Lila BartelLila Bartel is a retired gifted studies teacher, who feeling a need for a new passion, began drawing and painting when her older child went off to college. She explored different techniques while studying with talented local and national artists. Portraits have become her favorite subject, especially children."My purpose is to start a new genre, Expressionism. If Impressionism started with Monet's impressionist 'Sunrise, ' Expressionism can start inTopeka, Kansas."Bartel draws a distinction between her Expressionism and the Abstract Expressionism popular in the 1950s."(My style) is strengthened with abstractions and exaggerations and sensations, while holding out a very realistic world. We baby boomers have lived idealism, and now we have met with reality." Read More Read Less