Landscape paintings by Samuel Musa on display at NOVA-Manassas

Landscape paintings by Samuel Musa of Haymarket will be on exhibition in Colgan Gallery at the Manassas Campus of Northern Virginia Community College from May 23 to July 22.

Musa started painting in his 70s after retiring from various management and research positions in government, industry and academia. His only formal art training has been the studio art classes he started taking at NOVA-Manassas five years ago. He began painting with pastels, progressed to acrylics and is currently working in oils.

Musa’s late-in-life passion demonstrates considerable talent. His work has been exhibited in juried art shows at the Burwell-Morgan Mill in Millwood, Piedmont Regional Art Show in The Plains, Oatlands Plantation, and Live an Artful Life gallery in The Plains.

Musa earned a doctorate in applied physics at Harvard University. During his career he was a professor of engineering and associate vice president for Strategic Initiatives at Northwestern University. Later, on special assignment at the National Defense University, he was Homeland Security Science and Technology Chair and Senior Research Fellow.

Along with his painting, Musa has been conducting research in the art field. He presented a paper on “Relationship between Music and Painting: Replication of Emotional Response” during the 23rd Biennial Congress of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics (IAEA) in 2014. Another paper, “Emotional Response to Paintings: An Awe Sensation,” has been accepted for the upcoming IAEA Congress in Vienna, Austria.

Colgan Gallery is free and open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday during the summer. Contact Rosemary Gallick at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for more information.