Elizabeth Gilfilen paints airy and delightfully rough abstract oil paintings. She embraces a sense of frenzy in her strokes, amplified by loose waves of pigment colliding with tighter line markings. From the lines emerge abstractions of figures, trees, and unknown forms. Her compositions are at once volatile, sophisticated, and atmospheric. Gilfilen earned her BFA from College of D.A.A.P. at University of Cincinnati, and MFA from VCUarts (1997, 2001). She has mounted solo exhibitions across the east coast as well as an international show in Brisbane, Australia (2018). She currently resides and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Born in 1957 in Lima, Peru, Javier Tapia grew up in a tumultuous period as guerrilla warfare dominated political and social movements throughout the country. He moved to the United States in the 1980s, having witnessed the many binaries of humanity: good and evil, intellectual and primal, connection and detachment. His work explores how these opposites manifest in life; abstract shapes and broad strokes become metaphors for chaos and control, or structure and disorder. Much like traditional Peruvian weaving, Tapia overlaps, subtracts, and reworks layers of watercolor, creating dynamic compositions which emanate physicality.

Tapia earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin (1984, 1987). He has exhibited at the Embassy of Peru Art Gallery, Washington, DC; Museo de Osma, Barranco, Peru; Bloom Gallery, Milan, Italy; Hunt Gallery at Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, VA; 1708 Gallery, and the Anderson Gallery, both, Richmond, VA. He currently lives in Richmond, VA and works in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Painting and Printmaking, where he has taught since 1988.

Carlton Newton’s interest in science, nature and technology weaves itself into his Sumi ink drawings on paper which render imagined subjects both organic and manufactured. His precise black forms appear specimen-like; self-contained clumps of undulating lines and intertwined structures contrast a pristine white background as though laid out for careful study and inspection.

Born in 1946, Newton currently lives and works in Richmond. After teaching at the College of William and Mary and Princeton University, Newton joined VCUarts Department of Sculpture and Extended Media from 1987 to 2017. He received both his BFA and MFA degrees in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. His work has been exhibited at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond; Danese/Corey Gallery and the New Museum in New York; the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C; the Peruvian North American Cultural Institute, Lima, Peru; and the Keith Talent Gallery, London, England, among others. Newton’s work is included in the collections of several major corporations including Markel, Altria, and Dominion.