Sarah Burns
Create! Magazine is proud to feature artist Sarah Burns in the “Land and Longing” virtual exhibition. Based in Southern Oregon, Burns captures the vibrant landscapes of her home region using traditional European painting techniques. Deeply inspired by the natural world and historical art practices, her plein air paintings not only preserve the beauty of the environment but also foster a deeper connection to place, history, and community.
Nathaniel Moody
Nathaniel J Moody’s paintings blend memory, landscape, and emotional resonance into powerful visual narratives. Working in oil and watercolor, Moody captures the shifting nature of identity, belonging, and connection to land. His work, included in Create! Magazine’s Land and Longing exhibition, invites viewers to reflect on personal and collective journeys toward home.
Yemaya Diethelm
Yemaya Diethelm’s multidisciplinary practice weaves together memory, the human body, and nature, with a focus on the ecologies of the Pacific Northwest. Her latest works, featured in the "Land and Longing" virtual exhibition, reflect on the fragility and resilience of our environment through powerful oil paintings. Discover how Diethelm uses seaweed as a symbol of ecological strength and addresses themes of climate grief in her compelling visual narratives.
Daniel Freaker
In Create! Magazine’s Land and Longing exhibition, British artist Daniel Freaker shares richly layered paintings that balance bright, beautiful color with deeper reflections on the human condition. Freaker's work captures the tension between structure and chaos, inviting viewers into dynamic narratives of searching, connection, and meaning.
Laura Barr
Laura Barr’s richly colored paintings capture fleeting, transcendent moments where light, color, and form transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Through her Here and There series and other works, Barr explores impermanence, water conservation, and meditative beauty. Featured in Create! Magazine’s Land and Longing virtual exhibition, her art invites viewers to pause, reflect, and reconnect with the quiet wonder of the natural world.
Phil Irish
Ontario-based artist Phil Irish brings together painting, collage, and environmental insight in his striking Niche Species series. Created during an Arctic Circle Residency and now featured in the Land and Longing exhibition, his work explores the beauty and fragility of the natural world through emotionally resonant animal imagery and stark Arctic landscapes. Each piece is a meditation on climate change, interconnection, and what it means to care for our planet in a time of crisis.
Cheryl Hochberg
Cheryl Hochberg’s artwork invites viewers to reflect on the deep connection between humans and nature. Through her ongoing projects in places like Wyoming, South China, Finland, and Tucson, Cheryl captures the beauty, struggle, and resilience of the landscapes she visits. Her work, currently featured in the Land and Longing virtual exhibition, embodies a unique exploration of the impact of human industry and nature’s ability to heal and adapt. Learn more about her process and the stories that shape her projects.
Catherine LaPointe
Catherine LaPointe-Vollmer brings a deep reverence for nature to her soft pastel landscapes, highlighting the subtle patterns of light and shadow often overlooked in everyday scenes. Her impressionistic works, featured in the Land and Longing virtual exhibition, are rooted in the forests, rivers, and seasonal shifts of her native North Country. Through plein air sketches and intuitive composition, LaPointe-Vollmer reveals how the ordinary becomes extraordinary when viewed in just the right light.
Tara Esperanza
Oakland-based painter Tara Esperanza brings the intricate beauty of succulents to life through her bold, representational oil paintings. Featured in Create! Magazine’s Land and Longing virtual exhibition, Esperanza’s work offers a vibrant reflection on nature, community, and resilience—seen through the imaginative lens of both artist and observer.
Susan Stillman
In Land and Longing, Susan Stillman’s evocative paintings capture the subtle drama of light as it transforms everyday landscapes into spaces of wonder and reflection. A longtime educator and accomplished artist, Stillman invites us into scenes both familiar and extraordinary, drawn from her neighborhood walks and travels abroad. With an intentional absence of the figure, her work focuses entirely on light, color, and the quiet beauty of a single moment.
Lily Timberlake
Lily Timberlake’s work invites us to slow down and savor the passing moments that often go unnoticed. Featured in the "Land and Longing" virtual exhibition, her oil paintings explore the intersection of time, memory, and the landscape, capturing the tenderness of everyday experiences. Timberlake’s intuitive approach to painting preserves the spirit of fleeting moments—from the warmth of a neighbor's garden to cherished objects and personal rituals. Her work encourages reflection and offers a sense of enchantment, as viewers are drawn into the vibrant layers of life she masterfully immortalizes on canvas.
David Linneweh
Featured in Land and Longing, a virtual group exhibition by Create! Magazine, David Linneweh’s work offers a contemplative look at suburban architecture and the emotional pull of memory. His image-transfer technique paired with vibrant color fields transforms familiar neighborhoods into layered reflections on time, idealism, and the fading mirage of the American Dream.
Jaclyn Gordyan
In Create! Magazine’s Land and Longing virtual exhibition, artist Jaclyn Gordyan presents a body of sculptural work rooted in nature and emotional resonance. Working from the forests of Michigan, Gordyan combines natural-found materials with abstract techniques to reflect on our ancestral ties to the Earth. Her contemplative process and evolving practice transform foraged elements into meditative, organic forms that explore human experience through the lens of the natural world.
Sara Roberts
Sara Roberts' work invites viewers into a world where reality and dreams converge, capturing fleeting moments of beauty within vast, luminous landscapes. Featured in the "Land and Longing" virtual exhibition, her paintings explore the profound relationship between humans and nature, using light, water, and shifting perspectives as metaphors for memory and perception. Experience the delicate balance of expansion and contraction in her evocative landscapes and dreamscapes that transport us into a space of introspection and stillness.
Mason Owens
Mason Owens’ paintings capture the subtle, transitory nature of everyday life, focusing on the intimate moments shared with friends and loved ones. His work, imbued with nostalgia, humor, and childlike curiosity, transports viewers into landscapes where ordinary scenes are transformed by the warmth of memory. Owens’ practice—now part of the "Land and Longing" virtual exhibition—combines egg tempera with a playful, experimental approach, translating the magic of these fleeting experiences into timeless pieces.
Jena Thomas
Jena Thomas’s thought-provoking work bridges the gap between human nature and the natural world. In the Land and Longing virtual exhibition, Thomas delves into how humanity idealizes nature and creates artificial environments, capturing the transient collision between the two. Through emotive abstractions and surreal landscapes, her work challenges us to reconsider how we relate to both the world around us and the marks we leave upon it. Discover more about her unique approach and thematic explorations in this featured artist profile.
Yuan Butler
Yuan Butler’s work embodies the intersection of cultural heritage and personal exploration, where abstraction meets figuration to evoke the power of mythology and nature. Featured in the Land and Longing virtual exhibition, Butler’s art delves into the mysteries of water and female forms, creating an immersive dialogue that invites viewers to reflect on the fluid myths of time and space. Her paintings offer a glimpse into her internal landscape, where intuition, nature, and identity converge in an ever-evolving, meditative practice.
Rainey Straus
In her feature for Land and Longing, Rainey Straus shares The Old Growth Project, a multidisciplinary body of work that merges technology, ecology, and ritual. Through LiDAR scans of California’s redwoods and embodied observation, Straus paints the presence of trees beyond human-centered narratives, inviting us to consider new ways of relating to the natural world. Her work unearths beauty and urgency in the forest’s voice, resonating with themes of loss, reciprocity, and reverence.
Sharon Wensel
Sharon Wensel’s art invites us into moments of stillness, healing, and reflection through vibrant scenes inspired by the natural world. Following a return to painting later in life, her work now appears in Create! Magazine’s Land and Longing exhibition, celebrating the deep emotional resonance found in nature’s beauty.
Elisha Enfield
Elisha Enfield’s evocative paintings draw from the rich history of human rituals, blending themes of fire, funerary rites, and remembrance. In her works, she examines how we navigate grief, celebrate life, and honor those who are no longer with us. Featured in the Land and Longing virtual exhibition, Enfield’s paintings invite viewers to reflect on the interplay of memory and myth in the human experience.