The Rowayton Arts Center is proud to present its fourth annual RAC Masters, a members-only, juried group exhibition. This show was conceived to give our Exhibiting Members the opportunity to display a cohesive body of work, representing their unique style and point of view. It also helps young or less-experienced artists by encouraging them to focus their creative vision and polish their professional skills. This year’s class includes long-time members, well-established artists, two RAC instructors, and a few who are relatively new to RAC. Exhibiting Members are eligible to apply again after three years, however only by presenting a new body of work each time.
This year’s juror, Jared Quinton, is a curator and writer in Connecticut. Most recently, he was curator of contemporary art at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. We are excited and proud to present the work of these eleven artists, selected from a very strong group of forty-four of our most talented and accomplished RAC Exhibiting Members.
Congratulations to our 2026 RAC Masters: Janine Brown, Kat Evans, Andy Kimmel,
Andrea Letters, Lori Lohstoeter, Merrilee Main, Annie Roberts, Barbara O’Shea Strong, Anda Styler, Almudena Fernandez Vicens and Zili Zhang.
JUROR
Jared Quinton, independent curator and writer based in Connecticut.
Click here for juror's statement and bio.
Janine Brown
THIRD PRIZE
Janine Brown’s work explores the histories of home economics and women’s labor through cooking, sewing, and traditional craft practices. She creates biodegradable plastics and composite materials that transform everyday domestic processes into acts of artistic inquiry. Incorporating kitchen leftovers, family financial statements, shredded U.S. currency, and the language of flowers, her symbolic, home-cooked materials carry layers of personal and cultural meaning.These composites are stitched and crafted into objects and quilt patterns that examine the domestic constraints, pervasive myths, andcapitalist expectations surrounding women, marriage, and motherhood. The biodegradable nature of the work introduces a critical tension: its longevity depends on the attentive care of its keeper, paralleling the ephemeral yet demanding nature of the domestic labor they critique.
Wedded Bliss
Home-cooked bioplastic, rose petals, shredded U.S. currency,
hand-stitched with crochet thread, wood
2024
38.5” x 38.5" x 1”
$6,250
Dismantling the Patriarchy
He's Cooking, Caring, and Cleaning
Home-cooked bioplastic, rose petals, corn flower petals,,
hand-stitched with crochet thread, black ink
2024
20” x 34” x .25"
$3.250
Betty's Choice (Love or Money)
Home-cooked bioplastic, red rose petals, shredded U.S. currency,
hand-stitched with cotton thread, wood
2025
12.25” x 12.25” x 1.75"
$1,350
Lover's Knot (Strawberry and Chocolate)
Home-cooked bioplastic, strawberries, chocolate,
hand-stitched with crochet thread, wood panel
2025
12.25” x 12.25” x 1.75"
$1,350
Carrie's Choice (Joy and Grace)
Home-cooked bioplastic, calendula and white hydrangea petals,
hand-stitched with cotton thread, wood
2025
12.25” x 12.25” x 1.75"
$1,350
Sarah's Choice (Love, Grief, and Grace)
Home-cooked bioplastic, red rose, calendula and white hydrangea petals, hand-stitched with cotton thread, wood
2025
12.25” x 12.25” x 1.75"
$1,350
Money Makes the World Go Around
Home-cooked bioplastic, shredded U.S. currency, white peony
petals, food coloring, hand-stitched with crochet thread and
pearl cotton, wood
2025
37.5” x 37.5” x 1"
$8,750
Kat Evans
Color interaction and its ability to evoke an emotional response are central to Kat Evans’
practice. Working intuitively and embracing chance, she creates abstract compositions that
draw the imagination into moods, movement, and natural forms.
Through layered color relationships, cropped compositions, complex color combinations, and clear acrylic mediums, Kat builds surfaces rich in depth and texture. Inspired by the color harmonies of artists including Helen Frankenthaler, Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko,
and Emily Mason, as well as the imagery found in the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, and Frank O’Hara, Kat’s paintings celebrate the expressive possibilities of color and the ways it can shape perception and feeling.
@katevansartist
Sunny Disposition II
Acrylic on canvas
2025
36” x 36”
$7,500
Sunset, Deconstructed
Acrylic on canvas
2025
40” x 40”
$9,000
Secret Garden
Acrylic on canvas
2025
36” x 48”
NFS
Andy Kimmel
Andy Kimmel sold his first work of art in 1990, when an admiring subway passenger purchased one of his drawings for five dollars. He began painting with the Pink House artists in Westport at the age of eleven, and just one year later, the Ridgefield Guild
of Artists accepted his oil painting Ocean Tydings, marking the first time a twelve-year-old was accepted into their annual show. Since then, Andy’s oil painting shave consistently sold and are in homes throughout Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, Utah, California, and Málaga, Spain.
Inspired by the natural world, he prefers his paintings to stand for themselves without commentary.
Moss
Oil
2026
24” x 24”
$400
SOLD
Tree
Oil
2026
24” x 24”
$400
Branches
Oil
2026
22” x 28”
$450
SOLD
Sand
Oil
2026
22” x 28”
$450
Blues
Oil
2026
24” x 30”
$450
Dusk
Oil
2026
24” x 24”
$400
SOLD
Andrea Letters
The Nightlife of Flowering Trees and Shrubs
SECOND PRIZE
Andrea Letters’ The Nightlife of Flowering Trees and Shrubs began with evening walks with her dog, when she started photographing flowering plants in the dark. Intrigued by what the camera revealed, she returned with a tripod and began working with directed light and long exposures. The resulting images depict a world that is both familiar and strange. Flowers, leaves, and branches emerge from the darkness, transformed by light and suspended in time. What appears to be a recognizable garden becomes something less certain—a place that exists somewhere between observation and imagination. The photographs are not records of a world that can be seen. Rather, they are the creation of a world that exists only in the resulting image. Through the camera’s ability to gather and transform light over
time, Andrea makes visible something that was never visible in the first place.
Forsythia
Archival pigment print
2023
25” x 17”
$750
Privet
Archival pigment print
2024
16” x 20”
$750
Azalea and Rhododendron
Archival pigment print
2024
16” x 20”
$750
Cherry
Archival pigment print
2023
17” x 25”
$750
SOLD
Crepe Myrtle
Archival pigment print
2025
20” x 27”
$750
Sister Hydrangeas
Archival pigment print
2025
20” x 27”
$750
SOLD
Tree Hydrangea
Archival pigment print
2024
17” x 25”
$750
Winter Hydrangea
Archival pigment print
2025
16” x 20”
$750
Lori Lohstoeter
Lori Lohstoeter’s practice is rooted in an active imagination and close observation. Working
primarily through abstraction, she seeks to capture the spirit of a place, experiencing a sense of flow when she silences all voices and is left with her experience and her art.
Drawing from printmaking, sculpture, and painting, Lori builds layered surfaces through mixing and waxing pigments, scratching, embossing, etching, and transferring. Her works often suggest elements of the natural world, including water, forests, and creeks. Unconventional tools, such as whittled branches, allow each process to introduce unexpected shifts in texture and form.
Lori’s process balances control with chaos in an ongoing act of seeing, listening, and creating. Her work reflects the complexity of translating an experience of place into material form through richly textured surfaces and intuitive mark-making.
Brackish (diptych)
Cold Wax
2025
36” x 48” x 2.25"
NFS
Drift
Cold Wax
2026
30” x 25” x 2"
$1,820
SOLD
Hidingspaces (diptych)
Cold Wax
2025
24” x 48”x 2"
$5,200
Unbridled (triptych)
Cold Wax
2024
14” x 36”
$3,350
Merrilee Main
Merrilee creates paintings independent of visual reference. Working within the tradition
of Abstract Expressionism, she uses color, form, and space as a visual language, allowing free gesture and process to shape each composition.
Layers of paint and brushwork accumulate over time, revealing unexpected moments of chance that are refined and developed through deliberate decision-making. By balancing spontaneous mark-making with careful consideration, Merrilee creates compositions that feel both intuitive and intentional.
Through light, space, and calligraphic brushwork, her paintings evoke a sense of place, movement, drama, and quiet whimsy. Together, these elements create a visual experience that invites viewers to move between spontaneity and structure.
merrileemain@gmail.com
Good Music
Acrylic on canvas
2025
30” x 24”
$850
Mummer
Acrylic on canvas
2018
30” x 24”
$850
Spring Thing
Acrylic on canvas
2025
30” x 24”
$850
Silk Road
Acrylic on canvas
2025
30” x 24”
$850
Flight
Acrylic on canvas
2026
30” x 24”
$850
Annie Roberts
Annie Roberts’ practice is grounded in an exploration of form, proportion, balance, and structure. As both a sculptor and architect, she understands how thoughtful relationships between these elements can create a quiet strength that requires little embellishment.
Nature and the subtle forces that shape it remain Annie’s greatest source of inspiration. As a scuba diver, hiker, and lifelong lover of the coast, she is drawn to the rhythms and structures found beneath the water, along shorelines, within forests, and among mountains.
Working primarily with porcelain, Annie pushes the material to its limits, creating translucent
and delicate forms that balance vulnerability with strength. Through luminous surfaces, fluid
structures, and carefully resolved proportions, her sculptures evoke the movement and harmony found throughout the natural world.
@annieroberts_ceramics
Untitled
Porcelain
2026
10” x 7” x 7"
$425
Untitled
Porcelain
2026
9” x 5” x 5"
$425
Seaweed
Porcelain
2026
7” x 7” x 4"
$325
Untitled
Porcelain
2026
6” x 8” x 8"
$525
Untitled
Porcelain
2026
4” x 10” x 3"
$325
Sea Cabbage
Porcelain
2026
8” x 8” x 8"
$625
Untitled
Porcelain
2026
8” x 9” x 7"
$625
Eddy
Porcelain
2026
7” x 8” x 7"
$525
Barbara O’Shea Strong
Barbara O’Shea Strong’s photographic practice is rooted in close observation of the ways people move through their surroundings. She is drawn to the choreography and interactions of everyday life.
In this series, Barbara was struck by the wrapped forms standing along the shoreline, recognizing similarities to congregations, families, gatherings, and silent figures within the landscape. While the burlap serves the practical purpose of protecting plants through the winter, the forms suggest broader themes of shelter, vulnerability, belonging, and community.
By leaving her photographs untitled, Barbara allows space for individual interpretation. Her work captures the energy and mood of the moments that first drew her attention, inviting viewers to bring their own readings to what they see.
@barbaraosheaphotography
Untitled
Archival pigment print on paper
2025
16" x 20”
$400
Untitled
Archival pigment print on paper
2018
16" x 20”
$400
Untitled
Archival pigment print on paper
2025
22” x 14”
$400
Untitled
Archival pigment print on paper
2025
22” x 14”
$400
Untitled
Archival pigment print on paper
2025
22” x 14”
$400
Untitled
Archival pigment print on paper
2025
12” x 8”
$400
Untitled
Archival pigment print on paper
2018
16" x 20”
$400
Anda Styler
Anda Styler’s plein air practice explores the light, movement, and energy found within nature. Through direct observation, she captures the energy of nature and the shifting relationships among movement, color, and form as they emerge in the landscape.
Her ongoing study of nature has deepened her understanding of the natural processes that shape the growth and appearance of organic forms. With each painting, Anda explores the possibilities of her medium, experimenting with surfaces that expand her approach to painting.
While rooted in observation, her work extends beyond the physical landscape. Through an element of imagination, Anda captures the feeling and energy of fleeting moments, creating paintings that reflect both the experience of nature and the possibilities of perception.
@AndaJStyler
Wet Pavement
Acrylic on aluminum
2026
16” x 20"
$1,500
Mid September
Acrylic on composite
2026
18” x 24”
$2,200
Deep Woods Falls
Acrylic on aluminum
2026
12” x 16”
$750
Steep Rock
Acrylic on aluminum
2026
16” x 20”
$1,500
Dunhams Pond
Acrylic on aluminum
2025
12” x 16”
$750
Shallow Water
Acrylic on aluminum
2026
12” x 16”
$750
Shadowed Rock
Acrylic on composite
2026
18” x 24”
$2,200
Almudena Fernandez Vicens
FIRST PRIZE
Almudena Fernandez Vicens explores the relationship between material, time, and perception through experimentation and discovery. Rather than following
a predetermined plan, she works closely with her materials, allowing each piece to evolve through unexpected changes and adjustments.
Guided by minimal expression, monochromatic palettes, and open space, Almudena creates abstract works that exist between the recognizable and
unknown. Drawing inspiration from architecture, nature, and the beauty of decay, she investigates materiality and the passage of time through landscape sshaped by memory, erosion, and change.
At the core of her practice is a search for stillness and honesty, drawing attention to quiet moment sand fleeting forms of beauty. Through abstraction,
Almudena invites viewers to pause, reflect, and engage more deeply with her work.
Holding Space
Cheesecloth and PaperCrate clay mounted on wooden frame
2025
15” x 15”
$1,200
Inner Dialogue
Monotype–etching inks on Stonehenge 250g paper
2025
19” x 19”
$650
Unfolding Time
Cheesecloth and PaperCrate clay mounted on wooden frame
2026
15” x 15”
$1,200
A Drop of Time
Monotype–etching inks on Stonehenge 250g paper
2025
19” x 19”
$650
Weaving Time
Cheesecloth and PaperCrate clay mounted on wooden frame
2025
15” x 15”
$1,200
Dialogues
Monotype–etching inks on Stonehenge 250g paper
2025
19” x 19”
$650
Zili Zhang
SMALL
Zili’s photography applies the principles of Minimalism to the complexity of everyday life. Through a unique combination of color, form, and space, he transforms ordinary scenes into quiet studies of balance, simplicity, and human presence.
When a compelling subject emerges, Zili often waits for another element—whether a person, object, or gesture—to enter the frame and complete the
composition. This process creates a visual dialogue between the elements within each photograph, allowing seemingly ordinary moments to take on
new significance.
Working from a variety of vantage points, Zili’s photographs reveal the smallness of human beings within the natural world and their built environments. Through careful observation and composition, his work transforms scenes from nature and the human world into poetic expressions of existence.
@windinsilence
Far Above Dam No.1
Archival inkjet print
2019
16” x 20”
$300
Three Trees Three Shadows (Color)
Archival inkjet print
2025
16” x 20”
$300
Crossing (One)
Archival inkjet print
2025
16” x 20”
$300
Three Plus One
Archival inkjet print
2026
16” x 20”
$300
Subconscious
Archival inkjet print
2025
20” x 16”
$300
Red
Archival inkjet print
2026
20” x 16”
$300
Two and Two
Archival inkjet print
2023
20” x 16”
$300
