Artistic renditions of the mystical female spirit are coming to our gallery this March. “She Who Shines” features over 35 works of heavily stylized and whimsical imagery of women. Through imaginative aesthetics and intuitive art-making, this exhibition celebrates feminine energy and the power of archetypal women in lore and history. The exhibition, which runs from March 7-29, includes art from Kathy Daywalt, Deborah Johnson, Rachel Romano, and Pritha Srinivasan. 

 

     Kathy Daywalt is an award-winning artist who has been honing her craft for more than 40 years. She works in a variety of media, but has opted to include watercolors in this exhibit. She has been included in numerous juried exhibitions and solo showcases. Her interest in figures and beautifully patterned compositions is evident in her work. Her long experience with linocut printmaking has carried over into her painting, as she employs artist-made linocut stamps as well as found objects to create her richly textured, patterned paintings. Kathy’s women feel more like characters than subjects, as their universal appeal could place them anywhere in the world. The flattened and elongated figures wearing royal regalia, along with the appearance of mosaics and icons, give the pieces a medieval feel, evoking imagery often associated with folklore and mythology.

 

     Deborah Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the connection between inner life and the natural world. Working primarily in oil and cold wax, she creates layered, atmospheric paintings in which women, animals, water, and landscape merge into a single emotional space. Deborah’s practice is rooted in material knowledge and traditional hand processes, allowing each medium’s physical properties to shape the final image. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and has been featured in institutional collections, invitational exhibitions, and community-based installations. For “She Who Shines,” Deborah is showing off both her oil paintings and kiln-formed glasswork. Her luminous pieces fuse womanhood with the natural world, exploring the quiet intersection of figure, environment, and inner life. While the glass pieces rely on a limited palette and fundamental curvilinear shapes, her paintings explore light, shadow, and color.

 

     Rachel Romano is a surrealist figurative painter. Her inspiration is rooted in humanity’s adversity, strength, resilience, and absurdity of life. She considers herself a storyteller for adults, expressing the myths and experiences of humanity. She has been featured in numerous publications, blogs, and interviews, and her sketchbook and working drawings are in the permanent collection of The Pennsylvania Historical Society in Philadelphia. Rachel’s surreal oil paintings are bold, colorful, and symbolic. Each object featured in a scene serves as a metaphor for a deeper meaning. Conversely, her pencil pieces offer the same storytelling but through stripped-back scenes and monochromatic palettes. 

 

     Pritha Srinivasan is a Mid-Atlantic self-taught contemporary artist who has been creating art since childhood. Her award-winning figurative and nature-based watermedia artwork celebrates the wonders within and the fleeting moments we share on life’s collective journey. She uses watercolor and acrylic to convey her unique narrative, which is deeply influenced by her cultural heritage, travels around the world, literature, and an abiding love of nature. By combining dynamic color with detail, her artwork transforms both the mysterious and familiar into something radiant and visionary. She displays her artwork locally in juried art exhibits, in addition to taking part in several invitational group shows. The ethereal women in Pritha’s watercolors are bathed in technicolor. While defined in their faces, the realism begins to fall away in other elements of the paintings, such as the garments, hair, and backgrounds. The vibrant pigments flow freely across the surface in an explosion of spirited color.