HORIZON FINE ART GALLERY - Key Persons
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- Medium: Mixed Technique Read Artist
- Medium: Oil Read Artist
- Medium: Oil Read Artist Bio View Lookbook
- Medium: Watercolor Read Artist
Artist, Painter | Medium: Oil, Watercolor & Gouache | Read Artist Bio
In December of 1998, Barbara Nowak's Horizon Fine Art Gallery was born, and just as a baby is carefully handled and passionately cultivated into phases of experience and success, her eclectic collection thrives in an atmosphere of familial-like bonds and careful tending. There are years of effort behind well-adjusted offspring. Nowak's gallery is the fruit of passionate understanding of the human spirit and the art of representing artists who themselves offer up their own creative babies for her consideration.
Her selected works represent the world's best. Without a hint of aristocratic airs, Nowak walks through the gallery describing her duties. "Horizon is my life's work so when I have to do some of the more mundane tasks that are required here, I'm totally happy to do them." The gallery's paintings pull an observer into rainy New York streets, Venetian canals, toward new Russian masters who paint like the old masters. There are queenly jewels, the orange glow of fossilized Polish amber necklaces. On the back wall, three-dimensional, sand-hill cranes, alight into a moonlit sky.
Like many galleries in Jackson, Horizon started with a primarily traditional - western art collection. As her artistic eye matured, she took more risks and began pulling in more diverse pieces. Nowak shares, "A good portion of my off-season is dedicated to discovering new artists."
Even after many years rooted in art, she's still addicted to the business she's grown to love. The gallery is still her baby… a baby she loves with all her artistic heart.
, a Utah native, received his art education at the University of Utah, where he studied with David Dornan and Paul Davis. As an undergraduate, Brandon developed consummate drafting skills through the classical study of the human form. After graduating with a B.F.A. in 1996, he lived and painted in a rural valley of the Utah mountains. The dramatic landscape that he encountered there sparked, and has continued to propel his thematic use of the landscape as a context within which to explore the space between the material and the immaterial.
Brandon is an elemental painter. The malleable elements of the landscape allow a painting to come to life on the canvas; in the act of painting - a process that takes advantage of chance and glimpsed possibilities - the creative vision of mind and spirit is fused. Brandon's interest in the physical qualities of the materials he employs - the viscosity of oil paints, the texture of canvas and the luminosity of multiple glazes - is matched by his interest in the ability of the visible to metaphorically explore the invisible.
His compositions share both palette and spirit with nineteenth-century American painters Ralph Albert Blakelock and George Inness. Ranging from the drama of stormy skies to the deep tranquility of nightscapes, all are impeccable in their execution and universal in their appeal.
Brandon's paintings have been exhibited in group and solo shows across the country, and hang in both private and corporate collections. He has been featured in many local and national publications. In 2002, Brandon received the distinction of being included, by Southwest Art Magazine, on their short list of Artists to Watch. In July 2006, Brandon was selected as one of the profiled artists in the American Art Collector Magazine. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Artists of Utah.
Job Titles:
- Artist, Bronze, Dimensional Art Read Artist Bio
David Mensing has been a professional artist for more than twenty years. His paintings are featured in collections and exhibitions across the nation and around the globe.
Dorota Piotrowiak is a professional artist who works in painting, sculpture, and graphics. Known for her stunning portraits of women, as well as her life size paper sculptures of plants and animals, Dorota is an award-winning artist with works in major private collections and museums around the world. Her paintings of birds, insects and animals travel all over the country and abroad.
Gary has been involved in many national and regional invitational western art shows as well as many one-man shows. He has conducted many workshops including several years doing wilderness horse packing painting workshop trips. Gary is represented by a number of galleries including his own in Dubois, Wyoming, the Silversage Gallery where he lives and paints.
As an artist, Karl started out painting land and seascapes until he discovered portraiture. While painting portraits, it became clear that developing a relationship with the subject was an important part of the process in making a painting successful. The more he learned about the subject, the better the finished work became. Coincidentally, while studying at Yale University, he began to experiment with symbols. He discovered that he was able to share his relationship and deeper understanding of the subject in a unique way by incorporating symbols into his art.
Combined with his ability to understand how to utilize color, which was forged by his experience as a young boy working at his father's color separation printing company, he developed the foundation to create very complex and very realistic paintings at the same time. As the audience studies the painting and its symbols, a story unfolds like a puzzle.
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- Artist Bio
- Artist, Dimensional Art Read Artist Bio
Job Titles:
- Artist, Dimensional Art Read Artist Bio
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- Artist Bio
- Artist, Sculpture Read Artist Bio
Job Titles:
- Artist Bio
- Artist, Furnishings, Dimensional Art Read Artist Bio
Ron was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, into a family of builders. He began using woodworking tools at an early age as he helped with the family business. He graduated with an education degree from Edinboro University and earned a master's degree from Wilkes College, both in Pennsylvania. He was a teacher for more than thirty years and owned a photography business for twelve years. During this time woodworking continued to be his creative outlet. Now retired and living in Arizona, that hobby has become a full-time endeavor. "To me, retired just means doing what I want to do, and this is it," he says. Nowadays he's either working in his shop or travelling to mills around the country in search of the perfect piece of wood.
Job Titles:
- Artist Bio
- Artist, Dimensional Art Read Artist Bio
has worked in clay for over 50 years. Her first exposure to ceramics came in the form of a course at the Rhode Island School of Design during her time as an undergraduate. This initial experience opened her eyes to the myriad creative possibilities inherent in the medium and seeded a deep appreciation for the particular rhythms and techniques of ceramics as a craft and practice. The romance of earth and fire led her to fall in love with clay, and never look back. After graduating with a major in Illustration from RISD, Hill further committed herself to the medium, and went on to earn a M.F.A. in Ceramics from the College of Ceramics at Alfred University.
Through the course of her career in clay, Hill has hewn closely to her conviction in the importance of arts education and mentorship. She has endeavored to pass along her love for clay, as well as her exacting attention to the techniques and formal elements of ceramics as a craft to be mastered. In one of the earlier chapters of this journey, Hill taught ceramic at Wells College and helped to build their ceramics program. More recently, she has joined the ceramics department of the University of Notre Dame, and enjoyed assisting undergraduates in undertaking projects that challenge their creative energies. In the intervening years, she has taught and practiced her art in many places including the Corcoran Museum School in Washington DC, as well as the Umbrella Center for the Arts in Concord, MA. Since the early aughts, Hill has actively maintained a studio at the Umbrella, and taught adult ceramics classes through their arts education program.
Hill's work is distinctive for her experimentation with and mastery of Saggar firing techniques. Additionally, the forms and colors of the vessels she produces take inspiration from lines and shades found in nature. Suzanne is particularly taken with the wild landscapes of the American South West as well as the New England Coastline. She has for many years incorporated found natural items (stones and branches) as decorative elements in her work. Her work is also informed by years spent living and traveling outside of the United States. Exposure to traditional ceramics and ceramicists-particularly in Mexico, Peru, and Bangladesh-has cemented her appreciation and reverence for the diversity and power of ceramic traditions. She has had the privilege of visiting and working with many indigenous artists, and has greatly valued the opportunity to observe and learn the practice and processes. These experiences have also taught her humility in the face of the long and rich history of ceramics across the world.
Job Titles:
- Chairman / Professor of Department of Biological Sciences
Lona has lived her entire life on the banks of the Snake River in Southern Idaho, where she spent the greater part of her life on, or under water. Her infrequent time spent on dry land from the time she was about five has also been filled with a passion for art, especially drawing and sculpture.
She majored in 3 dimensional art and studied with Leon Parson at BYU Idaho. However, it was not until many years later that she applied that training in a most unexpected way when she began carving fish and birds. It just sort of evolved from the first really hideous and crude, somehow inspired attempt at a Rainbow Trout 17 years ago made from a pine two by four with chisel, hammer, and rasp.
She is primarily self taught and because of her inquisitive nature, she has experimented with many different media to incorporate in the process of her woodcarving.
Not only has she done most of her research and studies independently but has worked with such artists as friend and mentor, Floyd Scholz who is universally recognized as the most famous raptor carver in the world. She has had the great honor of collaborating with Floyd on two major carving commissions in 2010.
Currently she is working with Terry Bowyer, Chair/Professor of Department of Biological Sciences and David Delehanty, Professor of Ornithology on a non profit program for research and preservation of native Idaho birds.
Throughout her career, Lona has received many awards, both nationally and in the Ward World Championship.
She`s been carving professionally for 15 years now, and is represented in private collections as well as national museums and galleries throughout the U.S. and Canada, including The Kneeland Gallery of Sun Valley, Idaho; Horizon Gallery of Jackson, Wyoming; The Mountain Art Gathering in Keystone, Colorado; The National Hummingbird Society in Sedona, Arizona; the Bronx Zoo in New York; and The University of Tulsa Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Lona`s one of a kind sculptures are in great demand and her works routinely command prices of $1,500 to $13,000.
She has been given the ability to visually express her deep connection with, and love for the overlooked life within the natural world.
Her greatest joy and feeling of accomplishment comes with capturing the pure magic of the simplest moments in nature and sharing this gentle love and excitement of all things wild.