Richard Buntzen, Soody Neshatfar & Anna Wainright

RICHARD BUNTZEN

Richard Buntzen is an award-winning freelance visual artist who works in oil painting and print-media collage from his studio in Asbury Park, New Jersey. His creative practice explores the persistent friction between reality and abstraction, as well as the interplay between memory and imagination.

Buntzen is a Signature Member of the National Collage Society and a member of the Maryland Federation of Art, Atlantic Highlands Art Council, and Monmouth Arts Alliance. He received his MFA in 2009 and continues to study painting with Julie Friedman.

Buntzen exhibits his work nationally and has participated in painting residency workshops with Mitchell Johnson in Truro, Massachusetts, and Edward Povey at Riven Projects in Catalonia, Spain. His work reflects an ongoing exploration of perception, experience, and the boundaries between the observed and the imagined.

SOODY NESHATFAR

The passion for visual art has been a lifelong part of Soody’s journey. She began her formal study of painting in 2000 under the guidance of Marge Levine. Her artistic education continued through pastel studies with acclaimed pastellists Richard McKinley and Lyn Asselta, as well as private instruction and numerous workshops with Julie Friedman in both oil and pastel.

Soody draws inspiration from the Impressionists, whose exploration of light, color, atmosphere, and everyday experience continues to inform her artistic vision. She is also a member of the Pastel Society of South Jersey, Monmouth Arts, and the Atlantic Highlands Art Council.

ANNA (AJ) WAINRIGHT, IAPS/EP- PSA/MP

Anna is a National and International award-winning gallery-represented artist.  Driven to paint images that evoke a sense of weather and emotion as well as place, she is known for her atmospheric paintings. After 25 years in public service, the pursuit of her dreams to be an artist began in 2007 with pastels as her preferred medium at the time. After 15 years of work in that medium her efforts culminated in 2022 when she received the top award, Prix De Pastel, in the Master Division of the Pastel World Exhibition at the International Association of Pastel Societies Convention in New Mexico, where she also received Eminent Pastelist distinction. She received the Alden Bryan Memorial Award in Landscape at the Oil Painters of America National Exhibition in 2024. She has Signature membership in the American Tonalist Society and (2027) Oil Painters of America, and associate in NOAPS and the American Impressionists Association.

Anna has exhibited in two shows in China and one in Korea. She was featured in “A Lyrical Landscape” in June 2025, “Conjuring the Landscape” in Jan 2021, and “Found and Imagined” April 2019 issues of the Artist’s Network Pastel Journal, as well as the book publication “Pure Pastel: Contemporary Works by Today’s Top Artists” in 2019.  Her works have been shown in museum exhibitions including the Butler Institute of American Art, OH; Slater Museum, Norwich, CT; and Haggin Museum, Stockton, CA. She has gallery representation at The Artful Deposit and Beacon Galleries in New Jersey, as well membership at the Salmagundi Club in New York City 2016-2025. www.ajwainright.com