An Old Town Scottsdale art gallery is hosting a women's art expo featuring live painting

By Tom Maxedon
Published: Thursday, October 12, 2023 - 7:05am
Updated: Thursday, October 12, 2023 - 7:49am

Jessica Garrett
Jessica Garrett is one of the featured artists at AWAE: A Women's Art Expo in Old Town Scottsdale Oct. 12-13, 2023.

The Marshall Gallery in Old Town Scottsdale is hosting a two-day event featuring 10 acclaimed female painters. It’s called, “AWAE: A Women's Art Exposition.”

Gallery co-owner DeeAn Gillespie Strub said attendees will be able to see past works by the artists and also witness them in action.

“Not all of them are regularly represented by the gallery,” she said. “It’s an invitational, and they will be there in person, painting. It’s a lovely experience to be able to come and see art being created.”

Strub also believes the event encourages a rediscovery of perspective.

“In resplendent Italy, the darkness of the Middle Ages reluctantly gave way to the beauties of the Renaissance - largely due to the discovery, or rediscovery, of perspective. AWAE offers our own rediscovery of perspective: the kindly, gentle, discerning women's perspective,” she said in a separate release.

The free shows run Thursday, October 12, from 5-9 p.m. and Friday, October 13, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

Featured artists

Carol Estes - Carol’s art reflects her inner buoyancy and progressive optimism. She developed her style in the avant-garde, Deep Ellum bohemian music and arts district in Dallas, Texas.

Jessica Garrett - Jessica Garrett is inspired by her life in the Southwest to showcase a fresh approach to color and an illusion of light that does justice to nature. She has learned how vital color is in recreating the feeling of light and explores color as her ultimate inspiration.

Elena Golberg - After moving to the United States in 2004 from Barnaul, an industrial city in the Siberian part of Russia, Elena Golberg became fascinated with Native American culture and has found Saguaro cacti to be the primary subject of her portraits.

Harper Henry - Harper Henry is an award-winning artist who creates unique, abstract-realistic paintings focused mainly on horses, animals, and the American West. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Illustration and had a successful 30-year career as a Designer and Art Director until 2016 when she decided to pursue painting full-time.

Shari Lyon - Shari Lyon is skilled in the ancient encaustic process of painting with a hot melted mixture of beeswax and damar resin. The labor-intensive process yields dreamy, ethereal images with texture and appeal unlike any other art form.

Krystii Melaine - Wildlife, horses, cowboys, and Native Americans have been the focus of Australian-born Krystii Melaine’s realistic oil paintings for 23 years. Krystii began to explore abstract art, which opened her imagination to modern concepts and a wider range of expressive ideas. Now, the abstracts have begun to work their way into her realism paintings as backgrounds, sometimes weaving through and over the animals and people too.

Becky Pashia - Becky Pashia “suggests” a subject in her art and focuses on light and color to evoke feelings and trigger memories. Her oil technique includes slipping and spreading paint across a surface with large spatulas and brushes, trying to keep the paint loose and raw in order to resemble watercolors.

Daniela Pasqualini - By breaking down elements of flora and fauna, Daniela Pasqualini, an innovative Italian painter, transforms her observations of nature onto the canvas, bringing rhythm to splashes of vibrant color and creating texture through form.

Leah Rei - Leah Rei weaves transparent layers together to create abstract representations of our natural surroundings. Her main goal is to create scenes of nature that can evoke a deep sense of calm and wonder.

Danene Taysom - Danene Taysom creates colorful landscape and still-life oil paintings.  The love of light and color is what ultimately drove her to become a professional artist. She also enjoys teaching art classes in her studio and providing painting workshops throughout the year.

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