Finding Sanctuary in the making... 13th Annual Abstract Sanctuary artists share the spiritual nature of creating!
- Jennifer Gillia Cutshall
- Mar 9
- 10 min read
Updated: Mar 11
LAEL SALAETS
"I experience sanctuary as an oasis - a place to rest and reflect physically, emotionally and spiritually. A pause, an escape, to stroll down an empty field on the way home. Or nowhere in particular.
This piece was a happy accident in an attempt to depict such a place from childhood. I explored atmosphere with contrasting edges and focus like depth of field in photography."
LAEL SALAETS
DARIA LOI
"My sanctuary is made of large floating boulders covered with tiny glass spheres.
There, I can stand still, surrounded by silence, while an ethereal sun warms my eyes."
Daria Loi
JAN LINTZ
"I find sanctuary in the mystery, beauty, and chaos of the natural world which tend to be woven together in my increasingly abstract art. Building both visual and physical texture using layers of oil paint combined with cold wax medium is a meditative path for me. I respond intuitively but pause to consider formal compositional elements and where a painting is heading. Arches, vessels, archetypal symbols, and repetitive patterns have all appeared somewhat mysteriously in my work for decades, while somehow reflecting personal and universal emotions, history, and relationships. This piece is a direct response
to the soul-crushing cruelty and greed of the men currently in power."
Jan Lintz
KENT ODOHERTY
"My work centers on what lies beyond - beyond one’s logical and intellectual understanding. I like to invite the viewers of my work to lay down the desire for certainty and enter a space where they can explore all that arises with total freedom."
Kent ODoherty
LISA HAMILTON
"Sanctuary is a safe haven, a place to rest, no explanations needed. The work within this place speaks the language your work speaks. It is removed but belongs"
Lisa Hamilton
LUCY CHILDS
"Everyone needs sanctuary, whether it’s physical, imagined, or felt. Other artists use colors and shapes to create mood or to evoke a sense of sanctuary. Mine are messages of affection, like that in my piece “Love Letter,” a reminder of the love and the sanctuary we all value. "
Lucy Childs
BETTY MALLORCA
"Sanctuary is a peaceful, beautiful, calming place. The deep forest feels like a sanctuary to me. Painting abstraction frees me from conveying a likeness, so I can focus on color and composition. That's my happy place!"
Betty Mallorca
LAWRENCE MANNING
"Sanctuary appears throughout my work. In my crow series Murder In Nampa, roosting crows embody safety, community, and spiritual connection — linking our souls to another world where peace is possible. In my Palouse project, the land becomes a visual score of harmony, a profound calm for the mind and soul."
Lawrence Manning
KIM MARCUCCI
"I was drawn to Abstract Sanctuary because it speaks to refuge as a felt, internal experience. Sanctuary emerges when control softens and intuition leads—like water, surrounding and carrying without confinement. It is subtle yet expansive, a spiritual unfolding where hidden emotions surface and the unknown becomes a space of trust and revelation."
Kim Marcucci
MICHELINE RONNINGEN
"Sanctuary is a safe place. My home state (Oregon) is one of 17 states in our country offering various levels of sanctuary.
As abstract art is considered “outsider” to many (despite its origins) this show offers exceptional aesthetics expressing diversity, safety and acceptance. It also expresses my current political ideology."
Micheline Ronningen
ELAINE DUNHAM
"In abstract, perhaps the creative process enables me to process without attempting to reproduce what I have seen, I usually paint to express what I have felt or understood. This is messy work but feels just right."
Elaine Dunham
ALMA MUELLER
Sanctuary
A place of refuge
of solace
of serenity
of peace
A place to rest
to reflect
to heal
to renew
A place for your heart
for your soul
(Poem by 7680 Salon,
including Alma Mueller)
CANDACE HEIDENRICH
“I find sanctuary in the stillness of mind while making art. By creating my own visual language through mark-making and negative space, I am taken to that place of suspended time and tranquility.”
Candace Heidenrich
STEPHEN LUCAS
"I have a white gessoed canvas before me and feel moved to begin painting. My goal is to create something truly unique in both color and design.
The process is cathartic for me; as I paint, my mind reflects on various scenes from the past and future. Once a piece is finished, the artwork truly seems to sing to me."
Stephen Lucas
SUSANNE TIERNEY
"Art like reality, can bring you to your knees, but I would not trade with anyone else. As Mondrian use to say:
"If we cannot free ourselves from the hazards and conflicts
inherent in living in space and time, we can free our vision."
The artist's medium is his collaborator and his conscience in that effort in which only a few succeed."
From the Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell (Quote shared by Susanne Tierney)
"My art is always abstract...
whether I am abstracting from nature or the nature of my consciousness.
My choice of mediums are mixed, as are my thoughts."
Susanne Tierney
KAREN HIGHTOWER
"Art inspires me to be a more open loving human!"
Karen Hightower
ANDREA KELSEY
"In a world that can often feel overwhelming and tumultuous, art serves as an outlet for me. It allows me to channel my thoughts and emotions into something tangible, creating a sense of calm."
Andrea Kelsey
BRUCE WILLIAMS
"Abstract art is a sanctuary in a double sense of the word. It is, at once, a place of freedom, of exploration beyond restraint. It also allows both the artist and the viewer access to the inner sanctum, the secret places within one's being."
Bruce Williams
JAMIE KOST
"Abstract sanctuary resonates with my practice because I build stillness through structure. In the quiet balance between order and feeling, I create quiet spaces where form holds energy gently-grounded, calm, and open to reflection."
Jamie Kost
GERRIT VAN OMMERING
Today everyone has a camera in their pocket, and it is a challenge to create something unique in photography. Transforming my photos into abstract art represents a no-rules sanctuary to me: I can follow my own muse, make creative and unique images, and maybe hear viewers say “Wow!”
Gerrit van Ommering
TABBY IVY
"To me sanctuary is an inner place of solace and contemplation. As an artist abstraction is the perfect outlet for evoking that inner world to others. I love conveying something intangible that comes to the canvas unfiltered and spontaneously from the unconscious, leaving a bit of mystery for interpretation by the viewer.”
Tabby Ivy
LOURDES RIVERA
"Art, painting, and colors are my passion, my pleasure, my obsession, my healing. In each work I pour out my spirit, my convictions, a message, a thought. Painting is my language, the one that translates what I feel, what I think, and my convictions about life. Colors are, from God's wonderful creation, the code that defines me.”
Lourdes Rivera, LULU
MICHAEL TOTI
"Abstract Sanctuary appealed to me because art is my sanctuary.
I do it because of the need to create and escape into something. A world that has no limitations or desires other than to create. Abstract also appealed to me as I work mostly with texture and color as major components in the design."
Michael Toti
ARLENE VIDOR
"Lately, the term ‘Sanctuary City”, a lovely alliteration, comes to mind -- and I am proud to live in one. In my photography practice, abstraction is a personal sanctuary or refuge from stark reality. For example, my photograph The Rotting Subfloor is a living abstraction designed by a talented household mold infestation; my discovery of it allowed me to take sanctuary from a stressful situation and find a creative pathway to beauty and serenity."
Arlene Vidor
GREGORY KESSLER
"A definition of Melancholy is “pensive | serious.” For me, sanctuary is a place of quiet thought and introspection. This aligns with the theme of my work “Drawing Silence.” Silence is critical in our age of continuous noise, media, 24-hour videos, podcasts and big data. From this the question becomes, how to find respite? My art seeks to provide a place where silence resides, where people can find solace and quietness."
Gregory Kessler
SARAH REHFELDT
ABSTRACT
This is how it’s done:
You lay down some color
a certain thickness
on the earth.
You trace it back
all the way
to the far edge of the horizon
with your eyes,
never stopping –
everything spilling out ahead of you
into what can only be
the perfect amount of light –
and wait here.
The way the wind will whisper over,
cloud-swirled and violet,
the shape of moon
or hint of blue
revealed inside its pebbled grayness –
you will have to let it shimmer in your mind a distance,
then quick-like, mark it permanent
before the sky erases.
- Sarah Rehfeldt
JOHN DIEPHOUSE
"Abstract Sanctuary provokes and provides a secure means of exploring the themes
that echo through my subconscious; an imaginary environment that sometime mirrors and often defies the forms found in our concrete reality. The results of this creative process surprise, amaze and often amuse me."
John Diephouse
TARJA HARVEY
"Creating art is a form of sanctuary and ritual for me.
The abstract landscape
image I created reflects this sense of retreat. The image combines water and landscape, representing a space where I feel most comfortable and able to disconnect from the external forces."
Tarja Harvey
JANE STEINHAUER
"Abstract art is definitely liberating when creating...I feel the art should say something, draw one in with its colors and most important the painting's energy."
Jane Steinhauer
BARRY GOLDSTEIN
"My abstractions are mind puzzles. Starting with a concept, I slowly develop the art working out different ideas until it all comes together.
Most of my abstractions take 2-3 months until it has been completed. Because I wake up in the middle of the night with more ideas to try, I rarely take on more than one abstraction at a time....Otherwise I would never sleep."
Barry Goldstein
ALLAN FINKELMAN
"For me, reduction allows familiar environments to be read as abstract systems: lines become rhythms, shapes become pressure points, tonal shifts define spatial boundaries. My photographs are meant to be inhabited rather than decoded. That suggests sanctuary."
Allan Finkelman
DEBBIE TRACEY
"Sanctuary is a place of immersion and quiet movement. In my painting, it's the feeling of being beneath the surface, surrounded by shifting light and depth, where nothing demands attention and everything invites you to simply be. "
Debbie Tracey
DENISE RICHARDS
"A couple of years ago, I was living out of the country and was part of a women's taller (workshop) in Argentina. While there, I produced a series of abstracts, of which Sleeping Sentry is a part. I never had a name in mind for the series but as soon as I read the call for this exhibit, it dawned on me, that since I was in Argentina seeking sanctuary from my own country, that every piece in the series had to do with that topic, sometimes for indigenous people, sometimes for myself."
Denise Richards
GABRIELLE GANTLEY
"Abstract Sanctuary resonated with me because my work lives in emotional interior spaces. I layer color the way memory builds — slowly, imperfectly, honestly. Sanctuary, for me, isn’t an escape. It’s the quiet permission to sit with complexity and let emotion exist without needing to solve it."
Gabrielle Gantley
CATHIE JOHNSON
"My studio time is my sanctuary. When I paint, I forget reality and time fades away. I let my art soul take over, focusing on the next colour or line I’m going to make. I think about the shapes and colours I form. Some days I follow my hand movements, going with the flow..."
DALE O'DELL
"Since the death of my wife six months ago my studio has become my ‘sanctuary.’ My life has changed so much since her passing and I now find the quiet calm of the studio (and computer workstation) a place where I can be happy, experiment and, hopefully, create something meaningful."
Dale O'Dell
JOAN SOWADA
"The artwork I create starts with a concept. I have asked myself what shape and size is Good Sleep? What textures and symbols do I incorporate in Metamorphosis? For Many Doors Open I wanted to show a place with many opportunities. Most folks would love to freely explore a safe place; one with open doors, trees, flower boxes, and quiet sunshine. It is indeed a sanctuary."
Joan Sowada
JACK REILY
"The concept of "Sanctuary" is a sacred environment, whether it be a physical or a mental place where contemplation is uninterrupted by external distractions. My goal is to provide the viewer with such an environment that visually stimulates their thoughts and emotions while simultaneously puts their soul at ease..."
Jack Reilly
STEVE MASON
"To quote Einstein: “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” Directing my curiosity to creating abstract art, I find it to be the most direct route to my feelings and soul, a sanctuary of expression, validation, and connection with people and nature."
Steve Mason
NANCY HOLZHAUSER
"Painting and wilderness are my sanctuaries. I lose myself in them, they are my safe places. A time to drop deep within myself and connect: to the colors of paint, the flow of the brush, the breeze, the mountain, the canyon, the birdsong. At some point when I am painting, be it an abstract piece or a more representational piece, I become both the painting and the wilderness; they become me. Our energies all merge as one, the life force connects us. It is
divine."
Nancy Holzhauser
HARRY LONSTREET
"Humanist."
Harry Longstreet
BECKY CHAPMAN
“Magic lies in between things, between the day and the night, between yellow and blue, between any two things.” `Charles de Lint
EVE SYRKIN WURTELE
"Nature manifests in a glorious interplay of repetition and diversity. My goal is to capture aspects of nature using the limited intellect and skill set of a human being."
Eve Syrkin Wurtele
CAROL MULLEN
"Life and all its curiosities are well communicated through the eyes, hands and heart of the artist using a unique visual vocabulary comprised of color, shape and composition."
Carol Mullen
RICHARD MITTELSTADT
"Though creating my paintings can be very satisfying and almost spiritual in a way, my work isn't a place to go to but to allow the viewer of my paintings to suspend disbelief, if for only a moment, as if they were viewing a theatrical production."
Richard Mittelstadt
