Sandi Parker

Website: www.sandiparker.com
Email: sandiparkerart@gmail.com.

Arlington, Virginia artist Sandi Parker (www.sandiparker.com) specializes in acrylic abstracts and impressionistic style oils. Her abstracts are based on urban walls and landscapes; favorite subjects for oils include landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, gardens and youth sports. She also has a line of jewelry, SandiSea Designs, made with shells, stone and other natural materials found on beaches.

Sandi is a member of the Arlington Artists Alliance, the Art League, and the Rehoboth Art League in Rehoboth, Delaware. She exhibits and sells her work at Gallery Underground, where she is Co-Director, located at 2100 Crystal Drive, Arlington, VA; Cassatt’s Café and Gallery, located at 4536 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA; The Corkran Gallery at the Rehoboth Art League; at numerous art shows and other venues in Arlington, and at her studio/gallery at Blue Studios at Art Underground at 2100 Crystal Drive, Arlington, VA. Her work has won awards and is frequently accepted into juried shows.

Artist’s Statement

“My goal in painting abstracts is to create dynamic color studies with movement and energy, invoking an urban vibe. In my traditional oils, I am especially drawn to the vivid purples of lavender fields in Provence, the yellows of Tuscan sunflower fields, the pastels of the sea, and the many hues of flowers. In these works I attempt to create a soothing mood through the use of color. In my paintings of youth sports I strive to capture action, drama, and touching interaction between players and coaches. In my jewelry line I have translated my love of the seashore and years of “treasure hunting” on beaches all over the world into a line of unique, one-of-a-kind pieces using natural materials.”

Sandi’s work can be seen on her website, at www.sandiparker.com. Her works are also available as prints upon request, and on notecards, and she accepts commissions. Contact Sandi at sandiparkerart@gmail.com.

Sharon Malley

Website: www.malleygallery.com
Email: sharonmalley@comcast.net

“Over the last few years, much of my creative work has been in response to the natural environment. The work is about something I’ve spent quite a bit of time with, and appreciated its presence, such as the cormorants that populated our stretch of river one summer, the 11 white egrets the next summer, and the trees and other plants and birds on our property on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. More recently, I have begun to work in a narrative style, conjuring memories of childhood on my grandparents’ farm, for instance, working alongside migrant workers and playing with their children. These narratives and others touch on social constructions that trigger memories and elicit emotions in the viewer.”

Sharon holds a BS in Art Education and Masters and Doctoral degrees in special education and disability related fields. Her career has spanned 35 years as a recreation therapist, special educator, academic researcher, and university adjunct professor, specializing in intellectual disabilities and autism. She incorporates the visual arts in her work with people with disabilities, and she has national recognition for her leadership in arts and disabilities policies and practice.

Visit Sharon at her studio:

Columbia Pike Artists’ Studios, studio 5, by appointment.

Jackie Afram

My art comes from my life experiences. Photos of friends and family are favorite sources for subjects and I draw inspiration from museum collections and enjoy trying to detect artists’ special techniques. I approach each painting with the style I believe best suits the subject. I have learned to add or subtract paint, and push it around with palette knife, brush, finger or paper towel. Oil paint is my primary media The many ways one can use it with a variety of media intrigues me. Recently I have enjoyed using oil bars, oil markers on black canvas and now alcohol ink markers and stone paper. Each painting is a learning experience and I look forward to more experiences.

Jane McElvany Coonce

Email: Jane.Coonce@verizon.net
Website: www.jmcelvany.com

Jane McElvany Coonce has been in the art field for over 30 years. She works primarily in oil, pastel, and terra cotta. Her favorite subjects are children, seascapes, and bridge scenes. She is particularly skillful at capturing the luminescent quality of sunlight reflecting on water and on the interplay of water and sky.
Her works are held by private and corporate collectors. Her corporate collectors include the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and the International Country Club, Fairfax, Virginia and the Rickover Academy in Chicago. She has won numerous awards for both her paintings and her sculptures.
She has been an art instructor for Arlington County Adult Education since 1980.
Born in Washington, DC, Jane McElvany Coonce lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and three sons.

Ann Bolster

Ann Bolster is a retired English as a Second Language teacher and the wife of an American diplomat. She has lived in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe and continues to travel extensively. Her time overseas has given her an appreciation of the beauty of natural dyes and pigments used in old textiles, carpets and paintings. She likes to use these rich earth and jewel tones in her own works in oil and sometimes enriches them further with the use of gold, silver or copper leaf details. This technique is sometimes used in her paintings of cats (domestic and wild), foxes, wolves and other wildlife and in her paintings of angels. Her love of color is also evident in her still lifes and landscapes. Her landscapes are often given a brooding quality because of her use of blues, deep reds, greens and purples. While working primarily in oil, she also uses acrylic, mixed media and collage techniques.

Ms. Bolster has studied with Jane McElvany Coonce and Shirley Blanchard and has taken workshops with Walt Bartman, Robert Johnson and others. She is a member of the Arlington Artists Alliance and the McLean Art Society. Her works are shown in various venues in Northern Virginia and are in private collections.

Donna Lomangino

Email: info@lomangino.com

Website: LomanginoArt.com

Instagram: LomanginoArt

Twitter: dlomangino

Facebook: LomanginoArt

I am inspired by the overwhelming beauty and serenity of nature, its subtle shifts in color and mood, its warmth and its ferocity. The sea is particularly compelling to me as a painter—the reassuring sound and rythm of the tides, the vast blue, the stillness and the roar.

When I paint, I allow my moods and my instincts to guide me, from selection of color to application. My goal is to preserve as much spontaneity and rhythm as possible, not overworking the paint, so that the energy of the painting remains and the force of the brushstrokes are preserved. Oil is my medium of choice, although I paint in acrylics as well, sometimes as an underpainting, and recently have been exploring cold wax and oil.

Painting has always been my passion. My artwork has been exhibited internationally, and my paintings have been collected across the U.S. and Europe. Please go upstairs at Gallery Clarendon to see some of my paintings!

In addition to her painting career, Donna Lomangino has been the principal and creative director of Lomangino Studio, an award-winning design firm, since 1988.

Gerda Lane

Email: Lanegerda@hotmail.com
Phone: 703-655-1375

Gerda Lane began pursuing her interest in art in 2014 after raising a family and retiring from a career in the US Department of State. She paints in oil, watercolor, and pastel. She has a degree in fine arts and continues to take classes and workshops in northern Virginia to further develop her skills. Gerda primarily paints landscapes, still life scenes and also enjoys creating whimsical nursery scenes. Her style can be described as impressionistic, choosing colors from a soft French inspired palette. She is a member of the Arlington Artists Alliance, Program Chair of the McLean Art Society, and the Falls Church Art Society, and enjoys belonging to these communities of fellow artists. Gerda works in her studio at the AAA Clarendon Gallery in Arlington.

Heike Gramckow

Most months of the year Heike lives in Arlington, Virginia, together with her husband Claus and a Labrador named Becca. The rest of the year she spends in Hamburg, Germany or travelling. Born and raised in Germany, she and her husband moved to the Washington DC area in 1986. She has a studio in both countries where she paints mostly landscapes and cityscapes in oil and pastels. She also paints en plein air in the different locations she lives in and travels to. Heike painted from an early age, but began painting in earnest only until her late 50’s. After a successful career as lawyer, researcher and international justice reform expert that took her around the globe, she decided a more balanced, creative approach to life was needed. Since then she has painted with several well-known American artists, such as Seth Haverkamp, Glen Kessler, Diane Tessler, Greg Kessler, Ted Reed, Fred Markham, Jill Banks, Adrienne Kralik, and Patrick Kirwin. She has a law degree and Ph.D, from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and a certificate in World Art History from the Smithsonian Institute. She is participating national and international art exhibitions and plein air competitions, participates in art fairs, is part of different art associations and has exhibited in several galleries in the Washington DC area. Impressionists, especially Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt, and Max Liebermann, have long been her favorite painters. Their use of color, light and shadow, as well as the fact that their beautiful paintings broke with was then considered high quality art, is what inspired her to try something similar in our times. Equally influential and shaping her style are more recent realism painters, especially Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. As a result, her style is modern impressionism with a touch of realism.