Winter Small Works 2024

acrylic 11 x 10" In the hushed embrace of winter, where nature weaves a tapestry of solitude with its icy tendrils, my creations emerge as reflections of the quiet storm within. Winter, oft perceived as a season of retreat, becomes the crucible for a transformative dance between isolation and inspiration. As we seek refuge indoors from the tempestuous storms that sweep across the landscape, an introspective sanctuary unfurls, cultivating an environment where solitude metamorphoses into the catalyst for unrestrained creativity. This piece is an exploration of the delicate balance between the tranquility of seclusion and the tumultuous beauty of unleashed imagination. Each stroke, each contour, is a testament to the nuanced interplay between the serenity of winter's embrace and the tempestuous bursts of creativity that arise when the world slows down.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

oil 10 x 10" As a landscape painter, I find nocturnes especially interesting and challenging. There is something special about capturing a feeling a nighttime experience has given us. Bright lights in contrast with cool eerie shadows allow me to explore different color palettes to evoke relatable emotions and memories.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

oil 10 x 12" I paint stories about people and sceneries that are inspired by the complexities and awesomeness of life.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

sculpture 7 x 11 x 9" Barbara “Berne” Smith is a professional artist sculptor who creates award winning Porcelain & Clay works of traditional realism which express relationships, behavior and perspective of animals interacting with their daily environment. Ms. Smith’s insights are gained from a lifetime of working with and observing animals. Owning and living on a farm in central Virginia provides her a constant window on the personalities and activities of animals in their natural surroundings that inspire her creative works. Ms. Smith is an Elected Member of the Salmagundi Club of New York (SCNY); Signature Member of The American Artists Professional League Inc. (AAPL), Elected Member of Audubon Artists Inc., and National Sculpture Society Member.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

watercolor 11 x 14" I enjoy working in many mediums and have fun while engaged in the creative process. I rarely if ever have an end picture in mind, as I mostly play and experiment in a very fluid way. I enjoy layering, trying new techniques and tools, and using more than one medium in a piece. I step away often to assess my next move and try to stop when it 'feels done'. It's often a very happy surprise, but sometimes the piece goes into the 'someday' pile/file for a future painting or collage. My inspiration comes from nature, color, new art supplies and processes, and language.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

digital 7 x 10" Creative Spirit Unveiled: Inspired by the holistic concepts of space and time in Indigenous cultures, I explore ways to use light, reflections, shadows, and delicately balanced spatial relationships to reveal the spiritual strength and synergy that evolve with creative expression. I use custom software that allows me to “mold space with light” and create ethereal nth dimensional worlds with spatial and temporal transformations that manifest various perceptual dichotomies.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

acrylic 11 x 9" As a fine artist: painter and sculptor, I use concepts of abstraction, cubism, and surrealism to explore the elusive qualities of time, energy, and storytelling. My artistic goal is to create seductive surfaces and provocative forms that involve the viewer in an emotional visual adventure. This painting is executed with acrylic paint on a third dimensional gourd. I redefine the use of the natural plant gourd as a third dimensional canvas. The gourd is a member of the pumpkin family. This plant form is dried, opened and the seeds removed. The surface is primed, images are rendered and finished with a protective matte varnish. Although coated inside the vessel may not be used for liquid.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

photography 15 x 15" "I am passionate about my photography and print all my images, spending hours in the "Light Room". This gives me a true sense of freedom in expressing my work. I want my work to enhance my viewers' imaginations and to lift their spirits. I hope that what I see with my heart becomes what the viewer sees with their eyes."   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

oil 10 x 10" All I ever wanted to be was smaller. I’ve found refuge from this compulsive desire by allowing myself space in the work. In my body of work, autobiographical paintings depict tender moments from my day to day life. Portraits of my partner and I provide queer representation void of hyper sexualized or traumatic imagery, with this I begin to disrupt heteronormative narratives, and provide images of queer joy. In focusing on the figure through a queer feminine gaze I create colorful and carefully composed oil paintings that allow bodies that are often asked to shrink, a place to be vulnerable and take up space. Candid photos often acting as my source material allow insecurities to penetrate the most loving of works. Through eye level and framing the casual nature of the references invites the viewer in as a participant rather than a voyeur. There is sympathy and authenticity to the rendering of each subject, with careful consideration put into capturing the volume of the forms. My emphasis is always on the sense of touch, creating works that are tender and where each push and pull of the skin is felt. Thoughtfully placed line and vivid color works to exploit the most tense areas of the work, helping each to feel uncomfortably intimate.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

printmaking 10 x 8" My purpose in making art is to touch the ineffable, to go beyond words into the deep belly of creativity. It is to meet myself in the wellspring and have a conversation with the viewer, to communicate in a deep and intimate way at first sight, in an instant. I strive only to be in harmony with each line, each splash of color and splatter of ink as it strikes the painting surface, to reveal what is already there. The experience of making marks gets truly exciting when I resist the impulse to name what I’m seeing take shape and open myself up to the possibility of not knowing, of just seeing and experiencing whatever is in front of me – what it is saying, what it is becoming. To let it do me rather than me do it. I wish for anyone who stands or sits in front of a piece of art created in my studio this same experience. I don’t want viewers to know or feel what I feel. I want them to know and feel whatever they feel. That is for me the true nature of all art: beauty that is unrepeatable and unnamable.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

mixed media 10 x 10" This image represents a series of experiments combining photo transfers and printmaking as modes of art expression. Thematically, it shares the sense of exhilaration and magic experienced by children. It is my hope that it inspires a viewer to think, " I remember those innocent days." It has been created in the anticipation of larger canvases using similar processes. My art practice involves experimenting with and exploring different media and materials. For me, life is too short to limit my work to a specific style. In the same way I create this sense of childhood fantasy and freedom, I try to replicate that feeling in my paintings.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

oil 9 x 12" Fine artist and humanitarian Laurie Elizabeth McKinley has dedicated her life to observing, documenting, and participating in the human experience. She has traveled the globe her entire life, compelled to observe and photograph the stories of vanishing cultures with compassion and humanity. She translates these increasingly rare images onto canvas, so that she might share them with the world and hopefully inspire change to protect diversity and the environment. Laurie Elizabeth paints in all genres, especially enjoying en plein air in villages throughout the world and capturing that very special “first feeling” -- the mystery of the moment, the chi, the magic. Laurie Elizabeth encourages all to see the imbalances and injustices in the world and be a voice for awareness and change. She wants humanity to see the the disappearing cultures, traditions, and heritages of the world. She believes the artist’s duty is to see the beauty in all humans and in Mother Nature.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

photography 10 x 8" In Tales of a Consulting Detective, Sherlock Holmes said: “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.” I take my camera out. I may choose a subject; I may think “that would make a great picture”; I may visit a new place or one I’ve seen before. I want to observe and to present things in a way that causes the viewer to stop and observe. We have the technology to immediately capture whatever is in front of us. The challenge is for people to slow down; to question whether there is only one way to look at something; and to search for new meaning in something they may have seen before.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

printmaking 5 x 3" The theme of self-introspection is crucial to my art, since I believe that only by delving into the enigmas of the self can an individual truly engage with the world and bring about change in a profound, meaningful way. Though I consider myself primarily a Symbolist, my art draws on a wide variety of mythologies, worldviews, religions, and literary traditions, both ancient and modern, ranging from Buddhism to Russian folklore.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

mixed media 9 x 9.5" I reinterpret Palestinian identity through contemporary Tatreez, a traditional cross-stitch embroidery, and the keffiyeh, which is a traditional headscarf. The freehand stitched designs, created with a sewing machine on water-soluble fabric, blend with multimedia layers on canvas or paper. This intertwining reflects women’s self-expression and diasporic identity. The torn and stitched layers symbolize the resilience of identity by tearing apart and using thread to stitch back together multimedia-painted layers on canvas or paper, showing the complexities of identity and the power of heritage.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

collage 10 x 8" This art work is created with found papers, rice papers, hand drawn images, and acrylic mediums. I included text and asemic writing. These collage pieces were created after the "Me Too" movement in response to women's rights and in admiration of the strength of women in society.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

oil 8 x 10" Irina’s work is driven by passion to explore and celebrate life. She is searching for beauty, balance, harmony and the ideal, following the philosophy of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy who believed that “beauty will save the world.” Art has always been Irina’s salvation and the fountain from which she could draw inspiration, strength, love and serenity. Irina is working primarily in oils in various genres, including portraits and figurative work, florals, still lives and landscapes. Recently she is exploring pastels, a new medium for her, which is experiencing Renaissance in the United States and which has been more widely adopted in Europe. Irina is also using digital media as her tool of storytelling to touch the audience’s hearts. Being equally good in traditional media and in digital arts, Irina explored a newly found ground in digital illustration by writing, illustrating, designing and publishing a new children’s book Balloon at Noon and Other Stories. Irina’s main influences, at least for the moment, are the Florentine Renaissance painters of the 16th century Leonardo da Vinci, Tintoretto, Veronese, Titian, among others. She has found it gratifying to rediscover realism and to dedicate time to study and observe form, light and color. She is painting and drawing live models again to explore the subtle shadows, softness, and warmth of human flesh, as well as the texture and radiance of everyday objects. It feels as though it took Irina a long time, down an ever-winding road, to become a fine artist. There were many detours along.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

sculpture 15 x 10 x 15" Albert Einstein once wrote, "Look deep into nature and you will understand everything." I have looked at nature and seen much symbolism and metaphor for what is happening in the world today. My artwork focuses on the chaos, mystery, and whimsey in nature. The whimsey is sometimes dark, sometimes not, but always points to the foibles of human nature. Nature is innately smarter than man. It has solved many problems we are grappling with. Perhaps what surrounds us is the secret to survival. Nature has the ability to evolve and adapt to change the environmental conditions. It has slowly adapted to climate change hastened by man, but will it continue to? My ever-evolving artwork has become more activist and narrative driven, and explores some of these ideas and more.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

acrylic 14 x 11" Inspired by the Spanish artist Goya and the French artist Chardin's still-life paintings, Amber explores themes of death and deterioration in her paintings. Her artworks are in every way unlike traditional still life paintings, they are raw and brutal, provocative in their simplicity and directness. Amber's paintings are at once both macabre and stunningly alluring.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

pastel 12 x 9" The natural world always inspires me to paint with pastels. Cobalt reflections was inspired by a local hike after a recent snowfall. The blue sky reflections in the water with the rust colored leaves below the water attracted me to the location. The remaining scene unfolded before me and I knew I would paint it.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

digital 9 x 12.6" In my digital work my inspiration is my imagination.These images are from my imagination. I also do digital paintings from real life. I am an oil painter when not on my iPad. I enjoy the immediacy of digital. Most of my digital images are created after a day in the studio painting in oil.   Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

sculpture 14 x 15 x 7" I created Healing Hands after I had gone through two years of grueling, intense, hand therapy to regain the use of my left hand, which I almost severed in a near-fatal studio accident. The original sculpture intuitively flowed from the chisels. It was a spiritual experience to have the piece evolve without hesitation. The original marble sculpture was cut in a pristine white, Colorado Yule Marble. I have cast bronzes of the original sculpture, which is owned by my brilliant hand therapist-- who healed the hand and the spirit at the same time. It is a possibility that this piece will be cast large-scale in the future. Today I am still carving one-of-a-kind stone pieces--two which have been commissioned as five-foot bronzes. A third twelve foot bronze is being developed and will go to production in the next few months. The three sculptures will be the focal points for a sculpture garden in Knoxville, Tennessee. They are due for installation in 2025. Having just reached the ripe old age of 81, I am happy to say that I am still able to follow my passion. Each day is most definitely a gift! Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

sculpture 11 x 9 x 11" It is often hard to appreciate the seasons of life, the aging, the changing, the growing, the adapting, and the coping. But the pain disappears when I remember there is a reason for each season, and it is merely so we can get to the next - Winter is here in hibernation; thinking and breathing; storing energy; coiling it up for the destined release. Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.  

oil 11 x 14" Every artist has his or her own way of composing. I aim to create a story within my works. I am fascinated with all birds and love painting them. Additional shipping/delivery charges will be handled between artist and buyer after the purchase.