We're pleased to announce the addition of ten additional artists whose work will hang in the newly remodeled North Gallery at Pittsford Fine Art. Original work now by 23 local artists is how we're celebrating 2023!
Ronda Allen
Ronda Lyon Allen began studying art after graduating from the University of Buffalo with BA degrees in English and Communication Arts. Her post graduate art tutor was sculptor, John Giannotti, who is now a Professor Emeritus from Rutgers University. She continued formal training with graduate courses from Arizona State University.
Her focus turned to traditional and contemporary portrait work in charcoal, ink and acrylic 25 years ago after an award winning career in public broadcasting, and as Communications Manager for the Wisconsin Division of Tourism.
She has exhibited in the Memphis Art Gallery, and has participated in Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery’s Clothesline Art Festival, Corning Glass Art Festival, Waterfront Festival in Canandaigua, and at an invitational show at Rochester’s Artisan Works.
Ronda has shared her traditional and unique contemporary portraiture art through the Artist in Residence program, (originally a grant opportunity from Young Audiences of Rochester), and now is part of the art program at Fairport High School. She has been working through AIR with gifted high school juniors and seniors for over 17 years, offering traditional portraiture in pastel and charcoal and contemporary portrait design in acrylic.
Ronda Lyon Allen is new to the gallery, bringing her colorful contemporary work. She believes that to create is to survive the rigors of contention.
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Victoria Brzustowicz
Victoria Brzustowicz knew from an early age that art was her calling. She has a BA in studio art from Wells College, where she studied with painter William Roberts. She also studied painting and printmaking at Rochester Institute of Technology. She has attended workshops with many nationally-recognized painters, including Lori Putnam, Aline Ordman, and Ken DeWaard. Brzustowicz is a signature member of the Rochester Art Club, and the co-founder and current chair of Greater Rochester Plein Air Painters. She teaches at The Art Stop and Flower City Art Center. She has also taught plein air workshops for Cummings Nature Center (Rochester Museum & Science Center) and Main Street Arts, Clifton Springs, NY.
Brzustowicz focused on abstract painting for most of her career, but in 2015 she was introduced to the techniques of painting alla prima, and since then she has focused on painting outside the studio. Her work explores the line between abstraction and representation, with an emphasis on surface and mark-making.
“Painting is a combination of observation and exploration for me, not literal reporting. Whether outdoors or in the studio, each painting follows its own trajectory, and I discover what that is as the painting develops,” says Brzustowicz. “I want the viewer to feel the life and energy that attracted me to a subject matter in the first place.”
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Connie Ehindero
Connie Ehindero is an abstract landscape painter. Her art reflects immersion in the natural world, translating its lines and forms, seen and unseen, past and present, into paintings. Ehindero’s paintings move between natural space and the flat surface of abstraction, moving the viewer from the literal landscape into a primal connection to the natural world. She works in both encaustic and acrylics.
She often paints at her cottage on the shores of Lake Ontario. She says, “All that I have painted started from my connections to this place, the lake, its barrier dunes, old growth woods and marshes.”
Ehindero is a member of Genesee Valley Plein Air Painters (GVPAP) and Working With Wax Group. She shows throughout the region, and has won numerous awards, including a Merit Award at the MAG Clothesline Show, and Judges Awards at the annual GVPAP Annual Show. She was a recipient of an National Endowment for the Arts grant. She is a member of the International Encaustic Association and an encaustic teacher at the Mill Art Center, Honeoye Falls, NY. Her new video “Wax and Words” can be viewed through Painting with Fire, from Essence of Mulranny in Ireland. She received her BFA from St Lawrence University and London College of Printing, London, England.
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Mary Freida
Mary has been involved in the arts for over 40 years. She started as a fiber artist in 1989 creating artistic basketries, rustic furniture and participating in many art festivals as well as taught classes. Mary then became an active member in an artist co-op, The Gallery on Main Street in Canandaigua, NY that provided an opportunity to sell her artwork.
Over time Mary started taking classes in oil painting. She has studied with many artists such as Kenn Backhaus, Dick Kane and Pat Rini Rohrer. One of Mary’s passions is landscape painting which includes painting outdoors, also known as plein air painting. Mary has been involved in juried competitions and plein air events throughout the Finger Lakes and the Adirondacks. One accomplishment noted is that Mary was named People’s Choice Award at Anthony Road Winery’s plein air event in 2022. She also received an honorable mention at Canandaigua Plein Air Event in 2021 and People’s Choice Award at Paint Palmyra Plein Air Event in 2021.
By profession Mary is a registered nurse with her Masters in Nursing Education. Early in her nursing career Mary knew the importance of being grounded in holistic health care. She found that being creative is essential for wellbeing.
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Darrell Licata
Darrell Licata's mother is a painter so he was raised around the arts. He attended The State University Of New York at Purchase studying painting and printmaking.
Darrell has always pulled his inspiration from the world around him. The every day things, " I just go about my day and a composition will just present its self to me". Sometimes ordinary objects. Sometimes extraordinary nature, and the people he encounters. Equally comfortable oil painting outside or in his studio, he will often use alla prima studies done on location as references for larger paintings done with a glazing technique in the studio.
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Lee Ogden
Lee Ogden is an oil and acrylic painter born and based in beautiful Canandaigua, NY.
Her love of the lake and gardening inspires her work, which focuses on lake images, rolling landscapes, and lots of flowers. Lee is a real outdoor enthusiast and an accomplished gardener. She enjoys “painting“ her yard though gardening with the use of colorful bushes and flowers. She uses many of her own flowers and pond as subjects for her work and often takes pictures for future paintings while out walking her dogs. She is also an avid golfer, hiker, and occasional skier.
Lee is a dedicated painter with time in the studio to create beautiful landscape, flower, and Canandaigua paintings for all to enjoy.
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Rosemary Pergolizzi
Rosemary’s formal training began with an AAS from Rochester Institute of Technology’s Fine and Applied Arts Program. Rosemary received her Masters in Art Education from Nazareth College and spent the next 30 years teaching art at all grade levels in both private and public schools.
She is an active member of the Rochester Art Club, the Pastel Society of Western New York, National Association of Women in the Arts and Oil Painters of America. Her gallery representation includes membership with the Mill Gallery in Honeoye Falls, the View in Old Forge, and most recently, at Pittsford Fine Art. Recent exhibitions include the P.Tribastone Gallery, Barnes and Noble, Yates Center for the Arts, and Wayne County Center for the Arts. She is a member of the Main Street Artists group at the Hungerford on Main Street, Rochester. This studio space has been her creative home since retiring.
First Fridays at the Hungerford, exhibits at local businesses and shops and exhibition opportunities with her various clubs allows the public to access her work here in Rochester and around the country including NYC. Rosemary works mainly in oils and pastels. Subject matter is often landscapes, seascapes, cloudscapes and floral still life as well as commissioned portraiture of animals and children.
The love of natural beauty continues to compel her to commit her talents and techniques in the hopes of sharing that inspired and imaginative aesthetic with others.
“Imagination is more important than Knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” Einstein
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Jeff Tokarz
Tokarz' work can be described as impressionist realism. Specializing in charcoal, he began painting and selling commissions in 2020.
Self-taught, Tokarz paints portraits and landscapes that depict compelling narratives. Charcoal, he finds, intensifies observers' emotional connections with his paintings.
Inspired by Carl Bloch, Norman Rockwell, and John Singer Sargent, narrative artists from the past, Tokarz initiates the painting process collaboratively with clients ... seeking to understand the story to be conveyed in the portrait or landscape commission.
Working exclusively from reference photos, Tokarz' painting process begins with a 'blocking-in' of shapes and values to develop a composition. Final detailing and refinement, in concert with a client's wishes, continue until the narrative piece of art is approved.
Tokarz is a Signature Member of the Rochester Art Club, and a Member of The Portrait Society of America.
"Every time I paint a portrait, a landscape, I make a new friend!"
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Kathleen Warren
Painting has been Kathleen's creative outlet since retiring from corporate life in 2006. Judy Soprano at the Clothesline Art Show at the Memorial Art Gallery was her inspiration many years ago. Since then, she has studied with artists in Rochester and in Charleston SC to refine skills. Painting in oils and watercolors has replaced her previous avocation—flower arranging.
Kathleen finds subjects which appeal to her aesthetic and they vary from flowers, landscapes and seascapes, architecture, birds, still life, and quirky objects. She hopes to preserve that view for others to enjoy. Her artistic goal is representational impressionism, manifested in various painting styles. Artistic endeavors enhance her enthusiasm for life.
Kathleen has been a member of art guilds in Rochester and Charleston, SC.
Laurie Williams
Twelve year old Laurie Williams was invited to join an adult oil painting class in Spring Valley, NY. While this was intimidating, it was also an exciting opportunity to learn and grow. Laurie continued to paint with this group for the next six years before heading off to college. After earning a Master's in Education she became a K-6 art teacher.
Past and present art affiliations include The Plein Air Painters of Western NY, Pittsford and Penfield Art Groups, Rochester Art Club and The Tucson Plein Air Painters. Laurie has taken workshops and classes in New York and the southwest with Guy Leclair, Robert Goldman, Randy Sexton, Phil Starke and Jack Wahl. Laurie usually begins with a toned canvas in warm colors, followed by directional lines and three to five shapes, which are then blocked in.
The scent of pine, wind rustling through a stand of trees, sparkling lakes, majestic mountains, winding roads all inspire my painting process. A favorite quote of Guy LeClair, "don't paint the fleas before the dog" is one I like to keep in mind as I paint.