Like her art, Donna Barnako is a multi-faceted lady. Her abstract style, filled with a menagerie of color palettes, is a direct reflection of the artist, herself. She is both serious and whimsical, gentle and tough, experienced and innocent. Being a former French translator in Brussels and having a big career as a health care lobbyist in DC afforded Donna many things, but a creative, artistic outlet wasn’t one of them. Nonetheless, she did that on her own, and with a full head of knowledge turned her craft into business, as well.

She owned a yarn shop for 15 years to share her love of knitting and fine, exotic yarns with those who shared her passion. “I took groups on knitting tours around the world. We could be in Ireland or somewhere in the world and all be on the tour bus knitting as we traveled to our next stop.”

“Wow look at that one,” the girl exclaimed while making her way through the charming SOBA gallery in downtown Bluffton. She had been walking around the featured artist room when finally, her eyes fixated on the painting hanging across from her, “The Reader,” making it clear the painting captured more than just our attention at Pink Magazine.

For Nelson Boren, cover artist at Pink Magazine, this is not his first rodeo. The Utah-based artist contributed the February 2009 Pink cover, the only cover that doesn’t feature a female. While Nelson has been involved in creating art since he was a child, he became a full-time artist in the 1990s and has explored painting ever since.

The word “freedom” struck me while speaking with Nelson. It was the way he spoke about it, with a kind sentiment that made the phrase become seared in my mind, like a hot brander to the brain. Nelson’s paintings give you a sense that you’re free as a cowboy with a western breeze fluttering through your hair and dirt crunching beneath your worn boots. There’s freedom in his art, not just in subject matter, but in the choice he gives you to interpret it. “I want to portray a glimpse rather than the whole story,” Nelson explains, “My paintings are pieces of cowboys, and it’s amazing how people look at that and see their grandpa or uncle. They finish the story a whole lot better than I could ever do it as an artist.”

A professional art career came late to Peter O’Neill, but in truth, it was close to not coming at all. After two failed marriages and a botched suicide attempt, Peter O’Neill felt he had nothing and found himself in a New Jersey hospital hopelessly despondent and in treatment for acute depression. Then something clicked within him. He looked around at the others with truly severe mental impairments and realized he did not belong where he was. He checked out of the hospital and literally, checked himself back into life.

In the town of Lake City, SC, Baker’s Sweets cafe and bakery sits on Main Street, and during this small, rejuvenated town’s 9-day long art festival, Artfields, it’s hard to get a seat. This bustling spot is one of the many store fronts that displays the more than 400 works of juried art, which plays host to thousands of visitors who come from far and wide to take in the festival. This month’s cover piece was one of this year’s entries in the prestigious Artfield’s event and not only caught our Publisher Elizabeth Millen’s eye, but also her heart.

“I was at Baker’s Sweets trying not to eat cake when I saw this painting. I leaped from my chair and ran over to gawk. In an instant, I was fully immersed in memories of my days riding my bike at the beach. I was so touched by this painting and instantly connected with its subject. And, the painting itself is masterful, stunning. I loved everything about it!” said Elizabeth.

Four-time Pink cover artist Karen Tarlton began her career 23 years ago, when her husband started his work as an F-16 pilot and test pilot for the United States Air Force. Characteristic of her creativity, Karen’s first works were painted murals on walls and furniture. She began to shift toward painting fine art on canvas about 20 years ago. Since then, Karen has sold her paintings around the globe, shipping to a different country practically every day. “I paint because I love it. I’m so fortunate to do what I am passionate about for a living.”

Candace Whittemore Lovely

In celebration of Pink’s 15th birthday, we are delighted to have the work of American Impressionist Painter and legendary local artist Candace Whittemore Lovely gracing the cover of the magazine for an unprecedented tenth issue. A Copely Master, trained in the Boston School tradition, Candace’s self-professed “fascination of the woman” has been in perfect symmetry with friend and Publisher Elizabeth Millen’s Pink philosophy of celebrating women from the start.

Amos Hummell has been a doodler all his life. For the past 35 years, the self-trained, March Pink and Paisley cover artist has been a colorful, folk-art inspired fixture on the local Lowcountry art scene. Though he dabbled in the traditional medium of oil on canvas for a short time a few years back, Amos’ style explores beyond the lines and is far looser than the confines of tradition. “For me, oil painting is like trying to play rock and roll on a typewriter. It’s just too slow; I can’t jam and I need to jam.”

Amos now favors digital pen and ink drawings, which he creates with a stylus on his iPhone and immediately posts to his Facebook page, much to the delight of his loyal local fans.

Aziz Kadmiri

Moroccan born Aziz Kadmiri landed in Atlanta in 2012 and hit the ground racing onto the American art scene. His imaginative vision is as broad and diverse as his background. He grew up in Casablanca, graduated from the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland and moved to Paris, where he received his master’s degree in hotel management at the Université Paris-Dauphine. He has lived in Barcelona, Rome and has homes in Paris and Marrakesh, Morocco. He has made Atlanta his permanent residence.

Three-time Pink cover artist Karen Tarlton began her career as an artist 23 years ago, when her husband started his work as an F-16 pilot and test pilot for the United States Air Force. Characteristic of her creativity, Karen’s first works were painted murals on walls and furniture. She began to shift toward painting fine art on canvas about 20 years ago. Since then, Karen has sold her paintings around the globe, shipping to a different country practically every day. “I paint because I love it. I’m so fortunate to do what I am passionate about for a living.”

Until Pink Founder & Publisher, Elizabeth Millen, happened by one of Brenda Luczynski’s gallery shows last year, our December cover artist had always painted Santa Claus at Christmas. “Elizabeth pointed at my Santa painting,” Brenda recalled, “and she smiled and said this is lovely, but next year why don’t you paint Mrs. Claus? So I did.” And this month’s magazine cover is the luckier for it.

Chatting by phone from her current home base in Atlanta, the prolific oil painter, who also has a home in Palmetto Dunes and a boat in Shelter Cove Marina, is every bit as holly jolly as the subject of her cover work of art, aptly titled: “Mrs. Claus.” There’s a happy lilt in her lovely Southern accent and a joyful passion that lights up her fluttery patter. “Painting makes me happy. I just get lost in it. If my husband came home from work in the middle of the day, he might find me sitting in my little studio, still in my PJs. I’ve been in love with painting for most of my life.” 

This is the third time we have been privileged to feature the stunning portraiture of world-renowned illustrator and painter Joe Bowler (late 2016) on our cover. We spoke with his daughter Brynne Bowler, a lifelong resident of Hilton Head Island, who told us that even more powerful than her father’s prolific body of work—and the philanthropic contributions he made to the arts on Hilton Head via donations of his paintings in various charitable capacities—was the 66-year partnership he shared with his beloved wife, Marilyn. “They were shining examples of how human beings should treat each other and the world,” Brynne recalled with obvious love and pride. “That’s the most important story about Joe Bowler: What he and my mother accomplished together.”

This is the second time in our magazine’s history that the work of illustrator Alece Birnbach has been selected to sass up our cover. “So Many Frogs So Little Time,” a part of her Sassy Halloween Collection, features a sassy witch for our October cover. We were delighted to catch up with the now San Francisco Bay City Area based artist across the coast in New York City, where she was putting her current profession as a graphic recording artist to practice.

Gayle Miller has been described as an artist who “paints in verbs rather than nouns,” and a stroll through her recent August Feature Artist exhibit at the Society of Bluffton Artists (SOBA) gallery certainly had visitors reaching for adjectives and adverbs to describe her watercolors: “Delightful, free-spirited, fun!” When asked to personally describe her style, the local painter, who is also a dedicated champion of the arts both in Bluffton and Hilton Head (She has served as SOBA’s president for the past three years.) reaches for her own pallet of adjectives: “Colorful, free, and uninhibited. That’s the way I like to paint.”

A business major in college, Gayle carved out a stellar career in the medical insurance business with State Farm, but at one point found herself hungry for a creative outlet. “I have always been a creative person,” Gayle remembers. “In high school, I was always designing and making clothes for myself and my friends, but I didn’t find painting until 2000. Living in Bloomington, Illinois, at the time, working and raising a family with her husband Tony—the now Sun City residents have been married 54 years this month!—Gayle first found that outlet by attending local parks and recreation painting classes. That led to more classes, which led the budding artist to connect with kindred spirits, which led to her finding an outlet for both her business and artistic skills, co-founding Inside Out: Accessible Art, a co-op art gallery in Bloomington.

When it comes to her Gullah-inspired paintings, Outsider Folk Artist Saundra “Renee” Smith is actually anything but. It’s her insider’s perspective, her deep and rich Gullah family legacy, gleaned from a lifetime of living on St. Helena’s Island that has earned our August cover artist a place among America’s great outsider folk artists, according to the National Advisory Board for the Folk Society of America. “My art is a testament of “grow-in up Gullah; it captures ladies with hats pulled low to cover secrets carried softly on the waters which run so deeply through the veins of the Gullah culture.”