken by a friend of mine who was in search of the Kendrou bear on an island off the coast of British Colombia.

Pink Recycle SONYA MICHEL

After many years as a professor of history, American Studies and Women's and
Gender Studies and author of numerous books and articles, I retired and began
a new career as an artist. My work consists mainly of abstract paintings,
collages and assemblages. I use acrylics and found and recycled materials. I am
a member of the Touchstone Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C., and one of
my pieces will be featured in the upcoming juried exhibition "Re-Cycle" at the
Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition Gallery, opening in mid-September.
This is a collage, 22 inches by 24 inches, made primarily from recycled
corrugated cardboard and shopping bags, some of it painted in acrylics but
leaving the Recycled icons visible, along with the creases and stains the
materials acquired in the course of their history. The piece is meant to draw
attention to the aesthetic qualities of these materials as well as their long useful
lives.

Collaborate SARAH BLOCK

I have been living in Italy for over 25 years, which has inevitably had a strong impact on my artistic development. I have always been very drawn to the wonderful sense of space, light and color of this country. When I was in my twenties and thirties, I was highly influenced by the great masters and my work was figurative. In time, my work has became increasingly more abstract. I work a lot in pastels, oils and mixed media (collage).

In addition to being an artist, I am also a classroom teacher. I work a lot with my kids in helping them find their own artistic expression. Teaching for me is a very creative process. It feeds my soul, and has shaped me into the artist I have become.
This piece is pastel on black paper, with dimensions of 50 cm x 70 cm (18" x 24"). It tells the tale of working as a team and the feelings that go with it. When collaboration is approached with an open mind, passionate discussion of difference leads to enlightenment and clash turns into beauty.

Looking Out MICHAEL KARASIK

Michael Karasik has been drawing for decades. His paintings have evolved from simple line drawings to elaborate clay creations. In 1999 he created his technique of using modeling clay on a marble dusted gesso board. The artist described this technique as “immediately resonated with me. I became captivated with the intimacy of using my finger as a brush, the unlimited range of color and the complexity of layered clay; pulling the clay across the board to create veils of colors utilizing the three-dimensional properties inherent in clay." The artist also employs other media including watercolors, pastels and crayons on heavy paper. Drawing was a respite from the sometimes-chaotic household growing up with an older brother with an autism spectrum disorder. This was at a time when few supports existed for individuals with disabilities in the 1950's and 1960's.
'Looking out' Cat looking out of window. This painting is hung on a wall where our 1905 stone house's deeply set windows project shadows as the sunsets illuminating the window frame. The shadow creates the illusion of multiple windows. The clay cat is slightly elevated and the resulting shadows and the sun's movement make this painting extra special.

Untitled (New Smyrna-Titusville) MICHAEL COUGHLAN

Michael Coughlan is a visual artist living in Los Angeles, CA.

His solo exhibitions have been seen in Europe, Los Angeles and New York. Recent group exhibitions include shows at Stalke Gallery, Kirke Saaby, Denmark and Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles. His work has garnered praise and been featured in reviews in Artforum, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The LA Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Tema Celeste, among others.

He is the recipient of a Pollack Krasner Foundation grant (1996) and was a resident artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida 2011. Coughlan earned an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design for Painting.
The painting submitted for the TGF Art Challenge explores an ambiguous space between abstraction and representational landscape painting. Painted while a resident at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, the painting focuses on process, material breakdown, and the experience of looking.

Mrs. Black Moses JAHKORI DOPWELL HALL

Jahkori Dopwell Hall is currently a senior - majoring in Illustration at the Ringling College of Art and Design.

Born in Brooklyn, New York with primary congenital glaucoma, Jahkori has always had to balance creativity with his disability. Being immersed in a culture surrounded by the arts has allowed him to have his artwork displayed at many reputable locations and galleries.

Jahkori currently works as a private art instructor and freelance artist. In addition, he has become an ambassador for The Glaucoma Foundation Art Challenge this year.
Mrs. Black Moses is a digital illustration project, completed during my junior year of college. For this project, the class was instructed to create a portrait of someone famous using symbolic images that have meaning and tell a story. The reason I titled this piece, Mrs. Black Moses is because that is the nickname slavecatchers used to identify Harriet Tubman after discovering she was freeing enslaved people in the same fashion as the biblical Moses did.
In my piece, I chose to depict Harriet in her youth, surrounded by descriptive symbols. Instead of a stone tablet, she holds a wanted poster in her right hand. She is carrying the poster as a reminder of the danger she’s in, symbolic of her fearlessness. The red shawl she’s wearing is symbolic of the blood of her ancestors that could never reach freedom. The torch in her hand is a symbol of enlightenment on the path to liberty. The north star in the sky is a symbol of hope, inspiration and a guide to a purposeful destination. Harriet followed this star to freedom. The inclusion of water in the foreground is symbolic of the “Wade in the Water” spiritual that Harriet sang to warn the slaves to abandon the path and move into the water.
Using these five symbols, I was able to honor the legacy of Harriet Tubman and the history of the Underground Railroad. I am very pleased with how educational my painting turned out to be. The lighting, mood, setting, and symbolism work together to give this piece a powerful meaning. Harriet Tubman will always be my hero and her bravery will always be an inspiration to me.

Piazza del Campo, Sienna SONIA GRINEVA Creating art is an integral part of Sonia Grineva’s life. Sonia Grineva was born in Moscow, Russia, and received her B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the Stroganov Art Institute. (Stroganov Institute was founded in 1825 and is widely considered to be Moscow’s leading art school, famous for its professors Vassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, among others.) After coming to the United States at the age of 20, she studied at the National Academy of Design in Manhattan, where she was awarded a coveted traveling scholarship to Italy and completed a course of study at the British Institute in Florence. Sonia has since traveled extensively and works on location in the tradition of many “plein air” artists. She has painted some of Europe’s most impressive ports, waterways, and rivers, including those surrounding Venice, La Rochelle, Monte Carlo, Dieppe, and Prague. Ms. Grineva has gained an international reputation for her oil and watercolor landscapes and is well-known locally for her Manhattan cityscapes. In addition, she is adept at a variety of mediums, including printmaking and sculpture. Her work can be seen in galleries in New York, New England, Santa Fe, Georgia, Washington, and Europe and in numerous private, public, and museum collections. She maintains an art studio on Union Square in New York City. Sonia’s work is the permanent collections of numerous institutions, corporations, and museums, including The White House, Washington, DC; Forbes Foundation, New York, NY; and Smithsonian Institution, Branch New York, NY. soniagrineva@gmail.com

Birds and Flowers RANDY BROZEN Collage on hand-made Nepalese paper, magazine cut-out, photographic images. This work is part of a series of collages in response to the pandemic; this image of the Quan Yin (Goddess of Mercy), and lots of birds and bright sunflowers comfort and give hope for a brilliant and colorful future for us all.

Randy Brozen is an award winning New York based artist, papermaker and photographer with an MFA in Sculpture from the City College of New York, where she is teaches as Lecturer in the School of Education's Childhood Education program.
As an Artist-in-Residence, Art Consultant, and Teaching Artist, she has taught all ages and all media all over New York City. She especially loves to work with children and help them discover their own inner artist.

sun spot OLGA MIKHLINA Digital photograph Fire Island, NY, July 2021 A deer on the beach at sunrise... not an unusual sighting early in the morning.

A curiosity about and affinity for nature compels Olga to spend hours observing plants, birds, and animals. Having a camera handy only adds to the enjoyment. Loves seeing the world through a lens.

Bird stalker; deer whisperer; avid collector of sunrises and sunsets.