MEET OUR SEPTEMBER ARTIST AND POETS!

Meet our September Artists and Poets! Taste the local flavor, experience the local art. Featured this month, our menu shares the spotlight with talented artists and poets from our community. We are hosting an artist reception here on Sunday, September 20th at 3:00pm. Artist: Robyn Holl Robyn Marie Holl brings a rare blend of artistic vision and hands-on community leadership to Sarasota. As a talented painter, seasoned curator, and passionate advocate for local creativity, she understands both what it takes to bring people together through art and what it means to give artists a place to thrive. She holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a BFA in Painting from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Her work, characterized by vivid color and movement, has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Since April 2022, Robyn has served as Cultural Curator at Sarasota’s Art Ovation Hotel, where she designs immersive arts experiences from the ground up. In this role, she manages a rotating roster of resident and featured artists, curates exhibitions, and builds lasting relationships with community leaders and creatives across the region—effectively uniting artists, audiences, and the wider community in a shared celebration of the arts. Robyn’s experience extends well beyond Florida. She spent nearly four years as a Visual Arts Program Coordinator in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she led creative workshops for young people and forged partnerships with schools and universities. Her journey and creative work have been featured in multiple publications. With an extensive international exhibition history, Robyn recently completed her fifth artist residency at Art Ovation with an exhibition titled Sunlit Rejuvenation. Created in 2026, this series centers on the color yellow, which she describes as an expression of joy, clarity, sunlight, and permission. The work reflects the idea that life does not need to be controlled to be beautiful, embodying a sentiment of, “I am allowed to be seen. I am allowed to shine without apologizing.” Often, despite their abstraction, the shapes in her paintings suggest birds, wings, or opening flames. These forms serve as a testament to the soul’s resilience—demonstrating that when fear departs, movement returns. The gestural quality of her work captures this flow, bridging the spiritual and physical in a single, unified expression. After moving from Baltimore, Maryland, to Sarasota four and a half years ago, Robyn has truly made this community her home. She paints regularly in her studio, often joined by her curious cat, Tangerine. Poet: April Bourne April Bourne is a retired cybersecurity professional and lifelong poet who has been writing since the age of sixteen. Service runs deep in her family — she, her husband, and all three of her grown children have worn a military uniform, with two of her children continuing to serve in the U.S. Army Reserves. When she’s not writing, April can be found traveling, cycling, walking in nature, or savoring time with family and friends. The painting is called Magically Embraced. A.J.