The Downtown Gallery is an extension of Ryan Eure Designs located in the heart of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.  We officially opened our (2nd set of) doors to the public in November 2022. 

Our goal is to offer an eclectic art gallery featuring my jewelry as well as artwork from local artists for the community to enjoy.  The Downtown Gallery exhibits an array of visual arts from photography and oil paintings to bronze statues and carved wood sculptures. The store and gallery combine a passion for fine art and my career as a jewelry designer.

Read on to meet the other artists! 

          Gulay Berryman

 

Gulay Berryman received her art training at the Ecole National des Beaux Arts de Versailles, France, the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, and the Ecole du Louvre, Paris.  She has exhibited in France, Iceland, Senegal, Mauritius, Italy, Oman, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United States. In the late 1990’s, Gulay was commissioned to do portrait paintings by a member of the Royal Family of Oman.  She twice won the American Embassy Paris Art Show (2001-02) and invited to exhibit at the Biennial of Florence, Italy in 2005. Between 2015-18, Gulay was the owner/director of the Williamsburg Art Gallery in Williamsburg, Virginia which she now runs as an online gallery. Gulay is a juried Living Artist © of the Art Renewal Center, of the Salmagundi Club of New York, the International Guild of Realism, an elected member of the American Artists Professional League and an Associate Member of Oil Painters of America.

 

Andre Lucero

Andre Lucero is an impressionistic oil painter based near Richmond, VA, Andre trained in a traditional academic setting and has now combined his love for the outdoors with his art. His work includes landscapes, figures and still life all painted from life. Andre reveres Old Masters and their painting techniques. He works to use Renaissance painting materials to produce the medium that gives a distintive luminescent quality. Andre is of Spanish descent but was born in Tehran in 1967. His U.S. Military family returned to the states soon after his birth. After earning a BFA, cum laude, in 1989, Andre worked as a free-lance illustrator. During that time, his illustrations appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Playboy, U.S. News & World Report and The Washington Times. While his illustrations were honored with the 1995 Virginia Press Association Best of Show Award and the 1994 Award of Excellence from the Art Directors' Club of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Andre left illustration to devote his full attention to painting.

 

Joanna Wright
 
Jo Wright’s work is best described as a convergence of two enduring passions. Growing up in England, Jo has had a natural compulsion to create from childhood. A lifetime around horses has given rise to an obvious muse for this creativity. Jo’s work is inspired by a wide range of equestrian themes and can be both representational or stylized in composition. More recent pieces have incorporated natural American hardwoods with foundry cast bronze. Jo shares time between the UK and the USA and her work has been shown in galleries on both sides of the Atlantic including being represented every year at the Lloyds Art Show in London. By her own account, Jo’s creativity is genetically rather than academically acquired. Attention to detail and total immersion in her subject gives rise to pieces that have visually magnetic appeal.

Bill Casto

Bill is a former college football coach and athletic director. He creates nationally competitive wood sculptures using found driftwood from local waters. Bill selects weathered and interesting wood, often hundreds of years old to carve interpretive or stylized pieces of art.

Bill has the exceptional talent of seeing what lies hidden in the wood. By using the available lines and planes he painstakingly brings to life his wildlife sculptures. His creativity has been recognized by art professionals for its attention to detail, use of grain patterns and hand-polished glass-like finishes. Every attempt is made to capture the essence of the wildfowl rather than a realistic duplication of the subject. Bill's sculptures emphasize form, content, movement and are totally original and one of a kind.

  

Kathy Hornsby

Kathy is a photographer, painter, textile, and multi-media artist who lives in Williamsburg. When the global pandemic curtailed her love of travel photography, she looked closer to home for inspiration – ending up in her sister’s pool. Shooting from above the water or below, often on a submerged tripod, she spent countless fun-filled experimental hours splashing and swishing and swooshing flowers under water. At the edge of the pool, draping a towel over her head for darkness, she’d check the cameras’ back screens to see if anything was worth a damn; typically NOT the case. The “keeper” images combined movement, distortion, abstraction, reflections of the sky and the underside of the water’s surface. The resulting blur and fracturing of light resulted in unique and often surprising photographs.  These make up Kathy’s body of work titled “Flower Disarrangement”.

  

Wil Swink

Wil Swink was born in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1981. Swink is a self-taught artist who began painting in 2011 while living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In a brash attempt to impress a woman (now his wife), Swink, fictitiously, told her he was an artist and wanted to use her as a muse. This forced him to produce a portrait of her, which then became the catalyst for booking his first public art show. Swink continued to show work in the Boston area and has since shown work in his native Virginia, New York, and New Jersey. After living in the Boston area for over ten years, Swink is now living and working out of Williamsburg, VA. The paintings are typically a result of many layers of paint, maps or blueprints, wood stain, epoxy, etching and wood. These materials serve to provide richness and meaning in the sensory process.  Swink’s work is a product of a variety of life experiences and a vehicle for self-expression.
Thomas Ema

Thomas Ema is an Associate Member of the Oil Painters of America who captures dramatic light to make the ordinary look extraordinary.  “Having grown up in Williamsburg, Virginia, I have a deep appreciation for history and enduring values.”  His passion for painting began while a fine art major at Virginia Tech painting watercolor landscapes of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  In 1982, he moved to Denver, CO where he started and managed his own design firm, Ema Design Inc. for over 30 years.  In 2016, he moved back to Williamsburg to pursue painting on a full-time basis.  Thomas enjoys visiting places first discovered in his childhood and recalls taking art classes at the Twentieth Century Art Gallery before he started first grade.