Portfolio of Works

Artist Pat Macintyre founded the Reston Art Gallery on New Years Eve in 1986 and is a much respected and beloved supporter of the arts in northern Virginia and beyond.  Pat is a Washington DC native.  She graduated from the Corcoran College of Art and Design.  She is a long-time teacher at the Reston's Children Center and had a children's art show on television for many years.  Pat is an arts activist, serving on many boards in the metro area.  

Website:

www.rosemarieforsythe.com

See this Art in Embassies video about Rosemarie's inspirations and process:

 https://art.state.gov/portfolio/3q-rosemarie-forsythe/

Biography

Inspired by living and working around the world, Rosemarie Forsythe paints in a Renaissance-era style that celebrates nature and the power of ideas that have influenced the course of history or changed the way we think about the world. 

Reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts, Rosemarie's works in acrylic or flashe embed symbols, math/science equations, algorithms, ornaments, and/or intellectual puzzles in her modern art.  

Rosemarie creates paintings in a series on a variety of subjects, including, for example, the work of famous female scientists, seventeen equations that changed the world, botanicals that are the basis of modern medicines, and scenes of nature with a hint of mystery and magic.  The Empire Twilight series includes photos and text from her officially declassified diplomatic reporting cables from the end of the Soviet Union (1989-91) and other mementos of her life as a US diplomat and policymaker.  

Before she became a full-time artist almost a decade ago, Rosemarie lived in seven countries and visited over 60 countries in the course of her past careers as a U.S. diplomat, policymaker, and international business executive.  Self-taught in art, she found a way to combine her intellectual and prior work interests with her artistic sense to create a unique style of painting. 

From 2020-2024, the U.S. Department of State's Art in Embassies Program selected several of Rosemarie's works to be displayed in U.S. Embassies in Jordan, Bolivia, and Austria.  Her art was also chosen for the Brussels office of Rose Gottemoeller, the Deputy Secretary General of NATO.  Rosemarie’s works are in private collections in Qatar, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Togo, Australia, the UK, the US, and other countries.  Rosemarie's paintings have been in dozens of solo and group exhibitions.  Rosemarie is a member of the Advisory Board and Director's Circle of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

CINDY GRISDELA  

Cindy Grisdela is an artist, teacher, and author of Artful Improv and Adventures in Improv Quilts, both books about creating original quilts without patterns. She specializes in Improv design and using color fearlessly in quiltmaking, and she travels all over the country teaching and lecturing to guilds and groups, as well as teaching virtually.   Cindy creates abstract designs in fabric with a focus on color and line. Her work is designed improvisationally without a preconceived pattern, a little bit like jazz music, where each decision about color and shape influences the next. The color is the first step.  Putting colors together intuitively, Cindy uses fabric the way a painter might use paint to create graphic compositions that engage the viewer from a distance yet invite a closer look. The texture is the second step. The stitching lines provide contrast and dimension to the piece, integrating the elements into a cohesive whole.   Her work has won awards in both quilt venues and art venues and can be found in private collections all over the country.  She has a BFA in Art History from the College and William and Mary and an MBA in Finance from George Washington University.   Cindy lives and works in Reston, VA. Visit her website at https://cindygrisdela.com or follow her on Instagram @cindygrisdelaquilts to learn more.  

Website:

www.m2artist.com

See the Washington Post Review of Marthe's work:

Artist's Statement

I am an artist based in Reston Virginia and have been painting daily for over a decade. After a long, successful career designing area rugs for select residential and commercial clients, the transition to fulltime painting came naturally. 

I keep both my life and my art playful and free. I fearlessly create mostly abstract art with a modern flair.

 Global travel experiences influence my bold and richly colored canvasses. My process utilizes many media types such as acrylics, oils, collage and numerous mark making tools.

I am a juried member of TFAA (Torpedo Factory Artists Association), and many other local and national art groups.

My studio is in a gallery established in 1964. I enjoy welcoming visitors from around the world.  The opportunity to meet and get to know collectors of my work is wonderful.

 

 

Layers of Living Memory: A Review of Julia Malakoff’s “The Poetry of Everyday Things”

 

By Annie Przypyszny

[email protected]

Annieprzypyszny.com

 

Julia Malakoff’s latest solo show, “The Poetry of Everyday Things” takes the broad and layered memories of a life, and revives them into new, dynamic manifestations. In Malakoff’s show, the clutter of meaningful living is captured in “curated corners” of mixed-media collage, where whimsy, warmth, and color are welcome with open arms. Delight and wonder abound in works of art that don’t shy away from play; Malakoff doesn’t simply present us with her past, but revitalizes it, contextualizes it, and imbues it with her distinctly jubilant flair. The show is dedicated to Malakoff’s late parents and her upbringing in Iowa City, giving the objects portrayed a tender gravity as well as an aesthetic appreciation: “all of my work is a celebration of living a life filled with joy,” Malakoff states.

 

What stands out in Malakoff’s work is its unapologetic vibrance. Her playful use of bright colors and palpable textures recalls post-impressionist artists such as Matisse, whose work Malakoff sees as “an expression of a love for life.” Like Matisse, Malakoff “aspires to use colors to tell stories,” to shape the “vignettes” she portrays in her pieces. This audacious use of bold hues and the way Malakoff contrasts them keeps her compositions from being reduced to mere ‘still life.’ While her art contains intentionally arranged scenes akin to that of the still life tradition, Malakoff’s eclectic stylistic choices “convey a sense warmth in the work,” allowing her to portray the objects “as if they have a life-like energy.”

 

In addition to Matisse, Malakoff finds profound inspiration from another artist: her mother. In “The Poetry of Everyday Things,” She recalls how, as a photographer, her mother would “layer her negatives in our home-based darkroom,” which Malakoff recognizes as “a catalyst to help me think about working in paper layers at an early age.” In “Reflections,” Malakoff’s photos of Iowa scenery are featured amid a background of striped patterns that allude to the photos themselves, combining both the crisp memories that snapshots capture with the blurriness of the recollection in between. Her series of four “Home Grown” pieces also incorporate photography, as well as some miniature prints of Malakoff’s other work and a sample of handwriting from her great grandmother and namesake, Julia Tabas. The scrapbook-like elements of the series transform ephemera into a display of metamemory.

 

Malakoff also pays tribute to her mother’s work in pottery, with many of her artworks featuring vases and vessels. Malakoff recalls how her mother “played with glazes, and created her own textures and patterns, often drawing florals into the glazes” --- a process Malakoff replicates in the cardboard vases featured in many of her show’s works, including her “Paper Flowers” triptych. The textures carved into the painted cardboard give extra dimension to the scene; Malakoff described her process of adding etchings as often being instinctual, giving them a quality of organic exuberance.

 

The appreciation for artisan vases is complimented in Malakoff’s work by the incorporation of plants and flowers, “another nod to [her] life in Iowa City,” where her family “had a giant vegetable garden, inspired by the fields of corn, soybeans, and Midwest produce.” Both of Malakoff’s parents had “green thumbs,” and as she grew up, the rooms of their home were filled with various flora. Like a real-life garden, the foliage in Malakoff’s painting is layered, sometimes even palimpsestic: in “Garden Musings” you can see the imprint of larger sunflowers underneath the final image. Candid elements such as this capture what it means to continually reinterpret memory, the way our past changes shape each time we look at it anew.

 

The significance of objects and mementos in Malakoff’s work goes beyond mere appreciation and nostalgia, however. “My hope is that the more I put [objects] into my work, the less attached I will feel when the time comes where the objects and me will need to part ways.” Malakoff recognizes that the things of our lives are transient. Still, her work immortalizes these objects and their memories, in a manner not dissimilar to the Elizabethan tradition of immortalizing the mortal beloved through a poem. Malakoff’s work contains optimism and vivacity, but also mindfulness. The objects she represents are beautiful, but her work shows that it’s the people and places they call to mind that give them their value. What Malakoff desires most of all is for her work and what it represents to have a lifting impact on others. “I make a concerted effort to put my energy into making our world a better place by creating art that can connect people in a positive way,” she says. Although based around memory, “The Poetry of Everyday Things” isn’t trapped in the past. Instead, Malakoff uses the treasured moments of her life to envision a bright and worthwhile future.

 

Website:

www.juliamalakoff.com

 

 

Our adjunct artists are Doug Fuller and Geoff Lipsey

DOUG FULLER

Doug Fuller works with found objects and creates sculptures, collages and paintings, including a wonderful series featuring baseballs.    Arts Herndon called him "A master of recycled art."  Follow Doug on Instagram @rustdoug. His art was described in the Washington Post as "burly, masculine and untamed."