MEDICINE MAN GALLERY - Key Persons
Alex Sanchez is an award winning, third generation silversmith, from the Navajo (Water Edge Clan) and Zuni Clan.
Born in Mexican Springs, NM in 1969, Alex Sanchez was inspired and taught silversmithing, by his brother Myron Panteah, while Alex was studying Sports Medicine in his 20s. Petroglyph designs, such as animal, human and spirit symbols are the cornerstone of his work. They are created with heavy gauge silver, reflecting contemporary and traditional totemic designs.
He has been exhibiting and selling his work since 2001. His works have been presented at The Santa Fe Indian Market and The Heard Museum. He has received awards from the Red Earth Show in Oklahoma, The Gallup Ceremonial and Navajo Nation Fair.
Alex Sanchez is the younger brother of Myron Panteah and Brad Panteah. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his wife and three daughters.
Alfred Joe is known for his graceful, traditional designs, with a contemporary edge. He uses shadowbox techniques as well as stamping and overlay. Gem grade turquoise stones from mines such as, Carico Lake, Lander, Bisbee, Morenci and more, are used in his pieces, in addition to Mediterranean red corral and Lapis. A technique used in creating his signature rug bracelets is a silver dust overlay process that provides a level of contrast and texture to the pieces. Working in both silver and gold, his two-sided pendants are highly prized for their magnificent, gem-quality stones and elegant craftsmanship.
Since 1972, Alfred Joe has won every major award bestowed in his field. Some of these include:
Best in Show, Eight Northern Indian Arts & Crafts Show
Best in Show, Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial
First place, Santa Fe Indian Market, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2000, and 2001.
Artist of the Year, IACA, 2001 and 2009
Alfred Joe taught his son Bryan, and his grandson Derrick Joe, as well as his brother Larry Joe, the skills for jewelry making. Alfred currently lives in Winslow, AZ, where he produces jewelry every day.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director Tohono Chul Park
My search in the visual arts is for the hidden Human spirit. That small part that makes us each unique, yet finds us a common home. I have been a paid professional as well as an active volunteer in state run mental institutions, private and county run nursing homes and been a drug rehabilitation counselor. Overriding this vein is the love of movement and dance and the shear joy of a good laugh. These feelings find expression three - dimensionally in clay, plaster, wax and metal. In my pieces I first search for that bit of movement, then I search for the humor to help carry me through the piece, and in completion I search for serenity. My fortune lies in the knowledge that my audience has been like my work, ongoing.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Tampa Museum of Art
Job Titles:
- Governor of Maine / Blue Cross / Blue Shield / Unum Insurance Company
Anthony Lovato was raised by his mother to become a silversmith. Mary also was instrumental in revising the traditional Pueblo shell inlay work in Santo Domingo. Anthony learned most of his skills from his grandfather, Santiago Leo Coriz, who was very adept at tufa casting, having learned it from a Hopi friend.
Anthony's tufa cast designs to bridge traditional and contemporary styles. They reflect his family's creative legacy and Santo Domingo religious heritage. He is known for his petroglyph and pictograph symbols of horses and buffalo. Anthony is a member of the Corn Clan in his village. He is best known for his corn rings, corn maidens and corn bracelets, as well as his unique canteens. Anthony also creates large hollow-ware jars and fabricated vessels. He has said of all the pieces he creates, that he "strives to make them perfect and right."
Anthony has won many awards for his exceptional work over the years. His sons Cordell Pajarito and Joel Pajarito are also accomplished, silversmiths. Anthony has a brother, Isaac Coriz and a sister, Mary Frances Coriz, who are both sought after artists in their own right.
Anthony is now retired.
Job Titles:
- Arts and Culture Reporter, KVOI AM 1030 Tucson, 2011 to Present
- Show KJLL AM Art Commentator 2011
Bill Gallen grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan and would wander off into the woods and fields of his native Wisconsin. This gave him an early appreciation for the wonders of the natural world. Bill Gallen graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in history and German. He spent a year studying in Freiburg, Germany. Plans to pursue an academic teaching career gave way when he moved to Colorado and began a painting contracting business with his brother. Nurturing a lifelong interest in art, Bill Gallen studied painting and drawing in his free time with local instructors as well as at workshops in Taos, New Mexico, and the Scottsdale Artists School. He counts Michael Lynch, David Ballew and Matt Smith among his most influential teachers. After nearly fifteen years as a contractor, Bill Gallen traded in his house painting brushes for an easel painter's tool.
Bill Gallen currently resides in New Mexico where he enjoys painting landscapes, particularly location pieces. The eye for beauty and harmony in nature, which he developed as a child in the Midwest, informs his work with freshness and sensitivity. Bill Gallen's paintings are included in collections nationwide.
Billy Schenck has been known internationally for 44 years as one of the originators of the contemporary "Pop" western movement. Schenck has had over 100 solo shows and is included in 44 museum collections. He is an American painter who incorporates techniques from Photo-Realism with a Pop Art sensibility to both exalt and poke fun at images of the West.
Career highlights for the artist include the 2013 Utah Museum of Fine Art's Bierstadt to Warhol: American Indians in the West exhibit, the Denver Art Museum's "Western Horizons" and a retrospective of serigraphs created by Schenck from 1971 through 1996 at the Tucson Museum of Art.
Job Titles:
- Head of the University of Arizona Art Department
Shortly after graduation, he and his father founded Chavez Studios. Here Jared continues to evolve his jewelry designs. He is known for his unique and intricate silver motifs and attention to detail. He and his father continue to collaborate on pieces, bringing their exacting standards, and dedication to design, to every piece they make.
Dana Busch recently left the medical field to pursue her love of art. Her recent honors and awards are related to the medical field. Prior to her medical career, Dana Busch received the following art-related honors and awards:
David Meikle was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1987, he was the state winner in Art in the Deseret News Sterling Scholar Competition for high school students in Utah. He attended the University of Utah on a four-year scholarship and received his BFA in Graphic Design and Illustration in 1994. In 2006, he finished his MFA from the University of Utah, where he was the recipient of the Alvin Gittins scholarship.
In 2006, David won the jurors' first place award at the 82nd Annual Spring Salon at the Springville Museum of Art (out of 1000 entries). His paintings have been included in the Spring Salon every year since 1998. David's work is represented in the books "Painters of the Wasatch Mountains" and "Painters of Utah's Canyons and Deserts" (his painting was on the back cover).
Co. & Gallery in Salt Lake City. David created the images that are seen on the "Welcome to Utah" billboards found at all major entry points to the state. David's paintings are included in the permanent collections of the Springville Museum of Art and Salt Lake County, as well as many private and corporate collections. He recently finished a 10' x 23' mural for the City Creek Center in down town Salt Lake City and in 2011 he was named by the Springville Museum of Art as one of Utah's 100 "Most Honored" artists. This year, David was inducted into the Highland High Hall of Fame in recognition of his success as an artist.
David is happily married to Lacy Egbert and has five children (Daniel, Amelia, Samuel, William, and Madeline plus a crazy cat named Blue).
Dean L. Mitchell was born 1957, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and reared in Quincy, Florida. He is a graduate of the Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, Ohio. Mitchell is well known for his figurative works, landscapes and still lifes. In addition to watercolors, he is accomplished in other mediums, including egg temperas, oils and pastels.
Mitchell has been featured in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, American Artist, Artist Magazine, Fine Art International and Art News.
His art can be found in corporate and museum collections across the country, including: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi; Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Beach Museum of Art, Manhattan, Kansas; The Autry National Center, Los Angeles; The Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Arkansas; Gadsden Art Center Quincy, Florida; Canton Museum of Art, Canton, Ohio and the Library of Congress.
He has received the American Watercolor Society Gold Medal, Allied Artist of American Gold Medal in Watercolor and Oil, Thomas Moran Award from the Salmagundi Club in New York, Remington Professional League, and for three years in a row the Best in Show Award from the Mississippi Watercolor Society Grand National Competition. In 2004 and 2007, he received the Autry National Center Award for Watercolor at the Masters of the American West Fine Art Exhibition and sale. Mitchell is a member of several professional societies, including the American Watercolor Society and the National Watercolor Society.
Doug Hyde attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, during which time he enjoyed the tutelage and friendship of the late renowned Apache sculptor, Allan Houser. In 1967 Doug Hyde attended the San Francisco Art Institute on scholarship for a time before enlisting in the U.S. Army. During his second tour of duty in Viet Nam, a grenade seriously wounded Doug Hyde. During his recuperation he learned the use of power tools in the cutting and shaping of stone while working in a friend's tombstone business, all the while continuing his art education and sculpting at night. Finally Doug Hyde entered some of his sculpture for a show sponsored by the Northern Plains Indian Museum in Browning, Montana. When his work sold out, Doug Hyde realized that he was now ready to make his mark and that Santa Fe was to be his base of operations.
Returning to Santa Fe in 1972 to teach at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Doug Hyde brought with him experience and knowledge as well as a desire to learn all he could about other native cultures. The following year he left the institute to devote himself full-time to sculpting. Doug Hyde's works sculptured in bronze or stone, often in monumental size, frequently represent the stories told to him during his youth or portray more historical events. What is of great importance to him is that they are accurate representations of their subject matter, and that process only occurs "when I can visualize the finished sculpture in my mind."
Doug Hyde has remained a resident of Santa Fe since 1972. His works may be viewed in the collections of the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Heard Museum, Museum of the Southwest, Southwest Museum, Gilcrease Museum, Eitelborg Museum, and the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center among others. In 1990 the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, provided Doug Hyde with a retrospective exhibit of his work.
Education:
Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico
San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, California
Faculty, Institute of American Arts
Dr. Mark Sublette is a former Naval physician and the founder (1992) of Medicine Man Gallery, based in Tucson, Arizona. He is a sought-after speaker on Western and Native art, the author of numerous catalogs in the field and is an authority on the artwork of Maynard Dixon. Sublette is a contributor to Western Art Collector magazine, Native American Art magazine and Canyon Road Arts. His latest book, Maynard Dixon's American West, is a seminal work on the artist's life, writings, and artwork.
Medicine Man Gallery houses some of the finest Native American, Early American and Western paintings. Mark has made the life work of western illustrator and artist Maynard Dixon a specialty. A museum housed inside the gallery is dedicated to the artist, with hundreds of original works and artifacts. Mark also handles works of the Taos Society of Artists, along with contemporary fine art & sculpture, representing over 30 well-known contemporary artists and sculptors. The art ranges from the ethereal realism of Peter Nisbet paintings to the cubist works of Ed Mell to the western paintings by Cowboy Artists of America John Moyers and sculpture by Fred Fellows. Native Artists Mateo Romero and Shonto Begay are also represented.
Mark's involvement in the arts is all-encompassing. He buys, sells, researches, educates, and has established a foundation for the arts. A constant student of the many areas he delves into, he is happy to pass along the knowledge; the delight in sharing his passion is evident as he speaks. The Medicine Man Gallery YouTube channel has millions of views and has been a weekly educational show for over 12 years, focusing primarily on Western and Native art. MedicineManGallery.com has become not only a place to purchase art but an important source for educational videos, hallmark identification of Native Arts and artist information.
The Art Dealer Diaries Podcast is in its fifth year and features over 200 interviews with unique individuals who curate, collect, create, write, sell, and deal in Western and Native art. Sublette is also the author of the Charles Bloom Murder Mystery series. Books in this series include Paint by Numbers, Kayenta Crossing, Hidden Canyon, Stone Men, The Butterfly Twins, Indian School Days, Guardian of the Cornfields and The Candy Man. Between the White Lines is Mark Sublette's stand-alone murder mystery focused around golf and a Thomas Moran painting. The photography featured in his novels is his other love, which he shares on his website at www.marksublette.com.
Born in 1942, Ed Mell spent an idyllic childhood in what was then the small western city of Phoenix. He attended Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, and soon after graduation accepted a position in New York as an art director for a large advertising agency.
Seeking greater artistic freedom, he opened an illustration studio and was met with immediate success, establishing his national reputation. Still, Mell felt that he hadn't yet found his voice as an artist.
Seeking a break from the city's pace, he accepted a teaching position the Hopi reservation in 1970. Time spent on Arizona's Colorado Plateau reconnected Mell with the land he loved and his artistic course was set. He relocated to Phoenix and began painting his well-known landscapes.
Mell's creative drive has led him to produce bronze sculptures and print series in addition to his oils. Ed Mell's work is found in many public and private collections including those of Tri-Star Pictures, Phoenix Art Museum, Kartchner Caverns State Park, Diane Keaton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Babbitt.
Erin Hanson began painting as a young girl, voraciously learning oils, acrylics, watercolor, pen and ink, pastels, and life drawing from accomplished art instructors. She began commissioning paintings at age ten, and by age twelve, she was employed after school by a mural studio, learning the techniques of acrylics on the grand scale of forty-foot canvases. Two years later, a high school scholarship took her to Otis College of Art, where she immersed herself in figure drawing. Graduating high school at age sixteen and once again demonstrating that she was a child prodigy, Hanson next attended UC Berkeley, excelling further in her studies and creative development and attaining a degree in Bioengineering.
After graduating from college, Hanson entered the art trade as a professional, inspired by landscapes and vantage points only beheld by the most adventurous. Rock climbing among the brilliantly colored cliffs of Nevada and Utah, watching the seasons and the light change daily across the desert, provided endless inspiration for her work. In these beautiful surroundings, Hanson decided firmly to dedicate herself to creating one painting every week for the rest of her life. She has stuck to that decision ever since and has for the past decade been developing a unique, minimalist technique of placing impasto paint strokes without layering, which has become known as "Open-Impressionism." As other artists began emulating her painting techniques, Hanson was credited as the pioneer and originator of this contemporary style.
Through the years, Hanson has continued to use the outdoors to inspire a huge collection of work. She visits the Colorado plateau every year, backpacking and hiking through areas such as Zion National Park, Canyon de Chelly, and Monument Valley. Other favorite haunts include Paso Robles, Joshua Tree National Park, and the Anza-Borrego desert. Erin Hanson transforms these landscapes into abstract mosaics of color and texture, her impasto application of paint lending a sculptural effect to her art. Her oil paintings stand out in a crowd, bringing a fresh new look to Western landscapes.
Born in Cortez, Colorado, Francis Livingston is in the top ranks of American illustrators, and his work has been widely published. Francis Livingston's paintings have been exhibited in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. Livingston was awarded both Gold and Silver Medals from the New York Society of Illustrators, San Francisco Society of Illustrators, and Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles.
Francis Livingston studied at the Rocky Mountain School of Art in Denver before moving to San Francisco in 1975 to attend the Academy of Art. He has been an instructor in the illustration and painting department for 25 years. Influenced by Sargent and Whistler, Francis Livingston painted primarily in a monochromatic style until he began to study the work of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, including Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud and others. That led to experiments with color and a fondness for the California and French Impressionists.
For nearly twenty-five years, Francis Livingston has been painting the Santa Cruz boardwalk. "I'd always been intrigued by amusement parks, the rundown seediness, the intermingling of the past and present. When I went down to Santa Cruz for the first time in the 70's, it had that same quality as the old rides, the colors starting to fade. It fit in with the look I was after." Livingston has also done numerous portrayals of scenes from New York City and Coney Island, focusing on dramatic architecture and color.
Francis Livingston lived and worked in San Francisco and San Anselmo for 20 years until he and his family relocated to the Sun Valley, Idaho area, where he has developed a deeper appreciation for the west. He has now become one of the West's premier living painters. Francis Livingston's paintings of western landscapes and pueblo architecture capture the colors and light effects that are unique to the West. His deep understanding of history, the land and its people allow him to create imagery reminiscent of the Taos Founders, and other great western artists.
Francis Livingston was commissioned to create the book cover images for academy award winning author Michael Blake's, Dances with Wolves and it's sequel, The Holy Road. He was also selected by the Kentucky Derby in 2004 to create their annual poster.
Education:
Rocky Mountain School of Art, Denver, Colorado
Academy of Art College, San Francisco, California
Teaching Experience:
Academy of Art College, San Francisco, California - 10 years
Job Titles:
- Curator Tucson Museum of Art
In November of 1995, shortly after Glen retired, a friend gave him an old wood lathe. Although he had considerable woodworking experience, he had never used a wood lathe before. He glued up scraps of wood to turn and started to see designs found in Anazasi pottery.
Glenn recognized his interest for art at the age of 13, however, he didn't realize his love for painting the landscape until his early 20's. His path became clear when he first saw examples of work by the Early California and Western landscape painters of the early 1900's. "Their work emphasized the importance of seeing the color of light combined with interesting compositions and seemingly effortless designs, while carefully observing the simple and basic characteristics of a specific location".
Basically a self-taught artist, Glenn has a passion and joy for discovering answers to the complexities found in the works of the past masters. Glenn strives for a similar quality in his work and uses the past masters as a standard to check his own work against. "The early painters incorporated good use of the principles of aesthetic art". Glenn believes that their paintings revealed the spiritual element of the landscape, which he feels should be the goal of the landscape painter.
Glenn gained recognition in the art world at a relatively young age. He has appeared in several national magazines including Southwest Art, Art of the West, and American Artist. Glenn has won a number of awards, including the first ever "Emerging Artist Award" presented by Art and Antiques magazine. He is also the recipient of the Grand Prize and Artists Choice awards at the inaugural Tucson/Sonoran Desert Museum Plein Air Invitational.
Glenn's goal as an artist is to bring honor and glory to God through painting the best he can with the gifts and tools that have been given to him.
Glenn paints on-location throughout the Southwest, dividing his time between deserts, mountains, and coastal subjects. Glenn feels that time in the field and in the studio are equally important. In his studio, Glenn develops larger compositions worked from field studies and other references. After living in New Mexico for nearly 4 years, Glenn has returned to his native state of California, where he lives on the Central Coast.
Born in 1947 in Portland, Maine, Glenn Renell was educated at Rhode Island School of Design, Fort Wright College, and received his MFA from the University of Massachusetts in 1978. He taught painting, drawing, design at Maine College of Art for twenty two years, resigning in 2001 to paint full time. Glenn Renell now resides in Southeastern Arizona.
A landscape painter, Glenn Renell works on site, directly from nature, making small paintings whose subject is the experience of seeing and being there. Looking to the qualities of the changing light, the relationships of sky, land and horizon, the paintings are structured around broad notes of color and brought equilibrium and order as the painting develops and nears an equivalent of seeing. Visiting the same site a number of times Glenn Renell aims for a distillation and understanding of place that gets beyond the casual and picturesque and finds those points where spirit of artist and place meld in the painting and process. At various points the small paintings and experience are brought into the studio and serve as the basis of larger works. The larger paintings are created within a process of integration and differentiation, and are a search for further and deeper understandings developed into paintings that are embodiments of that quest for spirit of place.
Glenn Renell operates from the belief that it is when a viewer connects with a painting and knows, at a seemingly perceptual level, a sense and spirit of place, that the painting and a circle of seeing is complete.
A native of Arizona, Greg Campbell has been working with wood most of his life, from carpentry to art. The art phase of his woodworking began around the late 1980s when he discovered his passion for seeing what a piece of wood had to offer. Greg jokes that he has never met a tree he didn't like. He uses a variety of wood from exotics to trees found locally. Using wood from trees that are being removed for development or that have been felled by Mother Nature gives Greg the most pleasure. "The history of wood used in each piece makes if all the more interesting," states Greg "and knowing that I have created something lasting from each tree gives me great satisfaction."
Greg's work has been displayed and sold in galleries across the United States, from West Virginia to Washington. He has also had works exhibited in Massachusetts at the Fitchburg Art Museum and the Nelson Fine Art Museum at Arizona State University.
Throughout a successful career in illustration, Greg has created art for the likes of American Express, Fedex, Heinz, Smuckers, Boy Scouts of America, Harper Collins, Harcourt, Scholastic, Random House and Simon & Schuster. In 2014, Greg was awarded a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles. He has illustrated a dozen books for children. He is now focusing on painting the western landscape that inspired him to first pick up a brush.
Greg's paintings explore an idealized vision of the west and are included in the permanent collections of Salt Lake City Corporation, Boy Scouts of America, Springville Museum of Art, Utah Transit Authority and Zions Bank Corporation, among others.
Born in Lynn, Massachusetts to Greek immigrant parents, Gregory Kondos moved to California with his family at a young age. Encouraged by his parents to live his particular version of the American Dream, Gregory Kondos attended art school in Sacramento and Los Angeles. After taking several art-related jobs and appointments, Kondos began teaching at his alma mater, Sacramento City College, in 1956, and continued to work there until his retirement in 1982 (whereupon the school renamed their exhibition space the Gregory Kondos Gallery).
Over the course of his life, Gregory Kondos won several awards, including those at Winter Invitationals of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, a Dillard Collection prize, and an appointment as Full Academician at the National Academy of Design in 1995. Gregory Kondos also had an extensive exhibition history, including several one-person shows at galleries in the Sacramento and San Francisco area and group exhibitions, such as his 1993 invitation to show at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. Gregory Kondos also served as an artist-in-residence at Yosemite National Park (1990) and spent many summer months there. Gregory Kondos continued to live in Sacramento with his wife, Moni Van Camp. Influences were Maynard Dixon, William de Kooning, Paul Cezanne, and Paul Gauguin.
Job Titles:
- Poster Artist for 2015. Hermosa Beach, CA
Job Titles:
- Head of the University of Arizona Art Department
Job Titles:
- Bronc Riders under the Grand Stand, Oil on Canvas, 36" X 44
- Remnant of the Rains, Oil on Canvas, 52" X 42
Known for his paintings of cattle, cowboys, rodeo arenas, and ranch life executed with a unique aerial perspective and sun-drenched hues, Howard Post is an impressionist who portrays the contemporary West in a modern fashion. Howard Post, a native Arizonan, was born and raised on a ranch near Tucson. Not surprisingly, he gravitated toward the lif e of a cowboy. The family ranch raised rodeo stock, and as Howard Post gained experience, he started to enter rodeo competitions. In time, he became an Arizona High School All-Round Rodeo Champion, a member of the University of Arizona rodeo team, and eventually, a competitor with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. After Howard Post completed bachelor's and Master's degrees in fine art at the University of Arizona, he taught there for two years.
Howard Post worked as a commercial artist until 1980, when he decided to paint what he knew best, Arizona's ranch traditions. Viewers of Howard Post's oils or pastels respond to a bird's-eye view of cattle clustered in a corral, cowboys perched in fence rails, or a distant ranch house. This higher perspective endows people and animals in the painting with stronger shapes and patterns. Howard Post draws from a collection of several thousand slides, from imagination, and then starts a canvas without preliminary sketches. Up to six colors might be used, painted over a dark background. His work is defined by orderly, strong shadow patterns cast by the figures of cattle, cowboys, trees, or fences.
Howard Post's oils and pastels have been included in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States. Many of his paintings are represented in public, corporate, and private collections.
For over thirty years Jan has been immersed in the rural cultural of Colorado's ranching community. With encouragement from her horse-trainer husband and an inquisitive mind, Jan developed her ability to express, first in clay and later in paint, the things that touched her heart.
Today her work travels from her studio in southeastern Colorado all across the United States. While her contract for the design of the National Cutting Horse Association's trophy takes her sculpture around the globe. But whether painting or sculpting Jan's goal is the same: "to capture the spirit and beauty of this earthly experience, and to encourage others to see, feel, enjoy, and appreciate it."
Jeff Aeling was born in 1958 in Iowa City, Iowa and currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri. His father was an Army physician during the 1950s and 1960s so the family moved from one hot spot to another when the Cold War dominated the American consciousness. His connection to nature came when the family was posted in Hawaii.
In addition to painting absorbing landscapes images at his home studio in Kansas City, Missouri, Aeling recently concluded a monumental exhibition that took over two years to design and create. "The Layman's Guide to the Passage of the Millennium" included over a hundred exquisite three-dimensional assemblages and paintings addressing the anxieties of contemporary culture. Aeling's painting travels take him all over the southwest. He finds himself returning to particular areas that allow clear observations of the weather, atmosphere and the unobstructed lay of the land.
Out on location, Aeling absorbs the geography and the rich earth colors, terra verde, ochre and reds that permeate the landscape. Jeff Aeling's universal landscapes possess a stunning intimacy that conveys unexpected power and emotion. His paintings draw upon a vastness that gives you a sense of wonder and awe about the universe.
Once in the studio, Aeling paints with economy. He keeps his brush strokes gestural, often painting at arm's length, as he applies pigments to board he uses the smallest number of brush strokes.
Jeff Aeling's paintings have been shown in exhibitions and purchased for collections across the United States.
Job Titles:
- Professor Emeritus from Southern Oregon University
Jim Romberg is Professor Emeritus from Southern Oregon University where he headed the Ceramics Department for nineteen years. Jim received his BA in Ancient and Medieval History from Pomona College, attended graduate studies at Union Theological Seminary, NYC and the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1972, after two years as a studio assistant at Pottery Northwest, Seattle, Jim returned to The Claremont Graduate University and received his MFA in Ceramics. One-year teaching assignments each at Texas Tech University and the Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado, led to his creation of the ceramics department at the Sun Valley Center for Arts and Humanities in Sun Valley, Idaho. There as Artist-in-residence, and over the period of 12 years, Jim developed the Sun Valley Center's ceramics department into an internationally recognized ceramics program. In 1986 Jim left Sun Valley to join the faculty at Southern Oregon University.
Jim has taught workshops in France at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Aix-en-Provence, the Ceramics Workshop in Avignon, in Switzerland at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Vevey, and throughout the US. He currently presents workshops on the practice Raku ceramics, the development of new forms of expression, and the place of criticism for the creator.
Exhibitions of his work continue throughout France, Switzerland and the US. As an artist and writer, Jim is a dedicated proponent of criticism in contemporary ceramics. Most recently he curated the traveling International Exhibition of Raku Ceramics entitled: "Raku: Origins, Impact and Contemporary Expression."
In 2012, Romberg was honored with an invitation to France as the sole representative, demonstrator, and workshop leader from the USA for the International Raku Symposium: "Raku San Frontier, Giroussens, France."
Romberg is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics, and served as a Board Member of the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts. Jim and his wife Lynette Jennings, also an acclaimed artist, are currently living in Sedona, Arizona where he maintains his studio and is Program Director for the Eagleheart Center for Art and Inquiry.
Education
Master of Fine Arts, Claremont Graduate School 1972
Job Titles:
- Member of the Prestigious Cowboy Artists of American
Born in Southern California in 1949 John Coleman began his early studies at the Art Center for Design in Los Angeles. Since then he has continued his education by studying with many of the top sculptors, and today shares his passion for sculpting by teaching. John Coleman now teaches at the Scottsdale Artists School and the Loveland Academy.
John Coleman has been a member of the prestigious Cowboy Artists of American since 2001 and the National Sculpture Society since 1999. Coleman resides in Prescott. Arizona with his wife Sue.
Job Titles:
- Chief
- Chief Curator, Tucson Museum of Art, 2009
Job Titles:
- President, Kansas City Art Institute
Job Titles:
- Film Producer, Jerry McGuire and Dream Girls
Job Titles:
- Screenplay Writer for As Good As It Gets
Job Titles:
- Author of Dances With Wolves
Job Titles:
- International Artist, Fine Art Connoisseur
Eric Bowman was born in Pasadena and grew up in Orange County, CA. Essentially a self-taught artist, Eric had a knack for drawing as far back as he can remember, always the class artist throughout his elementary and high school years. Early on, various art-related jobs such as silk screen T-shirt printer or surfboard airbrush technician led to a lengthy and successful career as a commercial artist, eventually transitioning to fine art painting.
As a painter, Eric has exhibited in national & regional exhibitions in some of the country's most prestigious galleries and museums including the Autry Museum of the American West, the Briscoe Western Art Museum, the Gilcrease Museum, the Kaiping Art Museum (China), the Academy Art Museum, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and the Salmagundi Club in NYC. His paintings are in private and corporate collections throughout the U.S. as well as England, China, Australia, Canada and Mexico.
Eric's work has also been showcased in feature articles with Art Of The West, Southwest Art, Practique Des Arts (France), International Artist, Fine Art Connoisseur, Plein Air and Western Art Collector magazines. He is a Signature Member of the California Art Club, the American Impressionist Society and the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association. When not traveling to various art events or visiting his beloved home state of California, Eric resides in northwest Oregon with his wife and daughter, and their dog, Mucha.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director / Palos Verdes Art Center
Author Ted Andrews, in Animal-Speak, suggests: "Every flower blossoms with reminders to be creative, and every tree whispers with its rustling leaves the secrets of life." Trees and flowers, nature and all Her elements indeed seem to whisper to me incessantly as I sculpt and write. Their language is mystical and magical, apparent and elusive, evocative and reassuring. Seemingly common elements and threads weave themselves together through my hands and words into amazingly poignant and often cryptic expressions. Frequently, I am amazed when looking at a finished piece, as if to look over my shoulder and say, ‘Who did that?' I feel both humbled and honored knowing I was there, my hand following something much larger than myself. Again and again, I am blessed and inspired by the choir of guiding Voices throughout the process. The voices of the clay are the Voices of my inner guidance, holding a language I believe speaks to me and all of us at once. It is typically only after the vessel is completed that I am able to fully recognize and appreciate its full essence. The vessels evolve into treasures with a sensation of history and antiquity - rich in a tapestry of story and symbolism. Forms, creatures and numeric elements take on a sometimes cloaked or sometimes visible presence in my work, while continually weaving a mystical, symbolic thread.
Hanging precariously and horizontally from red sandstone, hundreds of feet above the ground, may not seem like it would inspire the creation of beautiful oil paintings, but that is exactly what happened with Erin Hanson. After a lifetime of experimenting in different styles and mediums, it wasn't until Hanson began rock climbing at Red Rock Canyon that her painting style was consolidated by a single inspiration and force of nature.
Erin Hanson began painting as a young girl, voraciously learning oils, acrylics, watercolor, pen and ink, pastels, and life drawing from accomplished art instructors. She began commissioning paintings at age ten, and by age twelve, she was employed after school by a mural studio, learning the techniques of acrylics on the grand scale of forty-foot canvases. Two years later, a high school scholarship took her to Otis College of Art, where she immersed herself in figure drawing. Graduating high school at age sixteen and once again demonstrating that she was a child prodigy, Hanson next attended UC Berkeley, excelling further in her studies and creative development and attaining a degree in Bioengineering.
After graduating from college, Hanson entered the art trade as a professional, inspired by landscapes and vantage points only beheld by the most adventurous. Rock climbing among the brilliantly colored cliffs of Nevada and Utah, watching the seasons and the light change daily across the desert, provided endless inspiration for her work. In these beautiful surroundings, Hanson decided firmly to dedicate herself to creating one painting every week for the rest of her life. She has stuck to that decision ever since and has for the past decade been developing a unique, minimalist technique of placing impasto paint strokes without layering, which has become known as "Open-Impressionism." As other artists began emulating her painting techniques, Hanson was credited as the pioneer and originator of this contemporary style.
Through the years, Hanson has continued to use the outdoors to inspire a huge collection of work. She visits the Colorado plateau every year, backpacking and hiking through areas such as Zion National Park, Canyon de Chelly, and Monument Valley. Other favorite haunts include Paso Robles, Joshua Tree National Park, and the Anza-Borrego desert. Erin Hanson transforms these landscapes into abstract mosaics of color and texture, her impasto application of paint lending a sculptural effect to her art. Her oil paintings stand out in a crowd, bringing a fresh new look to Western landscapes.
Gregory Kondos (1923-2021) painted the perceived colors of his environment, whether that might be the forests of Northern California, the mountainous Yosemite National Park, or the shores of his ancestral Greece.
Job Titles:
- Trainer of the Year Award - NCHA