Instead of filing photographs in an album, Elaine Nunnally recounted images of her travels along Interstate 81 on canvas.
Nunnally will present her series of painting titled "Interstate 81" at Gallery Two at 222 in Leesburg, Friday, Sept. 7 through Saturday, Sept. 29, with an artists’ reception from Friday, Sept. 7, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., during Leesburg’s First Friday Gallery Walk.
"Driving along interstates is one of the great common experiences that we have in this American car-loving society," Nunnally said in a press release. "The passing scenery, which includes interstate signs, billboards and exit ramp signs and vehicles, as well as rolling hills and mountains, has become rather beautiful to me. I decided to see if I could express this sensation in a new way, a way in which speed and cars and trucks and exit signs, in short, all the visual ‘stuff’ that we are bombarded with while traveling along an interstate highway, could be put in an interesting visual form."
NUNNALLY, a Sterling resident and art teacher at Potomac Falls High School, has shown her work locally and statewide, and her paintings are in private and public collections throughout the country.
Gale Waldron, spokesperson for the galleries, said Nunnally came to her with the idea of a series of paintings inspired by the artist’s experiences driving along the interstate from Northern Virginia to the Shenandoah Valley.
"We had just the place for her," Waldron said.
Gallery Two and 222 is a part of Gallery 222. It is an "emerging gallery," Waldron said, for new, cutting edge art forms, where as Gallery 222, the main gallery, is a place for "premiere and reputable" fine art.
"Elaine uses bright, bold colors," Waldron said. "When you first look at one of her paintings, you’re not sure what you’re looking at. Once you look at it for awhile, you start to see what it is."
Nunnally uses a lot of colors and big shapes to get her images across, Waldron said.
NUNNALLY WAS BORN in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Falls Church. She attended Radford University and later earned an MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has taught in Loudoun County Public Schools for 36 years.