Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, King's Grant, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
This annual open-entry exhibition presented by Lynwood Artists and Piedmont Arts features work by artists from Southern Virginia and the surrounding regions. The exhibit was judged by Gretchen Carr, gallery manager at Tamarack Marketplace in Beckley, West Virginia.
Visit the museum to vote for the People's Choice Award. Winner will be announced after the close of the exhibit.
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Sponsored by Marty Gardner, Olivia and Pres Garrett, Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Janet Lewis and Brad Johnson, Lynwood Artists, Sovah Health, Barbara and Guy Stanley and What's Your Sign.
Hardy and Ray have been living and working together for more than 25 years. They are inspired by found objects, patterns and designs discovered in nature. Through their intimate, creative and artistic bond they have created a diverse body of work full of rich textures and layered patterns.
Hardy says that art has always been an important part of her life. From an early age, she drew, painted and made things. She studied art education at Appalachian State University and painting and metal at Eastern Carolina University. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across the Southeast and is part of many private collections.
Ray works in a variety of media from drawing, painting, collage and sculpture to performance works. His aesthetic borrows heavily from the Dada and Fluxus movements, with a strong combination of word, gesture and image. Since 1990 he has been active in international correspondence art activities and projects in Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Japan, United States, Bolivia, Spain, Hungary, Switzerland and Latvia. He is a 2015 recipient of the North Carolina Arts Fellowship.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Marty Gardner, Olivia and Pres Garrett, Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Janet Lewis and Brad Johnson, Lynwood Artists, Sovah Health, Barbara and Guy Stanley and What's Your Sign.
American photographer, teacher and author Russell Hart uses his medium to explore the ways in which humans occupy and alter their environments and the landscape, but his photographs aren’t meant to be documentary or even realistic. “My work is based on observation,” Hart explains. “It doesn’t express a world view or share an intimate experience in the manner of so much contemporary art. It’s intended to show familiar things in a new way.”
In recent years, however, Hart’s work has ventured into more personal territory in the form of a project called “As I Found It: My Mother’s House,” newly released as a large-format coffee-table monograph by German art book publisher Kehrer Verlag. The project tells the story of his mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s and dementia, but not with the customary images of the disease’s sufferers and their caregivers; instead, it features photographs he made as he emptied out his mother’s house of forty years when she could no longer live there.
The images in “As I Found It: My Mother’s House” include not only the home’s increasingly empty interiors but also delicate still lifes taken from the massive yet ordered, deeply idiosyncratic collection of sentimental and practical objects and materials his mother left behind. For Hart, making these photographs was a way of mitigating his grief and extracting something positive from the experience. On the one hand the book is a meditation on memory and the pathos of objects. With the context provided by its introduction, texts, and captions, however, it is also a representation of how history and identity are lost to dementia. Signed copies of the book are available in the Piedmont Arts gift shop.
Both bodies of work will be featured among the thirty-five prints of “In a Different Light, ” Hart previously exhibited his environmental photographs at Piedmont Arts in 2017, and his work has been shown at galleries and museums including the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Hudson River Museum, the DeCordova Museum, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which has awarded him three traveling fellowships. He has taught photography at Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He currently teaches in the master’s in digital photography program at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Hart was for many years Executive Editor of American Photo magazine, and received the Griffin Museum’s Susan Sontag Scribe Award for best writing about photography. His writing on photographic subjects has also appeared in The New York Times, Men's Journal, and La Repubblica del Donne, among other publications. Hart grew up in Charlottesville, Va. and now lives in Lexington, Va.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Marty Gardner, Olivia and Pres Garrett, Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Janet Lewis and Brad Johnson, Lynwood Artists, Sovah Health, Barbara and Guy Stanley and What's Your Sign.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery features wildlife photography by Artemisia Blankenship.
Blankenship became passionate about photography while pursuing a career in fashion. Wildlife became one of her favorite subjects. She greatly enjoys photographing the animals she sees while taking long walks and views the images with a race of excitement, becoming truly lost in time discovering the magical beauty of every different species. She feels that the most meaningful way to capture the divine spirit and essence of wildlife and honor its existence on our planet is by sharing her images with others. Her favorite places to shoot are in the Florida Everglades, the coastal regions of North and South Carolina and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery is curated by Lynwood Artists, an organization for practicing artists in the Martinsville-Henry County area. Its members share a desire to stimulate understanding and enjoyment of fine art and the artistic process, while providing area artists with opportunities to exhibit and further develop their talents.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
Donald Towns is a painter, background animation illustrator and art director. Anything that captures his imagination — especially in nature — becomes the subject of his art. He is particularly inspired by the interaction of light and color in nature.
His style is influenced by American landscape artists Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran. He strives to emulate the dramatic lighting, striking compositions and luminescent color found in their work. His experience in the motion picture industry has influenced his painting, giving his work the ethereal appearance of animated movie stills.
He was born in Atlanta, Georgia. After graduating from high school, he attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago. He went on to work at Disney, where as a background illustrator and art director, he was involved in the making of the award-winning films "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin” and "The Little Mermaid," as well as the groundbreaking movie "TRON," which included the first computer-generated imagery in a live-action film. He has freelanced for several companies and was privileged to work under the late Thomas Kinkade as a digital concept artist for the Thomas Kinkade Company. His painting “Fount of Life” won Best in Show at “Expressions 2025,” the annual open-entry exhibition presented by Lynwood Artists and Piedmont Arts. He lives in Stuart, Virginia, with his wife Karen.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
"Peace Post" is a collection of 198 portraits of peace advocates by over 100 artists. The stories that permeate our newsfeeds have become increasingly dark lately. Abuse, discrimination, oppression, violence and war are global problems that all countries and people face. In an effort to shine a light on some of the individuals who stand against injustice and advocate for peace, this project asked artists to create a series of digital stamps featuring portraits of these heroes, one for each sovereign nation.
"Peace Post" is a project of Selman, a tight-knit studio of creatives who are committed to creating projects that positively impact our world. Selman was founded by Martinsville, Virginia, native Johnny Selman and is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
This drawing series by Leah Raintree underscores the importance of mark making, time and process across her artistic practice. Intricate and maplike, her drawings are produced on crushed paper with charcoal from the 2015 Valley Fire in California. The char was collected from the site of her sister’s home, which was destroyed in the fire. Marks occur at the scale of the human hand, but accumulate to reference the scale of geology, creating a concentrated record of time and attention.
Raintree is based in Richmond, Virginia, and Brooklyn, New York. Her practice focuses on the human connection to earth, with an interest in how we frame and experience time, matter, scale and phenomena. Her work is rooted in an experimental drawing practice that spans media, with projects developing through a combination of process-based mark-making and direct engagement with materiality and place. She primarily works across drawing, ceramic, and photographic processes, often using site-specific materials to explore our interconnection with the planet. These investigations occur at the scale of the body, revealing interrelationships between human and geologic scales. Raintree’s childhood was spent on a small farm in rural Virginia and she often returns to the process of “touching earth” as the cornerstone of her practice. She holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA from Parsons School of Design.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery features a selection of "inspired creations" by the group's members.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery is curated by Lynwood Artists, an organization for practicing artists in the Martinsville-Henry County area. Its members share a desire to stimulate understanding and enjoyment of fine art and the artistic process, while providing area artists with opportunities to exhibit and further develop their talents.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
This annual traveling exhibition by members of the American Watercolor Society includes paintings with styles ranging from hyper-realistic to abstract by artists from around the globe. More than 1,100 artists from the U.S. and 32 foreign countries submit their work to the exhibition each year and 40 pieces are chosen to be exhibited across the country.
The American Watercolor Society was founded in 1866 and is a nonprofit membership organization devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States. Membership in the society is granted by a panel of judges and signifies an artists mastery of the medium.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
Smith is an oil painter based in coastal North Carolina. Living on the Brunswick River has provided her with an endless source of inspiration for her paintings. Straddling the border between representational and impressionistic, her style has developed over 16 years of study and experimentation in oils. She paints what she loves and enjoys tinkering with color.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery features paintings by Kelly Gravely Mattox.
Featuring still lifes, landscapes and figurative paintings in oil, her work is an eye-catching kaleidoscope of hues. “My artwork is an extension of my personality,” says Mattox. "My representational to abstract work has a common theme: lots of energy, exuberant high color, plus an intensity acquired by bold brush strokes. The manipulation and harmony of these components is what intrigues me. ”
Her work has been shown across the country and was exhibited at Piedmont Arts' Historic Little Post Office in 2015. She has won numerous awards in "Expressions," the annual open-entry exhibition presented by Lynwood Artists and Piedmont Arts, including Best in Show in 2015 and Best Lynwood Artist in 2025. She holds a BFA in commercial art with a minor in art history from Virginia Commonwealth University. She grew up in Martinsville, Virginia, and now lives in Lynchburg, Virginia.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery is curated by Lynwood Artists, an organization for practicing artists in the Martinsville-Henry County area. Its members share a desire to stimulate understanding and enjoyment of fine art and the artistic process, while providing area artists with opportunities to exhibit and further develop their talents.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
Bannan’s works are based on seeing the earth from above. The experience of her first transcontinental flight was a stunning visual experience that demonstrated in a graphic way the enormity and variety of the land mass our country is situated upon. It was at that moment her painting became inexorably tied to flying. She is fascinated by visual sensations resulting from the interplay between manmade elements and the natural land surface and how people carve out a living in the geography in which they exist.
Bannan is a professor in the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech. She holds a BA in studio art from Virginia Tech and an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the country.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
Robinson’s work is propelled by the unexpected lines she sees sewing the universe together. Sometimes close, sometimes loose, there are parallels and commonalities to be found. Bringing these threaded lines to light weaves a space where viewers can see themselves as part of a larger whole. She wants viewers to see that they have meaning, connection and agency over life’s outcomes.
Robinson is a professor at the School of Art and Design at East Carolina University. She is also the proprietor of Somnambulist Tango Press where she makes artists books, broadsides, fine art, installations, curates exhibitions. Her work has been exhibited around the country is part of the collections of the New York Public Library, University of Chicago, Brown University, UC-Santa Cruz, Emory University and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
Lauren Thornhill is a knitter from Collinsville, Virginia. Her piece "A Crow's Gift" won Best in Show in "Expressions 2024," the annual open-entry exhibition presented by Lynwood Artists and Piedmont Arts.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Sovah Health and What's Your Sign.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery features work by the Reynolds Homestead Weavers Exchange.
The group was founded in 1985 by Cecelia Cassady and Johanna Britt. Since that time, the group has grown from informal sessions where members worked on personal projects to organized meetings with programs and workshops led by weavers of regional and national reputation. The group meets bi-monthly at the Community Engagement Center at Reynolds Homestead in Critz, Virginia.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery is curated by Lynwood Artists, an organization for practicing artists in the Martinsville-Henry County area. Its members share a desire to stimulate understanding and enjoyment of fine art and the artistic process, while providing area artists with opportunities to exhibit and further develop their talents.
Admission Free
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