Paula Goshgarian Smith, a New England native, and now a Richmond-based artist, was always interested in exploring her creative side, but focused her early career in healthcare, after obtaining her bachelor’s degree in Nursing in 1985. Also an athlete, she spent many years competing at the amateur level in cycling. Throughout this period, her creativity continued to express itself through her participation in the occasional painting class, first working in acrylics and then moving on to oils. It was not until a few years ago that she decided to apply her focus to her art and began to paint more regularly. Still working as a nurse, she now spends most of her free time taking art classes, participating in workshops, and creating works in oil. As both a nature and animal advocate, she first started the more art-focused phase of her life by exploring works of animals in their natural environment, and soon after began to receive commissions for animal paintings, which she still enjoys creating. More recently, her artwork has focused on architecture and the urban landscape, leading to the development of a series of paintings entitled Along the Bus Route. It was during her bus commute to work that she first noticed the nuances of the light and not only the beauty that exists in this light but the moodiness it created in her paintings, which is now a principal theme in Paula’s work: the energy and the listlessness, the movement and the stillness, the life and the loneliness, the freshness and the antiquity. Her work has been described as realistic yet “painterly.” Her paintings have been shown regionally in several juried exhibits. Although she has enjoyed her lifelong career as a nurse, she soon hopes to devote her retirement years solely to her art.