Best in Show—The Art League January 2026 Open Exhibit

I am thrilled to start the year with a Best-in-Show Award and a sale before the opening! 

Unbound (diptych) from my Spirits series was selected and chosen for the first-place Best-in-Show Award in the first open exhibit of the year at The Art League Gallery, juried by Xenia Gray. It was sold before the opening reception—a second pre-opening sale from this series in two months (see details on the previous event).

Visit Monday-Sunday, 10-6 pm during the exhibit: January 7 – 25, 2026

My own studio (#5) is a few steps from the Art League Gallery and is open to the public Friday-Sunday afternoons.

About the selected piece:

Unbound is the third piece from my new Spirits series, selected for The Art League Gallery’s open exhibits two months in a row (click here to read more). In Unbound, I experimented with the composition by splitting the painting into a diptych, thereby breaking its continuity to reflect the title—unbounding with the past and moving forward. The full narrative is left to the viewer’s interpretation, as I always invite the viewer to finish the story by delving into the ambiguity.

The “Spirits” series fuses figurative and landscape painting through a musical approach—a unique technique employing dense, filament-like lines (melody) and parallel striations (harmony), reminiscent of intaglio or etching. I hope to emphasize environmental awareness with this approach. The veiled figures, rendered in neutral tones, contrast with the warm landscape, symbolizing the ethereal emergence of nature’s guardians and stressing humanity’s inherent connection and responsibility to the Earth.

As a colorist artist trained by the founders and followers of the Washington Color School, my practice has evolved from abstract color field painting. I now employ a surreal approach, introducing elements of reality to explore the gap between the known (recognizable forms) and the unknown (abstract expression). This investigation centers on my “Spirits” series, in which innovative digital and mixed-media techniques fuse the human figure and landscape, emphasizing environmental connection.

Process:

I’ve used a hybrid, analog-digital-analog process in all these pieces, consisting of digitally merging and manipulating images of analog studies, printing on archival art watercolor paper mounted on a wood carded panel, and painting over with mixed media, including watercolor, pastel, ink, and acrylic, sealed with cold wax or spray varnish.