Sarasota has a rich history in the arts, offering sanctuary to the likes of important historical artists like Syd Solomon, Jon Corbino  and Julio de Diego to name a few. Though our once-small town has grown tremendously, Sarasota continues to be an important place for artists. We have highlighted five top living artists in Sarasota whose work is establishing a presence in the community.

Each artist’s work can be found at 530 Burns Gallery, an intimate gallery beneath the banyan tree in Historic Burns Court.

1. Linda Richichi

Linda Richichi is best known for her vibrantly colored pastel and oil paintings with layers of texture from detailed brushstrokes.  After classical training, she felt a calling for the wild. As she turned to plein air painting, she found that Mother Nature was the healing energy she needed to recover from deeply resonating personal loss.

Linda now calls Sarasota home, while taking trips around the United States and Europe to paint. Her talent has lec her to national acclaim. Gallery owner Nikki Sedacca says, “Linda’s recent appointment to Signature Status in the Pastel Society of America makes representing her more exciting than ever. Her talent is limitless.”

Linda will have a solo exhibition with an opening  on Friday, Jan. 24 at 6 p.m. at 530 Burns Gallery, one of the most anticipated shows of the season!

2. Katie Cassidy

Katie Cassidy is known for her ethereal oil paintings. In addition to her work as a painter, Cassidy teaches yoga and meditation, which inform her work. Cassidy says, “Inspired by Nature, I take the liberty of expanding and contracting what is before me. I allow myself to submerge into the imagined, uncharted, yet-to-be-discovered places.”

Using subtle shifts in color, Cassidy obscures the brush strokes to create a transformative landscape. Her work takes the viewer into a new land, where there is an inherent calmness and a sense of peace.

3. Bettina Sego

Bettina Sego is a German-American mixed media artist who uses many layers of ink, acrylic paint, collage, silver or gold leaf, and resin to create vibrancy and depth in her paintings. Sego takes inspiration from nature—the minuscule fragments and layers which build to give vibrancy to nature’s surfaces. After studying in France and Germany, she was awarded a scholarship at San Francisco State University, where she received a master of arts degree. She moved to Florida in 2000 and concentrated increasingly on experimenting with various media, focusing mostly on acrylics, mixed media and collage.

4. Kim McAninch

Kim McAninch is a recent transplant to Siesta Key from Stony Point, New York. Using her bush and palette knife extensively in her paintings on canvas, McAninch conveys uplifting emotion and the joyous expression that lives through color. The work calls viewers to add their own personal experience to her paintings, creating a dialogue within the work. Her new “Head & Heart” series combines oil, acrylic, pastel, ink and pencil on paper. The work blurs the line between abstract and landscape, the familiar with the imagined.

5. Andrea Dasha Reich 

Andrea Dasha Reich says, “I am as affected by the frog I saw yesterday, sitting on the lit globe of my outside light, as I am by the distant memories of a gray hut I once saw in China or a blue mosaic tile I saw years ago when I lived in Jerusalem." Taking pure pigments and layers of epoxy resin, Reich creates works that are woven with organic shapes and have a playful interaction with nature. She continues to capture the bold beauty of the imaginative world around her.

530 Burns Gallery
530 Burns Lane,  Sarasota, FL 34236
941.951.0620
530burnsgallery.com
Instagram @530burnsgallery
Facebook @530burnsgallery

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