A Norfolk Western 1218 locomotive emerges from a hazy, sage-green landscape painted on a three-story brick building in downtown Roanoke. The mural, titled “Nature Train,” features two tall trees shedding leaves, along with a squirrel and vines clinging to what was the world’s most powerful historic steam locomotive built by the railroad, now the Norfolk Southern, based in this city of southwest Virginia.
Read MoreTheodora Zavala showcases her diverse paintings in solo and group exhibits at galleries, colleges and libraries in New York City and Long Island.
Photos Joseph Kellard and Theodora Zavala
Artist Theodora Zavala Captures the Essentials
Theodora Zavala paints in multiple genres and diverse subjects, and therein lies a lead to what fundamentally drives her as an artist.
Read MoreWired Into Winter Trees
There’s something about the way Gail Neuman explains how she constructs a sculpture that inspires a likeness to an architect detailing blueprints for a building.
Read MoreBlowing His Own History
Edward Jimenez had flown in from Southern California to play his trumpet in midtown Manhattan, and I had just crossed the street from Central Park when our paths crossed.
Read MoreMetropolitan Opera’s Tour Offers Peek at Backstage Productivity
Maria Callas and Mario del Monaco stared at me from a wall in a corridor. I locked eyes with the celebrated singers, their portraits on canvas were the first of various theatrical encounters when I toured the hidden halls of the famed Metropolitan Opera House earlier this year.
Read MoreHarlequin Saves
In the acknowledgements of her haunting yet heroic autobiography Infidel, secular activist and ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali thanks several people who helped her to survive the brutal Islamic and tribalist cultures from which she was raised in Africa and Saudi Arabia. But the people who likely helped her most are those she never met, specifically authors from Emily Bronte to George Orwell to Danielle Steel.
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