The story below is a preview 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.
Ashley Wilson Fellers
“Al’s work has a wonderful sense of narrative that invokes nostalgia,” says Allen TenBusschen, who teaches painting and drawing at the University of Lynchburg. TenBusschen selected Al Winfield’s “Grand Old Day,” shown here with the artist, for Best in Show at a national juried exhibition at Bedford’s Bower Center for the Arts.
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
Ashley Wilson Fellers
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
Ashley Wilson Fellers
Hollins graduate Ashley King has spent the last two years experimenting with applying harsh chemical baths to family photographs, then encasing the results in encaustic wax. “Taking personal experiences and putting them in your artwork is hard, because you set these expectations for it,” King admits. “You have to remove yourself a little bit.”
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.
Ashley Wilson Fellers
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.”
Want to also read about local fiber artist Lena Loshonkohl and artist-influencer Abby K. Brown? Check out the latest issue, now on newsstands, or see it for free in our digital guide linked below!
The story above is a preview from our September/October 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!