Issue #18 ~ Winter 2025
Artwork
COVER IMAGE:
“Forever Again” by Gabrielle Miller
Gabrielle Miller is a Virginia-based painter and fiber artist. She earned her BFA in Studio Art and the David Diller Outstanding Student in Studio Art Award from James Madison University in 2024. Her practice centers on self-portraiture, symbols of desire, and intimate views of female identity. Using oil paint and hand-stitched embroidery, Miller explores themes of self-image and sexuality to create vulnerable, dream-like compositions. Her work has been exhibited at Second Street Gallery, Hanbury Design Studio, and ArtWorks Gallery. In 2024, she held her first solo exhibition, Underbelly, at James Madison University. Miller has been awarded residencies at McGuffey Art Center and Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild.
More by Gabrielle Miller
Kathleen Frank:
Santa Fe artist Kathleen Frank travels throughout the Southwest/West, seeking inspiration for landscape paintings. Using vibrant hues, she captures light, pattern and a glint of logic in complex terrains.
Exhibitions include International Art Museum of America; Museum of Western Art; St. George Museum of Art; Northwest Montana History Museum; UNM Valencia; MonDak Heritage Center| Art & History Museum; WaterWorks Museum; Sahara West Gallery; La Posada de Santa Fe; and Jane Hamilton Fine Art. Press includes LandEscape Art Review, MVIBE, Art Reveal, Magazine 43 and Southwest Art. Art in Embassies/U.S. State Department selected her work for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Cynthia Yatchman:
Artist Statement: In my paintings, I primarily use acrylic paint, latex paints, inks, papers and charcoal. My images contain many diverse layers of meaning, from the universal to the specific and personal. Many of my works are abstract. I am frequently interested in pattern and/or creating a rich sensual surface by making layer upon layer of marks. There is often an unseen history within these layers as images are obscured and revealed.
My Prints are frequently made with SafetyKut, a softer type of linoleum, I often print on unconventional surfaces, like plaster and wall paper.
More by Cynthia Yatchman…
John Widdowson:
Artist Statement: My art basis is on abstract expressionism, depth of visual texture and structure. Most based on traditional media and techniques, such as canvas, acrylic and mixed media. TikTok: ghetto.gallery
Matthew Fertel :
Matthew Fertel is an abstract photographer who seeks out beauty in the mundane. Passing by the same locations over days, months and years allows him to photograph his subjects under different lighting and weather conditions, and to observe the changes in these objects as the environment interacts with them over time. Small details get framed in ways that draw attention away from the actual object and focus on the shapes, textures, and colors, transforming them into landscapes, figures, and faces. His goal is to use these out-of-context images to create compositions that encourage an implied narrative that is easily influenced by the viewer and is open to multiple interpretations. More of Matthew’s work can be seen on his website and Instagram.
Devdatta Padekar:
Devdatta Padekar studied at Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 1999, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in Portraiture in 2001. On both occasions, he stood first with distinction. He later won the British Chevening Scholarship and earned a Master of Art in Drawing in 2005 from Camberwell College of Arts in London. A full-time painter, Padekar gets his greatest inspiration from nature and his paintings highlight its beauty and sensitivity.
Jules Ostara:
Jules Ostara is an eclectic artist and writer who greets a blank canvas as both playground and temple. She’s created two inspirational card decks and a book called Born to Bloom Bright that features an encouraging poem with paintings by many artists from all over the world. Jules also hosts creative courses and homeschooled her twin boys from K-12. She’s lived in the Florida Keys and the Appalachian Mountains. Visit her at instagram.com/julesostara or ThriveTrue.com.
紫月 李, Li Ziyue:
“图片10” by 紫月 李, Li Ziyue
Li Ziyue graduated from Zhejiang University of Media and Communication in 2020. Since 2012, she has studied feng shui and modern abstract art, and created the original style of “AI mixed painting,” to create the ultimate irregular combination in painting, the phenomenon of breaking through reality, as well as the sense of fragmentation and painting details.
Muhammad Ashraf :
Muhammad Ashraf lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan. He is currently the Chairperson and Associate Professor of the Department of Art and Design at COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus. More information is available on his website: https://studioashraf.pk/
Ann-Marie Brown:
Artist Statement: My family has planted a forest garden in coastal B.C. The trees grow hazelnuts, walnuts, cherries, apples, pears, figs, plums, apricots, and sea buckthorn. There are blueberry, raspberry, gogi and gooseberry along with grapes, and wildflowers on a lawn of clover. Climate change has been a challenge with freak weather and unseasonal temperatures–the drought last summer and the floods this one. I’ve been painting the fruits that do grow. Portraits of apples and plums, with as much attention paid to their individuality as I pay to my figure works.
Painting in a garden in a time of shifting ecologies is a celebration of resilience shadowed by knowledge. When Dutch painters in the 17th century painted fruit, they were in contemplation of the transience of human life, firm in the conviction that the eternal seasons would continue to unfold even as the eyes looking at the painting would turn to dust.
Barbara Sarvis:
Artist Statement: In the winter of 2020, Covid19 re-introduced me to several unfinished paintings hanging in my studio. For many weeks I stared at the images on the canvas while listening to the daily news. Feelings of rage, sadness and powerlessness overpowered me regarding immigration, systemic racism, climate change, equal rights and a woman’s right to choose. The paintings could no longer exist as a portrait, landscape or floral, but instead became visual stories that I had to tell as a catharsis for change.
Michael Kunzinger:
Michael Kunzinger is a photographer from Tidewater Virginia, drawing inspiration from the waters of his home region as well as travels further afield. His work examines art as created by nature, and the intersection of what is abstract and what is real. He has been featured in numerous solo shows, publications, and exhibitions.