Author: Mary W

Deborah K. Tash, born in 1949 in the Bay Area, merges poetry and painting in a way that’s both personal and mythic. Her work draws from her mixed heritage—Mexican on her mother’s side, Celtic on her father’s—infusing her art with memory, ancestry, and spiritual presence. Identity for Tash isn’t static. It’s woven from place, bloodline, and imagination. The term Mestiza runs deep in how she sees and expresses the world—not as a label, but as a fluid way of belonging to multiple realms at once. She’s drawn to color and texture, yes, but also to story—especially the ones that live beneath the…

José Brito doesn’t paint for comfort. His work doesn’t aim to calm or blend in. Based in Portugal, Brito treats painting more like a confrontation than an escape. His materials are torn, layered, and stained—black ink, newspaper scraps, paint thick enough to hide something beneath. What he puts on canvas feels more like a record than a picture. These are surfaces that have been scraped, rewritten, pushed to their edge. You won’t find smooth finishes or quiet compositions here. Brito’s materials already come with stories—headlines, ads, bits of political debris. He doesn’t clean them up. He lets the rawness stay…

Oenone Hammersley’s work speaks from the ground up—through water, leaf, and sky. Her connection to the natural world is steady and instinctive. She’s not just inspired by rainforests, rivers, and wildlife—they’re central to how she sees and paints. Her art moves between the recognizable and the abstract, pulling in texture, light, and atmosphere to create something that feels both grounded and fluid. There’s no drama in her delivery, but a quiet insistence—an understanding that the natural world is both beautiful and endangered, and that we need to pay attention. This fall and winter, Hammersley will show her work at several…

Stuart Beck, born in 1967 in Lancashire, UK, found his way into painting through his father’s encouragement. Art was never something distant or lofty—it was part of everyday life. That early exposure shaped his path. Beck eventually moved toward abstraction, but always kept a connection to real places and real things. His work might not show literal landscapes or figures, but it reflects what he’s taken in: the surfaces of buildings, the wear of time, the way nature creeps in and out of the built world. His paintings are like quiet observations—things most of us walk past without noticing. There’s…

In a quiet corner of Germantown, Philadelphia, Oronde Kairi creates art that hums with life. His paintings are full of movement and feeling, grounded in the rhythms of the city and the culture that shaped him. His subjects often come from music, sports, and urban history, but the way he approaches them makes them feel personal—less like icons, more like familiar voices in the room. Kairi’s visual language is bold—bright color, strong lines, and expressive composition—but what makes his work land is its sense of place and memory. He captures the everyday and makes it vivid: a streetlight, a denim…

Carolin Rechberg treats art like a lived experience, not a finished product. Born in Starnberg, Germany, she moves through creative fields with the ease of someone who never felt bound by category. Her practice spans ceramics, sculpture, painting, sound, performance, photography, writing, and installation—not as a list of skills, but as a way of staying connected to the world around her. Rechberg doesn’t aim to produce static objects. She’s more interested in what unfolds when material, body, space, and attention meet. Her process is physical. Sensory. Rooted in rhythm and repetition. The way she works reflects how she sees: nothing…

Cheryl Crane-Hunter approaches painting as a way to listen—not to trends or noise, but to something quieter and more enduring. With a background in art education and a deep bond with nature, she paints not just to express but to connect. Her work often carries a spiritual current, woven through with light, emotion, and symbols that hint at deeper layers. Every canvas becomes a place where seen and unseen meet. She often finds inspiration by the sea, where moonlight and tide become part of her rhythm. The brush becomes a way to receive, rather than control. There’s little rigidity in…

Doug Caplan, born in Montreal in 1965, first encountered photography as a teenager. His parents handed him a black-and-white Polaroid camera—simple, manual, and chemically scented. It didn’t spark an immediate calling. But it left a trace. The kind that lingers in the back of the mind for years. It wasn’t until the early ’90s, after getting married, that he picked up a camera again. This time, something clicked for good. Caplan has worked across analog and digital mediums, but the tool isn’t the story. What matters is how he sees. His photographs don’t chase grandeur or drama. They tune into…

Born in 1959 in Moscow, Idaho, Linda Cancel has always had a strong visual memory. One of her earliest moments—watching fireworks above the Snake River as a toddler—seems to have rooted her fascination with light and its emotional pull. The landscape of the Pacific Northwest, with its muted drama and natural quiet, shaped her instincts early. Forests, rivers, snow, and mist weren’t just scenery—they became part of her visual vocabulary. At twelve, she began oil painting lessons with William F. Pogue. His deep respect for the storytelling traditions of the Golden Age of Illustration left a strong impression. Through him,…

Albert Deak’s work moves fluidly through layers of mystery, inviting reflection rather than resolution. Since completing his ceramics degree in 1989 at a leading art university in Eastern Europe, Deak has explored a wide range of mediums and ideas. What began as a hands-on relationship with clay gradually expanded into painting, graphics, and digital forms. Each shift marks a natural unfolding of his practice—a way to give shape to ideas that hover just beyond definition. Influences like Pollock, Richter, and Kandinsky may be present in his visual vocabulary, but Deak doesn’t borrow; he interprets. His approach to abstraction isn’t to…