(NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ) -- The Alfa Art Gallery presents "Pigmented Perceptions," from September 1 to October 24, 2026. This exhibition explores oil and mixed media through the work of local fine artists. The Alfa Art Gallery invites you to experience the perspectives of twelve artists as they examine themes of architecture, landscapes, emotions, and identities.
Ranging in styles from portraiture to abstraction and realism, “Pigmented Perceptions” is an exploration of the world around us presented through the eyes of our selected artists. These distinct artistic perspectives are complemented by the diversity of mediums and techniques represented in the exhibition.
The exhibition serves as a celebration of both artistic expression and interpretation, showcasing the range of ways artists perceive, engage with, and represent their worldview. The gallery hopes to create an engaging dialogue between these varying types of works, while encouraging viewers to bring their own perspectives into the gallery space.
There will be an Opening Reception on Thursday, September 10, 2026 from 6:30pm - 9:30pm and a Virtual Reception: September 11, 2026 starting at 6:30pm. Alfa Art Gallery is located at 108 Church Street in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Alfa Art Gallery utilizes New Brunswick Art Salons to unify the local art community and beyond. Since starting the program in 2010, Alfa has made a point to include a salon dedicated to showcasing pieces in watercolor, oil, photography, and various mixed mediums. Over the years, the series has not only exhibited works from both established and emerging artists but has made fruitful connections locally and internationally through its successful programs. Within this non-profit organization, Alfa Art Gallery maintains its mission to uplift artists by providing an open and innovative environment that is dedicated to fostering a vibrant and diverse cultural community.
2026 NBAS Featured Artists in Oil and Mixed Media:
Amy Putman is a mixed-media and hand-cut collage artist, activist and creative director based in Montclair, New Jersey. Amy was raised outside of Boston and pursued her BFA from the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. After graduating, Amy moved to New York City, where she spent 17 years as an award-winning Creative Director at CBS News. While working at CBS, Amy became involved in activism, helping to create and brand the Million Mom March for Common Sense Gun Laws. In Amy’s life, art and design have been a consistent source of comfort; after the 2008 market crash, Amy spent the year painting and collaging pieces together, an undertaking that sowed the seeds for her current work. The results of the 2016 election inspired her to combine her passions for activism and art. Most recently, Putnam displayed her work at an exhibition at Newark Airport terminal A, which featured works from artists across the state of New Jersey and served to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution by showcasing pieces that address the ideals that drove the Revolution and the implications of those ideals for today’s society. Her art has garnered local and national media attention, with features from Newsweek Magazine and WNBC. Amy is a Trustee at Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, the Trust for Trauma Journalism, SKIP of New York, and a founding member of the New York Collage Ensemble.
Agnes Jackiewicz is an accomplished contemporary painter originally from Poland. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in painting and painting design in architecture and urban planning from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Wroclaw, Poland. After moving to the United States, she settled in Connecticut, where she lives and works today. Her practice focuses on vibrant abstract painting influenced by both fine art and architectural design, often exploring color, movement, and spatial relationships through layered compositions. In recent years, Jackiewicz has exhibited widely across the United States and Europe in solo and group shows, juried exhibitions, and competitions. Recent highlights include Digital Grace: FLEX:// at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven (2025) and the Greenwich Art Society’s Reviving Inner Rhythms exhibition (2023). She has also participated in numerous exhibitions in Poland and the U.S., maintaining an active international presence. Her work is included in private collections and design projects.
AnnaCarina Sinocchi is an esteemed, New Jersey-born and raised, oil and mixed media artist. Sinocchi discovered her love of art as a child and pursued both her BFA and MFA from William Paterson University. Throughout the years, Sinocchi has refined her practice and developed a distinct style whilst continuously using it as a form of self-expression. Her work emphasizes architecture while juxtaposing it with defined geometric forms and cloudy, astral abstraction. Now a professor at her alma mater, Sinocchi has been recognized both locally and globally, with her work being featured in U.S.A Today, The China Post, and The International Herald Tribune. Sinocchi is prominent within the New Jersey art world, with several solo exhibitions throughout the state, including her 2023 exhibition, 'Architecture for Spaces Unknown' with Monmouth Museum. Sinocchi’s work can be seen in both public and private collections, including The Paterson Museum and New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell’s collection.
Brian Keeler is an American realist painter recognized for his atmospheric landscapes and figurative works. Born in 1953, Keeler studied at Keystone College and the York Academy of Arts, working primarily in oil, pastel, and watercolor. His paintings emphasize direct observation and atmosphere. His drawing inspirations came from the landscapes of Pennsylvania, New York, and Italy. Notable bodies of work focus on the Susquehanna developed through his plein air practice. Keeler’s work has received wide acclaim over the years, appearing in feature articles such as American Artist Magazine and Pastelogram, while his paintings have been collected by private, corporate, and museum collections. In addition to his studio practice, Keeler is also an author, educator, and arts advocate, publishing the instructional books Dramatic Color in the Landscapes and Light on the Figure, while also founding arts initiatives including the Blue Heron Gallery and the Susquehanna Summer Solstice Fest.
Erica Harney is a curator, educator, fine artist, and scenic painter born in New York in 1984. Her acquired degrees (a BFA and an MFA in Drawing and Painting) ground Harney’s work in technical intention and the creation of scenery and atmosphere. In her landscape paintings, a breadth of painting, alongside mixed media, is used to create vast, sometimes fantastical landscapes. During the day, she works in the entertainment and production industries, painting murals and large-scale backdrops for television, film, museums, and retail displays. Her profession inspired a current series of work that highlights the abundance of waste generated by the entertainment industry. By taking scrap material from her day job, such as scrap lumber, muslin, and offcuts from CNC routers, and leftover materials from her home studio, Harney recontextualizes scenery to include waste in the final products of her work, directly countering the cycle of waste she encounters. She carries a wide resume of public mural commissions and philanthropic exhibitions across the tri-state area, which speaks to her dedication to involvement in the community. She’s currently based in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, where she has been since 2016, and is a member of both the Lansdowne Art Board as Exhibition Coordinator and Philadelphia Mural Arts as Assistant Painter and Restoration Artist.
Karen Goldberg is a realist oil painter and illustrator based in Bloomfield, New Jersey. She is primarily self-taught and further developed her artistic practice by attending classes at the Montclair Art Museum. Goldberg is known for creating paintings that evoke peace, warmth, and nostalgia, particularly through carefully observed landscapes, domestic settings, and figures. Her works are characterized by their attention to light, reflection, and the quiet beauty of everyday life. Before dedicating herself fully to art, she worked in New York City in the banking industry and later focused on raising her three daughters. In addition to fine art, Goldberg is the co-creator and illustrator of the award-winning Bumpy Books learn-to-read series, which received the 2008 Moonbeam Children’s Book Award for Reading Skills and Literacy. In 2013, she published Funny Side Up through Adams Media. Her paintings and illustrations have appeared on the covers of Suburban Essex Magazine, Vicinity Publications, and materials for the Montclair Art Museum. Her work has also been featured in numerous juried exhibitions throughout New Jersey. In 2025, Alfa Art Gallery honored Goldberg with its “Master of Material” Award in Oil Painting, recognizing her technical precision and emotional sensitivity as an artist.
Kate Kern Mundie is a mid-career landscape artist and educator based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a certificate in printmaking and painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Her work focuses on interactions between humanity and nature, with both urban cityscapes and natural environmental scenes being prominent subjects in her work. Her works are often plein air, adding an additional level of authenticity to her outdoor subjects.Her focus on environmental realism can be seen reflected in her work with her use of vibrant colors as well as a portrayal of human made structures within nature. Despite living in Philadelphia, Mundie often spends time on Deer Isle, Maine, the scenery of which often influences her work. She is active and prominent within both the Pennsylvania artist community and the Deer Isle artist community. She has won a variety of awards throughout her decades-long career, including the Best In Show & Donald Meyer Medal at the 2025 Art of the Flower exhibition. Her current gallery affiliations are with the F.A.N. gallery in Philadelphia, PA, the Station Gallery in Greenville, DE, and the Carver Hill Gallery in Camden, ME.
Keith Vogrin is a Pennsylvania artist known for his strong skill and passion for oil painting. His neoromantic style is shown through landscapes inspired by the outdoors that shaped his early love of nature. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Pennsylvania State University, where he developed formal techniques, including expressive brushstrokes influenced by Impressionism, which are now a key part of his work. Growing up in a small town, Keith developed a deep appreciation for nature, giving him a unique point of view that he incorporates into his art. His style of realism turns everyday scenes into something romantic through contrasting dark and light, and warm and cool tones. Through this approach, he reflects on the world in a way that helps others see familiar places differently. Since beginning his career, Keith Vogrin’s work has been shown in exhibitions across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Maryland. In 2022 Keith became a Lehigh Art Alliance Exhibition Award Winner in his hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Robert Henne is a New Jersey-based artist and writer specializing in unique, colorful oil paintings, both representational and abstract. He has several years of exhibition and art instruction experience, and has recently released a book titled “The Perceptive Eye,” a guide to seeing the world around oneself through an artistic lens. His paintings reflect the focus of his book, often depicting decaying manmade structures through colors that revitalize the space and draw the viewer’s attention to parts of the world that may be overlooked in everyday interaction. His abstract art, called “Visionary Works” by the artist, contain organic, undulating forms that create thought-provoking compositions and seek to engage the viewer in a similar way. By exploring the impact of color on his compositions, Henne expresses his thoughts, feelings, and ideas in the oil medium. Robert Henne has recently had works selected for Special Recognition at LST Online Gallery, has extensive exhibition experience in the New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania area, and has had two past solo exhibitions in Princeton, NJ titled “Illuminations” and “Impact Through Color”.
Santiago Cohen is a New Jersey based artist, animator, illustrator, and author whose work is distinguished by its ambitious storytelling and richly layered narratives. Through his oil paintings, Cohen intertwines surrealist elements with the real world, creating vivid and striking characters that blur the boundaries between memory, myth, and reality. As a Mexican American artist, Cohen’s work explores themes of identity, culture, migration, and social consciousness through immersive world building and striking imagery. His paintings are marked by bold contrasts and vibrant palettes, presenting humanity in a deeply expressive and fantastical light. In addition to his fine art practice, Cohen has built an extensive career as an illustrator and designer, contributing to numerous children’s books and collaborating with distinguished animators at HBO, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon to create captivating characters and imaginative visual narratives. Beyond animation, Cohen has worked as both an author and illustrator on several book publications, most recently Secrets of a Lost Diary, alongside his acclaimed trilogy Exvida: A Story of Migration. The project is an ambitious autobiographical work that reflects on his childhood growing up in post-World War II Mexico and his migration to New York City during the 1980s, weaving together personal history with his oil painting practice. Cohen has exhibited his artwork throughout New Jersey, Mexico, and New York City. Most recently, his work was featured at Art Fair 14C, with additional works on display at The Grange and Oso Felipe. Across both his paintings and illustrations, Cohen’s work functions as a unified exploration of the human experience, demonstrating his unique ability to transform fragments of personal and collective history into vibrant, imaginative worlds.
Shara Bailey is a representational artist with a focus on vast natural landscapes as well as the often overlooked beauty found within the built environment. After a trip to New Mexico in the late 1980s, Bailey discovered her love for the open skies and sprawling landscapes of the American West. Wishing to live in the area she felt so connected to, Bailey went on to spend 10 years in Arizona, earning her PhD in Anthropology from Arizona State University. Along with her anthropological studies, Bailey has also earned a certificate from North Montco Vo-Tech in Commercial Art and trained at the NJ Visual Arts Center with artist Valeri Larko. Bailey is now a Professor at the prestigious New York University. After returning to the East Coast, she turned to painting as a means to connect with her love of the American West. Bailey merges and applies the lens of natural landscapes with and onto those of urban scenes, reminding the viewer that beauty can be found everywhere. Her work is split between that of dramatic landscapes and isolated moments of the built space, often showcasing the impact of light, both natural and artificial, in transforming the mundane into something magical. Bailey has been showcased in numerous New York and New Jersey exhibitions and solo shows, most recently the 2022-25 SOMA Artists’ Studio Tour in Maplewood, NJ, and the 2025 Maplewood Artwalk & Music Festival.
Ritu Bajaj is a mixed media artist from New Jersey, with mostly oil paintings on display. She focuses on realism and naturalism as a reference for her art. She began creating art in college and decided that she wanted to make a career of it with a passion and focus on realistic paintings. Her paintings are exquisitely crafted with a hyper-realistic touch to them. She has been a part of many exhibitions with honorable mentions in various galleries, as well as, receiving third place in an exhibition. She has created many landscape paintings, including different views of landmarks and views of open bodies of water. She has also created floral paintings with a mix of other objects that make the paintings most delicate and ornate. In 2025, Ritu was honored with the Alden Bryan Memorial Medal Award at the Allied Artists of America’s 112th Exhibition. This 2025 exhibition was one that recognized her Traditional Landscape art.
The gallery thanks its sponsors: Amboy Bank, New Brunswick City Center, GSK, Magyar Bank, The Bank of Princeton, Daiichi-Sankyo, Johnson & Johnson, Middlesex County Board of Chosen Freeholders, Pfizer, and Merck.
