First Friday Art Walk – April 2022

Discover Art Downtown with our Artist Reception at NexLynx Gallery of Arts, Friday April 1st from 5pm to 8pm. View the new artwork by local artist, Becky Drager, during the First Friday Art Walk.

The year of 2022 is about a new journey and change, so with that comes change to Becky Drager’s artistic approach. In the recent past, she had been doing a more hyper-realistic type of work like her “Inspired By Topeka People” portrait and Sunflower series. After 11 years of being a professional painter, Becky felt that it is time to explore a new direction where she uses more of her creative intuition when painting.

Her dear friend, Romy, has been a huge inspiration in moving her forward by introducing Becky to “paint over”, this technique of taking an old painting that failed and adding new life to it by painting over it. Becky finds it to be very freeing, spiritual and meditative. So, some of the paintings in this exhibit are old paintings brought back to life with new added paint.

This paint over technique lead Becky to start using fresh new canvases, where she continues to use her colorful style, but with bigger blocks of color that are splashed upon the surface. This more abstract impressionistic style is about more freedom, exploring color using quicker and broader brush strokes, bringing more energy to her art. Although coloring outside her lines is a little scary, Becky is looking forward to the future knowing that there is a lot of joyful painting ahead of her.