LORYN BRAZIER
Brazier's official Portraits hang in government, corporate, academic and religious institutions across the country. Nearly 150 public figures have been her subjects. She is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and The National Museum of Women in the Arts, both in Washington, D.C.
She has won awards on four occasions from the Portrait Society of America and her work has been published in several art magazines and books.
As well as portrait work, she is an avid painter of landscapes, still life and figurative subjects and is a member of Plein Air Painters of the Southeast. She is the founder of Plein Air Richmond.
Loryn has owned Brazier Gallery for over 17 years. Prior to that she had owned an advertising agency and was also an illustrator. Her work has been profoundly influenced by artists such as P.S. Kroyer, John Singer Sargent, Cecelia Beaux, Joaquin Sorolla and by her former teacher and valued friend, Everett Raymond Kinstler.
BEN LANSING
Ben is an artist and educator and regularly teaches church history at Redeemer Anglican Church. Ben's artwork has appeared in print and online publications for the past two decades. In 2007, his editorial cartoon, “Today We Are All Hokies” received a Pulitzer nomination from John Seigenthaler, Sr., founding editor of USA Today. His editorial cartoon series, “Out of Order,” has received multiple “Best in Show” awards from the Virginia Press Association. For more information about Ben’s artwork, visit www.benlansing.com.
The artwork in the featured collection at the Redeemer Parish House is from Ben’s history portrait series, “Our Church Speaks.” “Our Church Speaks" features the words of Christians from around the globe, across traditions, and throughout the centuries. It is inspired by the calendar of Holy Days and Commemorations found in the Book of Common Prayer (2019 edition, pages 691-712). There are currently over 100 portraits in this growing series. To view more entries in the “Our Church Speaks” series and to order prints, visit www.benlansing.com/ourchurchspeaks.
CAMERON RITCHER
Often, the greatest innovations come not from abundance but from scarcity. We can recall examples of this in almost any aspect of our culture: architecture, music, food. Some of the most inventive culinary strategies were originally conceived out of economic or agricultural dearth.
I like to play a game in the studio where the only rule is that I cannot buy new materials. Instead, I try to convince myself that there is already a good painting somewhere in my studio, in the heaps of scraps from previous works and housing renovations and rusted buckets of salvaged house paint. While my marks maintain a child-like innocence, the weathered materials evoke nostalgia. When combined with the structural organization of the pieces, this suggests an urban, industrial history, and yet does not impose any concrete narrative on the viewer. The process of painting, cropping, and reassembling allows me to synthesize disparate ideas, in order to create works that are simultaneously spontaneous and available to the accident, yet is entirely within my control.
Of course, my work does not exist within a vacuum and it is only responsible for me to think of what impact my work may have on the world. I know, at my core, that I was designed for a very specific job: making paintings, simply for the sake of making paintings. I feel an intense and spiritual excitement and curiosity while making my work. Maybe it is a glimpse of heaven. My hope is that the viewer would feel at least a fraction of that.
