Regional Artists Spotlight Series – Round Four

The Regional Artist Spotlight Series celebrates the depth and diversity of creative talent found throughout Virginia and the surrounding region. This collection brings together artists working across a wide range of disciplines, each contributing a distinctive perspective shaped by years of practice, thoughtful observation, and a commitment to their craft.

Whether inspired by the natural landscape, the textures of everyday life, traditional techniques, or contemporary experimentation, these artists reveal the many paths creativity can take. Together, their work highlights the vibrant artistic community that continues to make our region an inspiring place to create, discover, and connect.

Arlington-based artist Alice Whealin works across oil, ink, watercolor, acrylic, drawing, and mixed media.

Inspired by sacred spaces in nature and the emotional life of human experience, she builds atmospheric works that explore feeling, memory, and the expressive possibilities of layered materials.

Her practice moves fluidly between observation and intuition, inviting viewers into moments of reflection and discovery.

For nearly two decades, Bob Carlson has painted Williamsburg and the surrounding region, building on an exhibition career that spans more than 50 years.

His work often explores the effects of light and shadow, especially as sunlight moves across water and other reflective or transparent surfaces.

Through familiar places and shared cultural experiences, Carlson creates paintings that connect careful observation with a strong sense of place.

Photographer Jake Falcone captures moments shaped by discipline, ritual, and exacting attention to detail.

His image of Virginia Military Institute cadets preparing their parade uniforms focuses on the precision of the tradition, from polished brass and shoes to the carefully folded officer’s sash.

By looking closely at preparation rather than spectacle, Falcone reveals the care and structure behind the final presentation.

Jane Connor brings a background in spatial design, museum and exhibition design, murals, teaching, and community arts into her mixed media practice.

Her recent collages transform greeting cards, bright colors, glitter, tea, and coffee into playful, richly textured compositions.

Alongside her studio work, Connor uses art as a tool for mindfulness, connection, and creative encouragement across generations.

Kelly Mazzrillo combines fine-detail painting with a lifelong fascination for geology and the natural world.

Working on agate slices and gesso boards, she uses acrylic and oil with a fine-liner brush to create highly detailed, photorealistic scenes.

Her work invites viewers to look closely at the extraordinary patterns found in stone, flowers, animals, and other natural forms.

Kimberly McKinnis works in sculpture and handblown glass, translating carved patterns and historical motifs into new forms.

By capturing surfaces once produced through labor-intensive traditional methods, she preserves traces of older craft while re-contextualizing them through contemporary materials and processes.

Her work considers how artists can give inherited designs renewed life as technologies and modes of production change.

Jewelry artist Lisa Markowitz brings natural texture, precious materials, and refined craftsmanship together in wearable form.

Her cuttlefish-cast brooch pairs recycled 14k gold with mirror-image grape agate and freshwater pearl accents.

The piece highlights the dialogue between organic pattern and careful design, turning distinctive materials into an intimate sculptural object.

Lori Leist creates vibrant landscape and floral paintings in acrylic and oil.

Bright color and modern impressionist brushwork give her compositions an energetic, uplifting quality.

Through expressive marks and a joyful response to the natural world, her paintings invite viewers to experience familiar subjects with renewed attention.

Marc Chabrier creates acrylic and mixed media paintings rooted in emotion, growth, and intentional living.

Using layered textures, fluid movement, and strong contrast, he balances structure with surrender and allows each piece to evolve through the process of making.

His work becomes a visual record of transformation, inviting viewers to reflect, feel, and embrace the unfinished nature of becoming.

Sandy Lupton creates paintings that respond to light, movement, and atmosphere.

Working in mixed media and oil, she brings a poetic sensibility to the canvas and explores moments when light becomes both subject and source of energy.

Her work invites viewers to consider what it means not only to follow the light, but also to embody it.

Williamsburg artist Monica Schauffler creates water-based oil paintings inspired by the natural beauty and people she encounters at home and while traveling.

Originally trained as a film editor, she brings a strong sense of framing, observation, and visual storytelling to her painting practice.

Her work transforms everyday encounters and changing landscapes into thoughtful records of place and experience.

Priscilla Stultz creates wearable art and fiber work from a deep love of fabric, color, and self-expression.

She dyes, prints, stamps, stitches, and collages her materials, continually transforming their surfaces and character.

Her pieces celebrate experimentation and the pleasure of sharing ideas, techniques, and joy through cloth.

Russ Turnage has worked as a full-time professional potter for 47 years and has participated in An Occasion for the Arts for more than four decades.

His functional and decorative porcelain pieces draw on the imagery and environment of the Chesapeake Bay.

Each work is hand-thrown, carved, appliquéd, and slip-trailed before being fired in a high-temperature reduction kiln he built himself.

Sherrie Payne works across photography, fiber art, and mixed media.

Her practice brings image, texture, and material exploration together, allowing subjects to be experienced through multiple visual and tactile approaches.

By moving between mediums, Payne creates work that reflects curiosity, experimentation, and an openness to unexpected connections.

Ted Lyman creates photo-based art drawn from six decades of film and digital imagery.

Working beyond the initial click, he uses post-processing to recover not only what his eyes saw, but also the emotional resonance of the moment.

His practice treats photography as an ongoing act of interpretation, memory, and renewed seeing.