Four New Artists to Watch

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The story below is from our September/October 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you! 

Meet four emerging Roanoke artists whose unique visions and compelling stories are capturing the community’s imagination and reshaping the local art scene.

In recent years, the Roanoke region has developed a reputation for its commitment to the arts. Sculptures spring up like mushrooms and murals bloom across bridges. But perhaps what’s most exciting is the space made for emerging artists to find their place. That’s why we asked gallery owners, established artists, instructors and museum directors to point us toward a few visual artists who are finding their momentum. To put it simply: here are four creatives worth watching.

Al Winfield

The Visual Storyteller

Walk up to one of Al Winfield’s large-scale oil paintings, and you might find yourself transported to a moment in time ... or perhaps more accurately, dozens of moments, past and present, all collapsed onto a single canvas. And that’s precisely the point.

“I was at home one day, looking through old photographs and thinking about relatives I’d never met before, and I started to craft different scenarios where we could all be together again, even if some of them weren’t still alive,” explains the young painter from Danville. 

The result became a kind of painterly obsession for Winfield: a chance to explore his history and honor those who’d paved the way for his work, fitting family and friends from various generations into colorful, crowded compositions.

“I feel like my work is, in a way, always reflective of the past and present – they’re inextricably linked,” he explains. “Sometimes I think certain people refuse to acknowledge that the past influences the present, but it definitely does... and that’s something I’ll always be interested in exploring.”

Winfield graduated from VCU with an arts degree in 2019 – just in time to find himself isolated during COVID-era lockdowns. He used that time to find his voice, his “groove,” he says, and now that voice is attracting attention. Winfield made his local debut in February during a show at Art on 1st, and since then he’s appeared in exhibitions throughout the state, with a Best in Show award at a national juried exhibition hosted by Bedford’s Bower Center for the Arts.

“Al has a wonderful ability to capture very personal moments that resonate with us on a larger scale,” explains Allen TenBusschen, the juror who selected Winfield’s “Grand Old Day” for the award. “By focusing on his experience, he has tapped into the human experience.”

Ashley King

The Experimental Photographer

When Ashley King graduated from Hollins University’s art program in 2022, she went straight back to work in her home studio. The photographer and painter expected to enter a season of experimentation, of exploring the technical aspects of the double-exposure and long-exposure portrait photography she’d come to love. 

She never could have anticipated what happened next.

“My sister called and said, ‘there’s something wrong with Mom,’” King remembers. And as King waited in the hospital, she watched while an infection paralyzed her mother from the waist down. It was a trauma that would, ultimately, have a profound effect on King’s creative life.

Months later, King says she found herself sorting through thousands of old family snapshots. “I’m looking back through the eyes of my childhood, this little girl seeing her mom in a superhero role, thinking nothing can hurt her, nothing can stop her ... And that’s been replaced by this mother who’s going through a hard thing. And what does that mean?” she asked.

Suddenly, she felt drawn to process that question – and, literally, the photographs that sparked it – using her art.

Methodically, King began putting the old photographs through the mordançage process. The technique irrevocably alters a photograph – often in unpredictable ways – by exposing it to a harsh chemical bath. The chemicals lift fragile, ghostly films, called “veils,” from the paper, which can then be applied to another surface. “You get these really beautiful, painterly marks,” King says. 

Next, she began experimenting with applying those veils onto panels and encasing them in layers of encaustic – a beeswax-based medium fused under high heat. The soft, dreamy results, which King calls “tiny reliquaries,” sometimes hint at the images that once were. At other times, they’re rendered completely unrecognizable. 

And all that feels symbolically resonant for King.

“When I begin the pieces, it’s very emotional,” she admits. “I’m taking [the image] through this very toxic process, [and] it’s almost going through these stages of life.... But it’s kind of a release when you get to the end.”

And now, she feels ready to begin sharing the results. “I want to let those emotional ties go and let the work be free in the world,” she says. “I’ve hidden in my studio long enough.”

Lena Loshonkohl

The Community-Based Fiber Artist

Most artists fall along a continuum. On the one hand, there’s the intensely private creator who labors quietly and thoughtfully in her studio. On the other, there’s the public artist, leveraging creativity to build community and drive change. And in the last few years, fiber artist Lena Loshonkohl has emerged as the latter.

“I can’t find purpose for my work outside of community,” admits Loshonkohl, who stitches mixed-media compositions on embroidery hoops.

Loshonkohl – a hairstylist by day – moved to Roanoke six years ago and immediately began finding a home for her art. She created a self-portrait for the city’s Year of the Artist initiative in 2022, and in 2023 she launched her first solo show, which was themed around her experience as a single parent, at Art on 1st. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a single parent or a coupled parent; it can be very isolating,” she says. “My hope was that parents who felt alone would come and feel seen.”

Now she’s moving deeper, leading a six-week embroidery class to help create community for survivors of domestic violence. The project received funding from an Artist Action Grant from the Roanoke Arts Commission, and it’s deeply personal to Loshonkohl.

“I left a difficult situation of my own some time ago,” she explains. “I was so aware of how alone I was going through it, and it was really unacceptable to me that anyone would feel so alone ... Making the work was the only thing that kept me going.”

Loshonkohl points to research that shows bilateral movements – such as the kinds used in embroidery – can be soothing for trauma survivors. Meanwhile, she hopes the class helps her students make connections ... and access resources from Total Action for Progress, if they choose.

“They get two hours of peace,” Loshonkohl explains. “They don’t have to fix the thing if they don’t want to. But if they want a resource, if they want a conversation, TAP is there.”

The classes will culminate in an October art show in the city’s municipal building, where survivors can share their work.

“When someone sees it, I just hope they feel less alone,” Loshonokohl says.

Abby K. Brown

The Artist-Influencer

This time last year, life as a full-time painter felt like a distant dream to Abby K. Brown. The Roanoke mom and knitting-pattern creator had spent eight years developing a business in fiber arts, but she secretly yearned to spend her days brushing oil paint on canvas: “The depth is just yummy,” she says. “It’s like painting with butter and frosting.” So she quietly indulged her painterly urges in a tiny studio in her basement, and for months, she told almost no one.

In February, though, Brown finally vowed to share her passion: “I just decided, okay, it’s time. If I don’t do it now, I may not ever.” So she started from scratch, she says, launching fresh social media profiles, a website and an Etsy storefront. And within four months, she’d managed to attract tens of thousands of Instagram followers ... and she was actively selling art.

Brown represents a new breed of emerging artist: the online-savvy upstart who connects with buyers not through a traditional gallery, but through online platforms. It’s a format that Brown finds exhilarating. She credits her success to an authentic approach – working fast, regularly posting her progress and openly sharing her mistakes. “It’s very freeing to me to just start new every day,” she says.

Then, too, there’s the work itself. It’s hard not to smile when you view an Abby K. Brown original, with its gelato-shaded palette and loose brushwork. There are winged children, animals wearing crowns and birds flitting across candy-colored skies. And that work strikes a chord.

“I think it’s because we all have this inner child that needs to be nourished,” Brown explains. “The world is so heavy ... but people are so good. And I just want my work to be joy-inducing.”

The story above is from our September/October 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!