Binford Harrell has made cardboard an art form! A painter who mastered traditional methods (oil on canvas), turned to the floor of his studio where he saw interesting shapes and texture after unloading supplies which were delivered in cardboard boxes.  The resulting work produced from corrugated cardboard and oil are abstract and beautiful.

Many are now at Art Works in Richmond, Virginia and available online. If you live in the Greater Richmond area, we deliver. Otherwise we can ship to you!  

Drop by the gallery to see these in person or view here. 

We'd like to introduce Katy Hicks a new artist selling her artwork at the gallery.  In this painting, Edge of Frozen, she has worked magic with oil on canvas. The winter scene background smooth and misty reminds me of silk draperies.

Available online or pick-up at the gallery.  

Gail Nichols is this month's featured artist.  More than 20 large and small works hang in the gallery at Art Works though January 21st.  Her work is a combination of photography, paintings, and fabric backgrounds, each meticulously stitched, embroidered, beaded, quilted, and embellished.

As the vibrant colors draw the viewers in from across the room, the details are utterly astounding. The directional lines of each intentional, singular stitch, the mountains and valleys of varying textures of the surface of the canvas, and the vibrant intensity of dyes and .paint colors are an adventure for the eyes.  Take the time to get up close and personal with these beauties while they are in the gallery or zoom in online to get the idea. Stunning!
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The last day of 2018 and although the gallery is closed today, artists are busy at work and the staff is getting ready for a fundraising New Years Day event for a special non-profit group.  So we're busy even when it looks like we're not.

What we did right in this past year?  You came to us: Yoga on Saturday mornings, Orbital Music (a music meet-up group), Creative Mornings, the Red Cross, RVA Chamber of Commerce EWX (Extraordinary Women's Exchange) needing space for meetings and events.  We said "yes".  

And this new website shop4artwork.com makes it easier to see and buy art. 

Learning took a front row seat this year. Thriving Artist Thursdays came into being. Lectures and demos help artists in business and in creativity.

Plus all the things we've been doing right all along, continue! Monthly art shows, juried shows, studio rentals, classrooms, parties, weddings...

It's been a good year.  Can't wait until tomorrow! 2018 - brand new opportunities for the creative sort!

I meet Gail when I was looking to rent a house one hot summer day and the property manager failed to show up. This nice lady was in her garden working and took the time to talk with me. We hit it off. She invited me in our house and showed me her artwork. Two years later Gail Nichols has filled the main gallery at Art Works with mixed media pieces.  They range from $150 to $1000...shockingly affordable given the amount of detail and work that went into each piece.

Many of the pieces are "garden scenes" as you might have guessed. Her work has a three dimensional look because after she paints a canvas she works in threads, textiles and mixed media. 

The exhibit continues through January 20, 2018. You can order online or drop by the gallery and purchase the art. 

In Richmond, we are close to both the mountains and the sea. So we are neither, nor, so to speak. We have plenty of city-scapes. lots of parks, rolling hills and even flat areas (fortunate for the airport.) But here we are, in our in-between state--in between the mountains and the sea with neither in sight.

This week Penny Ritch brought her paintings into the gallery and with them she brought the ocean--not the seascapes you might imagine but rather the minutia of waves and even sediment in abstract form.

Take a look at these six paintings priced from $50 to $200, masterfully done and available online. We deliver! 
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It is November in Richmond, Virginia. As the fall sets in and and warm days turn crisp, thick leaves shuffle and crunch under my shoes, and the hint of chimney smoke faintly creeps in,

I notice the beauty of the sun glowing behind and lighting up the bright yellow leaves of an one-hundred year-old tree.  It is the little things that compile to make one feel a specific place and a specific moment in time-- it's a smell, a whisper..

​These are the things that can't be fully described, they have to be felt.  When an artist captures a mood, a place, a feeling through color, rhythm, energy....we can be transported.  An adventure awaits!