Artist Biographies:

Cathy Abramson: paintings spotlight ordinary people and quotidian moments that can be easily overlooked. But they also capture what lies just beneath the surface of a scene. This imbues her work with an element of mystery and invites viewers to construct their own narratives around each scene based on their own lived experiences, allowing them to make a personal connection with the paintings. Abramson works with photos she has taken of scenes and people that intrigue her, and often combines elements from several different photos. This, combined with her expert draftsmanship and technique, charges her work with both accuracy and vitality.

Ken Bachman: although his time for painting was limited during his 40- year law career, he has been concentrating fully on his art for the last nine years. He has completed the three-year Master Artist Program at the Compass Atelier, and lives and works in Bethesda, Maryland. He has had solo exhibitions at the Delaplaine Arts Center, the Arts Club of Washington, the Hill Center Galleries, the Woman's National Democratic Club, the Signal Financial Gallery, and the Glen Echo Park View Gallery. 

Christopher Best: has a deep love and appreciation for the outdoors. Growing up sailing on the Chesapeake Bay he spent the majority of his free time on the water and gained a deep affinity for the shoreline. He would later develop this into a vocation through his landscape and marine paintings. His works have been displayed regionally and nationally in Annapolis, Baltimore, and Eastern Shore MD. He lives in Crownsville, MD.

Jacqueline Chanda: is drawn to representational genre scenes, intimate scenes of everyday life, of ordinary people at work or play. I love to capture people in the moment, in candid unscripted poses with unguarded expressions. As a representational oil painter, I use suggestive, painterly, loose brushstrokes. The intent is to create a natural, dynamic, or authentic environment that draws in the viewer.

Jane Coonce: works primarily in oil and pastel and in terra cotta. Her works are held by private collectors, and her corporate collectors include the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, the International Country Club of Fairfax, Virginia, Georgetown University, the Rickover Naval Academy and the Judicial Chambers of Arlington County, VA. She has won numerous awards for both her paintings and her sculptures, including first prize at the International Miniature Society of Washington,D.C. in 2000 and first prize in the plein air competiton of Kensington in 2005.

Ed Cooper: began drawing and painting at an early age—and it became his lifetime passion. As a youth, he lived on a farm, worked in the fields, hiked in the woods, wandered the hills, and developed a great love for nature and landscape. During this time, he collected and studied illustrations in outdoor and sporting magazines. He was also greatly influenced by plein air painters of Cape Anne such as Emile Gruppe, by Pennsylvania impressionists like Edward Redfield, and by the artistry of John Carlson.
After high school, he attended the Rochester Institute of Technology and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Illustration. He worked for many years as a graphic artist and illustrator before devoting himself full time to landscape painting. During his career, he used a progression of media, from oil to watercolor to pastel to acrylics, but finally settled again on his first love, oil paint.
He won first prize in the landscape category in a national contest sponsored by American Artist Magazine and won the Landscape Art Award at the highly competitive Arts for the Parks competition. Ed is a member of the Mid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters and has also been an award winner in a number of plein air painting competitions, including Paint Annapolis and Plein Air Easton.

Stephen Day: is a self-taught painter who started painting waterscapes and bird portraits at age eighteen. Both of his parents painted, which had a strong impact on him, as there were always watercolor paints, oils, and the whiff of turpentine in the house. He has had paintings in numerous shows, including at Strathmore. He has had four one-man and one two-person exhibitions in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. To date, he has sold over seventy-five paintings. Stylistically, it is difficult to pigeonhole Day.

Carlton Fletcher: received his degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA, 1972), and American University (MFA, 1982) where he studied under Robert D’Arista, and was one of the founding members of the Washington Studio School (1985). His work was featured in the 2018 Katzen Center exhibition on Robert D’Arista, his professor during his time at American University. Carlton's paintings are in the permanent collections of American University, Georgetown University, Stanford University, and the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities.

Susan La Mont : primary interest is in communicating the complexity and detail of life in the twenty-first century. Realism offers her a way to express the commonality of human experience to the widest range of viewers, as well as allowing her to follow in the tradition of genre painting. This narrative realism is grounded in contemporary life, with references to technology, our diverse culture, and the influence of the fashion world. Susan has exhibited in regional and national shows in fourteen states and has received awards from the Torpedo Factory’s Art League, Professional Artist Magazine, the Maryland Federation of Art, The Vienna Arts Society, Gallery Underground, and the League of Reston Artists.

Barry Lindley: is particularly known for the strength and vigor of his paintings - landscape, waterscape, and cityscape - and the agility and fluidity of his sketching on location. His paintings, with subjects throughout the DC area and around the world, are in the style of interpretative, or expressive realism. He has paintings in over 400 private collections and many corporate or public collections in 34 states and 7 foreign countries and has won numerous awards. His recent major juried solo exhibitions include The Art League Gallery in the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA, along with annual Open Studio exhibitions, and at the NIH Clinical Center and Cantrell Gallery in Little Rock.

Rodgers Naylor: is a native Washingtonian, was born near Georgetown and spent his childhood on a farm near the Patuxent River in Maryland. He pursued painting and drawing at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, The Atelier in Minneapolis, and the Art Students’ League of Denver after attending the University of Chicago and Carleton College for academics. Adhering to a realistic yet painterly style, Naylor paints in an “alla prima” manner, which allows great flexibility in mixing colors and attaining soft edges, fostering a fresh, spontaneous approach to painting. 

Judith Peck: is a Great Falls, VA allegorical figurative artist who has made her life's work to paint about history and healing, using a variety of methods and experimental techniques to achieve a diverse range of visual and tactile results that validate a strong narrative. She has been awarded by the Masur Museum of Art, the Alexandria Museum of Art, The Washington County Museum of Fine Art, the Lore Degenstein Gallery Competition at Susquehanna University, The Butler Institute of American Art, and Florida A&M University's Pinnacle Competition, shown in the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.

Linda Press: grew up in New York City where she attended the prestigious High School of Music and Art. She is a graduate of Cornell University and holds a Master of Fine Arts in painting from Columbia University. Linda paints vibrant and dynamic scenes in Europe, the United States and around the world. Directly observing from nature, she searches for abstract and expressive elements and paints with energy and gestural flair. They are about the spirit that permeates life, transporting the viewer to the specific place painted; to an ambiance where the senses are heightened; to that unique sensation one has where time has a special intensity. Light and shadow set up a counterpoint to the tangible structures in nature and man-made architecture.

Jean Schwartz: is an oil painter who is equally at home working on plein air or in her home studio. Her subjects are varied and include landscape, marine, and cityscapes. Jean paintings are in private and corporate collections both in the U.S and France. She is a juried member of the Washington Society of Landscape Painters, The Salmagundi Club NYC, The American Artists Professional League, Oil Painters of America, and the National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society.

Michael Steiner: is an architect and watercolorist living and working in the Washington, DC area since 1975. He is currently working on a series of paintings of bridges and other infrastructure elements in the built environment. He is married to Randy A. Steiner, FAIA and has three adult children.

Anne Stine: is an award-winning artist best known for her encaustic mixed media paintings that reflect and intimate, human connection with the natural world. She adds a contemporary twist to landscape painting by combining oils with encaustic beeswax medium, then fuses each layer using heat onto a wood panel. Her art is recognizable through her use of vivid color, dramatic texture, and luminosity. Her work can be found in international art competitions and solo and group exhibitions throughout the country, as well as private and public collections around the world.

Maud Taber-Thomas: was trained in classical techniques at the New York Academy of Art, Maud teaches at the National Gallery of Art. Highlights from her career include a Terra Foundation residency in Giverny, France; an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council, and in 2019, her painting Elizabeth Bennett was shortlisted for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Steven Walker: was born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and raised in Richmond, Virginia, Steven  discovered his love for art at a very early age and,  with little interest in anything  else, earned his BFA at Virginia  Commonwealth University. He would later earn his MFA from  Marywood University, where he also met his wife and fellow artist, Evelyn.  Since going full time as an artist in 2008, Steven has been included in several local and national juried competitions. Steven also had the privilege of being a part of a statewide traveling exhibition with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Steven currently resides in Hahira, Georgia, where he continues to work  hard on the advancement of his career with the assistance of his wife and daughter. 

Paul Zapatka: a native Washingtonian received his art education at American University in Washington, DC and at the College of New Rochelle in New York. He has had 14 solo art shows and been in numerous group shows including recently, "Spotlight:77 Artists," a virtual show(due to the pandemic) at the Touchstone Gallery where he showed "Red, White, and Blue," an acrylic still life in downtown Washington, DC from December, 2020 to February, 2021. He has won several awards including "Best In Show" at The Art League Gallery's "Habits" show in Alexandria, VA in January, 2017 for "Studio Still Life (after Diebenkorn)" and "Cherry Blossoms" another still life in 2013 at the same gallery. He paints both in his studio and from outdoors.