Photo by Kami Thacker Photography
If born and bred in Bedford, Virginia, one cannot help but be inspired by this picturesque backdrop. Rolling mountains and hay fields create a verdant, lush landscape where intense, glowy, orange sunsets that float over the horizon for miles are part of everyday life. By sheer immersion, this becomes the context of your ideal of beauty as it has for artist Carson Overstreet.
With innate tendencies, the landscape of the South has become the centerpiece of Carson’s art. Carson expresses herself through experience and a sense of place. Whether it be her beloved Blue Ridge Mountains, weeping willows and dogwoods blooming in springtime, the serpentine twists and turns of the James River, the marshes of the Carolinas or the tranquility of Virginia's Eastern shore, she is there. Her creative calling and craft provide the tools for her ability, but her experience and deeply rooted sense of place beget her subjects.
When you see Carson’s work, you feel her experience; her love and respect for place. Her paintings place you in a moment in time when you feel a porch filled with friends, salty marsh air, a cool mountain breeze, a cascading mountain creek or a peaceful thought, all of which placate the mind.
Carson is married to a Brit, and they make their home in Richmond, Virginia. Together, they have a trans-Atlantic family of six.
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Chelsea Hart is a contemporary painter and muralist based in Denver, CO. In her work, Hart explores vibrant, layered florals through bold colors and a child-like sense of playfulness. Hart received her BA in Visual Studies at Western Kentucky University in 2013. While pursuing her undergraduate degree, Hart studied abroad at Florence University of the Arts where she studied classical painting and ceramics techniques.
Hart has exhibited in numerous galleries including Grand Bohemian in Charleston, SC, AuSable Artisan Village in Grayling, MI and R Gallery in Boulder, CO. Additionally, Hart’s work has been featured in publications such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Daily News, Yahoo! News, The Daily Independent, Colorado Homes, Lifestyle Magazine, Denver Life Magazine, The Denver Post, The Arvada Press, and 303 Magazine.
Christen’s paintings explore a relationship with the landscape as well as its flora and fauna. Focusing on the Blue Ridge Mountain area of central Virginia, she uses loose and suggestive strokes that imply an immediacy of experience within which she wants the viewer to linger. Painting is a process of paying attention, of looking at the layers of meaning as we ascribe to our placed-ness and hopefully evoking moments of re-humanizing connections.
She lives and paints by the mountains just outside Charlottesville, Virginia with her husband, four kids and flock of hens.
She pushes this idea further by deconstructing her view into simpler elements and destroying the obvious while simultaneously including authentic moments to convey more elaborate ideas. She is intrigued with contrasting interactions; simple vs. complex, classic vs. modern, clarity vs. ambiguity, order vs. chaos, depth vs. shallowness, negative space vs. positive space, etc. She uses texture and line to define form by sculpting oil paint with her palette knife and pencil while scratching away paint with various tools, aka, Sgraffito. All of these elements combined with her creativity and skill bring to life a painting that displays imperfect beauty in a very unique style. She finds the most freedom of expression through various subject matter but is most known for her floral still lifes, waterlilies, botanicals, and abstracts. However, not to place limits on herself, she at times enjoys experimentation with other subjects while working with several mediums and tools at times...because...
“An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success.” Henri Matisse
Learn More About Younger here.
I am Elayna. A detail oriented introspective artist. I am a native Texan and a homebody. Keywords for I have never lived outside of Texas. Painting is my game and watercolor with a splash of gouache is my medium. I like thick expensive paper and can probably guess the weight of anything you mail me.
Elizabeth Bloom is a fine artist and designer based in Virginia with a background in branding, marketing and e-commerce.
She grew up in the south before moving to the Shenandoah Valley to attend James Madison University. She graduated with a BFA in Graphic Design, and promptly spent the following 10 years building a career as a Brand and UX Designer; designing for product-based businesses such as Tuckernuck, Olive Lane, Vineyard Vines, and Tervis Tumbler. In 2023 Elizabeth decided to move to her studio practice full time; creating brand identity, hand-painted invitations, and fine art through imagination, creativity and joy to enrich others lives through illustration and creative collaboration.
When Elizabeth is not designing or painting you can find her out in her garden, reading, hiking in the Shenandoah, or listening to live music.
Elizabeth Sage McLaurin is painter who graduated from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth,TX with her Bachelors in Fine Arts degree. With one foot in the city, and the other in the Texas country, moments of feeling lost in the wide open Texas skies left her longing to bring that feeling back home in the city. Her artwork explores her connection to the places she’s been, and how they become where she wants to be. She is driven by the desire to bringwide open spaces onto the boundaries of the canvas and finds inspiration from play of lighton the land, changing weather, and the variety of nature. By painting these special places, her artwork allows her to create that feeling of home no matter where she is. Elizabeth’s work has been included in exhibitions in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, as well as notable small towns throughout Texas.
I'm a New Yorker at heart (despite growing up in Maryland and now living in Los Angeles for years). That level of creative energy is tough to find anywhere else... and I love sarcasm. But L.A. is a sacred place when you’re obsessed with color. And living here has helped me to let go and be more myself in the art studio. It’s a safe city for experimentation.
Artist Statement
I started making my current work because I wanted to create immersive color. I wanted to take the hues I love and blow them up to see as much uninterrupted color in one place as I could. To frame and enhance them in a way that wouldn’t complicate the view with more paint, I added embroidery. I loved that I was connecting back to myself as a crafter, getting to use my hands and work directly with materials.
The thread was meant to be there only in service of the paint color, but has expanded into something integral to these paintings. When I’m in the process of making, it’s purely about color and pattern. But when I look at the finished work from the outside I see a special exchange happening that speaks to everything I love about art. These pieces are both painting on canvas and embroidery on fabric. Fine art and craft. As an artist you’re usually asked to pick a side.
The idea that art is for everyone has always been important to me. Choosing to work with unprimed, unstretched canvas is about making the art process more transparent and approachable. Artist’s canvas isn’t something beyond the everyday experience. It’s fabric. It frays, it wrinkles.
Emma is a self-taught artist who is heavily influenced by both physical and societal landscapes. She was born and raised in Lynchburg, Va, and later attended the University of Virginia where she majored in Media Studies. After college, her love for the arts and background in media studies inspired her to begin creating her own pieces. Her work serves as a comment on the way she sees the world around her. Emma is constantly inspired and surrounded by color, texture, and design. She currently lives in Richmond, Va.
Her latest collection focuses on the movement and fluidity of water within our current culture. Abstract bodies capture the underlying currents and movements impacting our environment. She sees water as the most beautiful natural element - one that is constantly taken advantage of in a mass-consumerism society. Loose marks represent the delicate nature of this intrinsically gracious element amongst our chaotic culture