Friends of the Coastal Branch Library are pleased to announce that Lori Drew is their featured artist for the month of May.

This is the third year the library has featured Drew, a former U.S. Navy photojournalist who now works out of an art studio in her home in the Point Washington neighborhood of Santa Rosa Beach.

This year’s show will feature Drew’s works in cold wax and oils, a technique she discovered during a trip to Asheville, N.C.

The technique involves mixing cold beeswax and solvent with oil paints and then layering it onto wood panels. After laying on a priming medium on custom wood panels, Drew mixes cold wax medium with oil paints and begins the journey, not really knowing what is at the end of the road.

“The first few layers create the base, with the next few usually revealing a path, but I never really know where I’m going till I get there,” Drew said. “I find that the most remarkable results happen, in art and in life, when you trust in your spirit and accept everything as being exactly where you are supposed to be at that moment.”

Drew was born and raised in a small town in New Jersey and moved to Santa Rosa Beach in 2000 after temporary stints in Japan, California, Oregon, Texas, Wisconsin and Indiana. She credits her love of nature not only to living on the emerald coast but also travelling to 17 national parks, thus far.

Drew’s work may also be enjoyed at the Lowkylzart Gallery featured at Acopia Home Loans in Destin as well as by appointment at Clay Road Studio.

Drew’s paintings will be on display at the Coastal Branch Library though the end of May.

Call 850-267-9452 for more information.

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