Local Artist Shares 'Peace & Quiet'

Lori Goll didn’t start out her career as an artist, but it is her passion.

The artist has an engineering background and after staring her career, began taking evening art classes, including taking studio classes at Northern Virginia Community College.

“I’ve always loved art,” Goll said. She said she worked in the telecommunications industry and after taking time off to raise her children, realized she didn’t want to go back to her job.

What Goll wanted to do was create art. “I’m not sure I’ve found my style yet,” she said of her work. She said she started out creating detailed, accurate paintings with small brushes, but found, “that’s not the kind of art I like to look at.”

Goll said she loves art that creates a mood that viewers can feel, rather than a literal representation of a scene. She said transitioning from creating detailed works to less technical scenes has been hard and she began working with pastels because of the material forces an artist to use larger lines and strokes.

Currently, Goll has work on exhibit at . The exhibit is called Peace & Quiet and runs through Sept. 24. She has participated in past Paint Herndon events, and Robin Carroll of ArtSpace thought her work would fit in well with this year’s event, since it had an agricultural theme. 

Goll said much of it includes seascapes that include just the sand, water and sky at different times of day and in different conditions, without much other detail. The exhibit also includes agricultural landscapes, many of them inspired or taken from Frying Pan Farm Park, just south of the town of Herndon.

She said both seascapes and landscapes are spaces she enjoys. Many of her seascapes are inspired from her time spent at Kill Devil Hills, N.C., where her family has a cottage. She said she likes looking out at the water and seeing a blank expanse. “It’s peaceful,” she said.

Peace and quiet was exactly what Goll was hoping to create with her art, she said. “That’s what I wanted people to feel,” she said. “I love to be at the ocean; and I love to be in the country.”

The ArtSpace exhibit also includes some etchings. “I love the look of etchings,” she said, which she feels look old fashioned and nostalgic by nature.

Goll has had one previous solo exhibit, at The Soundry in Vienna. She said she originally joined The Soundry because she was doing large-scale paintings on which she used glazes that needed better ventilation and more space to dry. Her dream is to some day have her own studio.

Goll said she is happy to be able to share her artwork so close to home at a location that works to promote art at a local level. “I don’t even know how to describe it,” she said. She said it can also be very scary to wait for the response to her work, but she has been pleased with the reception of her exhibit.

Some of Goll’s paintings and works have been sold through the ArtSpace exhibit. She said she is grateful to be able to sell and share her art. She said she doesn’t want her work sitting in her basement and is pleased to share it.

“I’m just obsessed with art now,” Goll said. “It’s all I want to do, it’s all I want to read about. I love it.”

Read more about Lori Goll, her art and where you can view it at her website or at ArtSpace's website.