I create life-affirming paintings that communicate the rough beauty present in our human brokenness and healing.

When I paint people, I am a studied realist, but the spaces around those people are varied as the places we call home. Here perception, art history, and interior contemplation interact in intuitive ways. Objects and rooms are metaphors for the darkness and light of human lives.

As a humanities educator and scholar, my driving interest has always been story and the "text" of our shared cultural communication. For the first half of my career, I wrote on subjects ranging from museums to public speaking to poetry, but one project in particular influenced my way of seeing: I spent seven years researching Be Opened! — a book about the religious traditions of Deaf people. Thinking deeply in the visual language of signs opened a door in my brain. My sensitivity to the world around me expanded, and soon I found myself working and studying full time in the visually accessible language of representational painting.

I grew up in Texas and now live in Maryland with my husband, portrait photographer Joe Portolano. Together we have six grown daughters — five of them adopted from Ukraine — and an ever-growing, international tribe of grandchildren who sometimes pose for portraits in our home studio.

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Lana Portolano is an artist & educator based in the Washington/Baltimore corridor.

Art Education
The Rome Workshops, Rome, Italy (2024, 2026)
Compass Atelier, Kensington, Maryland
Master copyist program, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (ongoing)
*I have workshopped with some of the finest figurative artists working today, including Steven Assael, Roberto Osti, Hollis Dunlap, and Zoey Frank

M.A. English literature & Ph.D. Rhetoric (1997), Catholic University of America

Selected Exhibitions
2025 National Gallery of Art Master Copyist group show, Nepenthe Gallery, Alexandria, Virginia
2025 Maryland Federation of Art Members Exhibit, Maryland Hall, Annapolis, Maryland
2024 Kensington Paint the Town Plein Air, first place, Kensington, Maryland, Juror: Teresa Oaxaca
2024 Covington Emerging Artist Award, third place, Howard County Maryland, Juror: Robin Holliday

Teaching Background
Until 2019, I directed the M.A. in Humanities program at Towson University, where I am professor emerita.
I have taught literature at the U.S. Naval Academy and poetry at the Johns Hopkins Osher Institute for Lifelong Learning.
Since pivoting to art, I have led several writers & artists retreats at Still Point Mountain Retreat in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
During the pandemic, I created a homeschool curriculum based on classical arts & humanities education.

Community Service
Portrait life model sessions moderator, Howard County Center for the Arts, Ellicott City, Maryland
Canine Humane Network, pet portrait collaborations, Highland, Maryland

Professional Organizations
Portrait Society of America
Maryland Federation of Art
DC Art Model Collective (artist member)

About me