to ride with the winds

First Friday Focus: Danna Tartaglia

Winslow Art Center Studio and GalleryMarch 6-28, 2020Friday, March 6 -- Show Preview 4-6p.m. Reception 6-8p.m. It is time to meet a new artist on Bainbridge Island. Danna Tartaglia found her way to the island…

  • Winslow Art Center Studio and Gallery
  • March 6-28, 2020
  • Friday, March 6 — Show Preview 4-6p.m.
  • Reception 6-8p.m.

It is time to meet a new artist on Bainbridge Island. Danna Tartaglia found her way to the island in 2018. And, while this show is a solo exhibition in our dynamic Winslow Art Center Studio and Gallery, she will also be exhibiting at our own BIMA.

A lifelong artist who has dabbled in various media since youth, she finally felt she could make the commitment to go professional in 2004, concentrating on oil painting. As her bio describes, she “remains a self-taught artist, painting what pleases her in an evolving style as she experiments with techniques and subjects.”

The exhibition will feature a variety of animals, with horses being one of her main loves. “To Ride the Wind” is one such painting. Its atmospheric color — a swoosh of yellows — pushes the viewer to confront the central figure of a horse. Still wearing her halter and lead line, the horse runs free. Aside from the mare’s powerful stride, you notice her eyes. Here, Tartaglia successfully demonstrates the goal of her work, which she describes as “capturing the motion and emotion of animal life on canvas.”

Red Boots. Image Courtesy of Danna Tartaglia

In addition to animals, she will have still life paintings. “Red Boots” will be among them, continuing Tartaglia’s love of all things equine. The love of the lifestyle comes through. Another example will be a simple, empty dessert plate. In her version, its sumptuous left-behind crumbs really make you wonder what it was, asking “why isn’t there any more of it?”

Tartaglia ran an art gallery in Jacksonville, Oregon, for most of a decade, occasionally setting herself up in the window to paint. That spirit is right in line with Winslow Art Center, which produces the annual Bainbridge Island Plein Air event (formerly known as Paint Out Winslow) and holds painting workshops all year.

Danna Tartaglia is involved with Bainbridge Island Studio Artists, hosting artists in her studio as well as joining its board. Artists from the group will exhibit together in the Steve Davis Community Gallery and John Ellis Bistro Gallery at BIMA. That exhibition opens March 14 and runs through June 7. She is also a member of Oil Painters of America, American Women Artists and Women Painters of Washington.


ABOUT BILL BARAN-MICKLE: 2020 Island Treasure Awardee . Recently, Bill has enjoyed exhibiting in several international art biennial exhibitions. Of the three in which he has participated, he won Third Place for Sculpture from the European Confederation of Art Critics in the Chianciamo Biennale, at the Chianciano Art Museum in Italy in 2011, and First Place in Applied Arts in the London Biennale of 2013. In 2013 alone, he will have participated in eight exhibitions: from London to a two-person exhibition near home. In addition, Bill was asked to be a representative for CCAC’s exhibition celebrating 100 years of the Metals Department, and a mix of group shows in New York City, Miami, Seattle and Las Vegas. Bill is the designer of the 10 foot Equitorial Bowstring Sundial located at the Richie Observatory in Battle Point Park on Bainbridge Island, WA and completed in 2015.