Lori Simmerman Goll
My love for art began at a very young age, when my great-grandmother would sit with me at the kitchen table in eastern Kentucky and show me the “proper way” to draw a house, tree, and fence. Although I didn’t attend art school (yet), I have always loved to draw and paint. After attaining an Electrical Engineering degree from Virginia Tech and working a few years in telecommunications, I realized that my true love is and has always been art. After taking some “time off” to be home with my two children, I have now become obsessed with art: reading about it, visiting galleries, perusing the internet, talking to other artists, and spending time exploring different media and creating my own artwork.
Over the past few years, I have taken several art classes, including watercolor and drawing classes from Lassie Corbett, several semesters of printmaking, drawing, and painting at NOVA Community College, and several media-specific workshops, most recently an oil-painting plein air workshop with Kevin Fitzgerald.
My favorite subjects are from nature: landscapes, seascapes, children, birds, animals, plants and trees. I am particularly drawn to the work of Tonalist landscape artists such as Kevin Fitzgerald, George Inness, Brandon Cook, Andrew Wyeth, and others.
After a couple of years of producing several fine art prints, mostly etchings, I am now moving on to two other series: Oceanscapes…long horizontal canvases depicting the ever-changing ocean at the Outer Banks of North Carolina, in oil….and a series of semi-rural farmscapes in the challenging medium of chalk pastel.
I love the Soundry! Here I can lay my canvases around to observe and work on…a preferable alternative to my dining room table. There is an excitement here–raw artistic energy, encouragement, and optimism. And the coffee is great, too!
