March brings the first hint of spring and the RAL Art Center windows will comply with a splash of color and a glimpse of the perennial white heron. Our artists, Sarah Haddox and Kathleen Noffsinger, will bring you into a ‘Spring State of Mind!’
Sarah Haddox is a unique exhibitor at the RAL gallery in that she also maintains a creative presence on the internet. She has an innovative site where she not only markets her art, but where you can also order art created just for you. Sarah works in watercolor and oil paints and enjoys capturing the beauty of the East Coast of Virginia. Every February for the last seven years, Sarah has embarked in making a painting each day in the effort to fight the winter blues and to fuel her creative dreams. You can see the fruit of her “28 days of delight” exhibited in the Gallery Windows, an explosion of yellow daffodils spilling off the canvas, painted in a delightfully impressionistic way – a delightful sight on a dreary winter day! Sarah is a Virginia native and graduate of University of Virginia. She embraces technology with her art, writing a newsletter and podcast and has also become a regular exhibitor in the RAL Art Center Gallery.
Kathleen Noffsinger is a longtime member of the RAL Art Center who has instructed many workshops there over the years. She is an artist who loves to teach and a teacher who loves to paint! Drawing and painting since childhood, she holds a BS in Education from the University of Maryland and has been teaching adult watercolor and drawing workshops since 1998. Having spent many enjoyable hours on the Chesapeake Bay, Kathleen chooses the water as one of her favorite subjects. Using her own photos as reference material she paints creative images of nature, from the wading heron to the tranquil beauty of her butterfly garden, creating images of nature that elicit an appreciation for the simpler things in life. Her painting, Marsh Walker, Heron, is painted with many layers of oil paint mixed with cold wax medium: Bees wax mixed with an odorless solvent. This gives the painting a fabulous texture with the many layers. Eye-catching colors reflect Kathleen’s love of these birds, saying, “They are always a joy to watch and a bit of a surprise when they lift off with unexpected grace!”. We think the viewer will agree.