Denise Horne-Kaplan started her professional career in 1983.  She has participated in exhibits and juried shows — over 74 national and International juried shows and eight solo shows to date.  She is in six international publications, including being a featured centerfold Artist with thirteen paintings in the 1999 Winter Issue of Watercolor magazine.  Horne-Kaplan is a signature member, one of only 130 in the country, of the Miniature Artists of America. 

Carolyn C. Bell, an award–winning Texas artist, fell in love with the southwest’s vast landscape upon moving to Texas at the age of eight.  Her love of the southwest landscape has been translated into many artworks that depict the myriad colors, rocks, and foliage that has caught her eye and heart.  Southwestern Spanish architecture and the Spanish missions of Texas and New Mexico are also cherished subjects, along with florals, wildlife and still life.

Nanette Biers is a Northern California painter with a rich and varied background of professional achievement. She received her Bachelor's degree in Fine Art with honors from UC Berkeley. Starting in 1980, for the next three decades she pursued a career as a freelance commercial illustrator, working through her NYC agents, Morgan Gaynin, Inc., and garnering awards and appearances in several prestigious illustration annuals. She became known for her painterly realism, working exclusively in oils. Today her paintings can be found in private and corporate collections around the country.

Having completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Oklahoma in 1978, Bruce Bingham has pursued further education by attending over 36 workshops and courses taught by renowned artists from around the globe. Bruce has recently returned to the United States after spending a decade living abroad and has chosen to settle in the vibrant city of Austin. Embracing the city's eclectic atmosphere, Bruce finds inspiration in capturing the local color and unique venues that Keep Austin Weird!   Bingham paints in lush, sensual oils that don’t just depict life...they celebrate it. Every brushstroke is a tribute to the beauty we often overlook. And every piece is a portal—to feeling more, noticing more, living more.

My “Mottled Art” – Equine art developed since 2002 in my new “Mottled” style that merges abstract and expressionism with a touch of realism.
The subject is created on a colorful abstract background to express feelings, often shown as a close-up,
with special attention to the eyes and focusing on specific moods and composition. Often with secondary transparent image/s to show movement or specific scenario.
In my paintings, I don’t intend to replicate photo-realistic objects, but to capture the utmost uniqueness of life.
Illustrating my subjects, I often pay no attention to exact shapes, textures, or real colors and emphasize just on a small fragment,
sometimes a very tiny detail, in order to insinuate an idea. That approach leads me to concentrate on what I feel and not what I see or know about the subject. Also, it helps me to effectively use visuals to depict a story about my subject.

Mary Russell lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma where she paints representational art that encompasses multiple genres including figure work, landscape, and still life. She is the recipient of awards from the prestigious Salon International, Women Artists of the West, the Pastel Society of America, and Oil Painters of America, and she has been featured in multiple magazines including American Artist, Southwest Art, and American Art Collector.

Roberta Barnes, a native of Nebraska, lives with her husband on a ranch next to the Nebraska National Forest. The artist shares her love of the landscape through her works in oils.  She finds an endless source of inspiration in the landscapes, not only in her “roots” from the Columbus area but also in the Sandhills region of Nebraska.  Her work is a part of both public and private collections.

Sue Barrasi is an award winning artist whose work has been exhibited in juried, invitational, group and solo exhibits. She has been awarded grants and residencies and has been commissioned by publishers and advertising agencies to create artwork for postage stamps, book and magazine covers, posters and apparel. Her work has been juried into events around the country including Oil Painters of America, National Association of Women Artists, National Oil &Acrylic Painters Society and the prestigious Salmagundi Club. She has served as juror for National Juried Shows, teaches Adult and Children Painting classes in New York and New Jersey while painting commissions in her studio in Tappan NY.

Oil painter, JILL BANKS, teaches multiple classes a week over three semesters each year; exhibits at  top fine art festivals; sends work off to juried exhibitions; paints in juried and invitational plein air competitions; takes on a small number of portrait commissions; and travels for personal painting trips and inspiration. Stylistically, she continues to evolve from realism with feeling to impressionism with even more emotion and simplification.

Born in Washington state but raised in Montana, Marcia can't remember a time when she wasn't sketching even as a child. Some of her fondest memories were trips to rural Montana or to her grandmother's cabin on the lake. "I often found myself drawn to the  majesty of the early morning and late evening light always surrounding the snowcapped mountains," Ballowe reflects.

 Marcia Ballowe’s creativity flourished with the encouragement of her husband, and family, as she attended multiple workshops with notable national artists: Irving Shapiro, Scott Christensen, John MacDonald, Marc Hanson, Matt Smith, to mention a few. But she felt the biggest impact on her work came through plein air painting where she learned to capture the fleeting light and mood of a place in her art.  Photographs never held the values and hues she could see outdoors. 

Barbara Archer-Baldwin, PSA, MC-IAPS, APAA, PSWC

A Master Medallion holder in the International Association of Pastel Societies, Barbara Archer-Baldwin and her husband John Baldwin relocated to Tucson in February, 2024 after living in Florida for over 25 years. She is an academically schooled professional artist with training at Rhode Island School of Design, Philadelphia University of the Arts, and Temple University's Tyler School of Fine Arts. She has been represented by the Four Corners Gallery in the Tucson Desert Art Museum since May 2024. Her work has been juried into three shows at the Phippen Museum, Prescott, AZ, since her relocation to Arizona. Painting the southwest has really expanded her muse.

Risa Waldt, a native Tucsonan, I grew up in the desert. While horseback riding along the Rillito river, I soaked up a vision of the desert that pursued me until I began painting to express it. In 1973 I began a love affair with light, using watercolor. I love to paint the Grand Canyon, wildlife, and historical features of Arizona.

Debbie Hughbanks is a professional artist specializing in wildlife, equine & domestic animal paintings, as well as figurative and western themed pieces. Painting most often in pastel or acrylic she still finds time to explore other avenues including scratchboard and mixed media work. Hughbanks is an artist that is passionate about the creation of art and finds her inspiration all around her studio located in northeastern Washington State.  Fascinated by animals, nature and interesting people she meets along the way there is never a shortage of subject matter to spark her creative flame. The connection she feels for the subjects she paints, as well as the passion and joy she experiences in the actual creation of the work, is evident in each unique completed piece of art.

Priya was born in India and currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has lived and studied in the United States, Asia and Europe and holds multiple degrees in Dentistry and Orthodontics from renowned American and international Universities. Priya has studied with many carefully selected internationally and nationally acclaimed artists including Shane Wolf and Daud Akhriev. Her quest for knowledge, love of reading and extensive travels through Europe, North America, Central America and Asia since a young age provide a well-grounded foundation from which her artworks are inspired and created.

Ran was born in Taiwan. At a young age Ran showed an interest in the arts, so her parents sent her to study drawing, watercolor, and Chinese brush painting. As Ran grew into a young adult, she moved to the United States and eventually settled in Northern California. After putting her art on hold to build a career for herself and her family in the corporate world, Ran found the opportunity to return to her previous passion of painting and pursued becoming a fine artist.

I was born and raised in New Jersey. Even though I was brought up in a small New Jersey town, I have always been a lover of all art forms of the west. As a child, and the daughter of an artist, I could always be found creating art throughout my childhood. I felt destined to become an artist, and it has been my privilege to work in the arts during my lifetime.

Much as a poet uses words to express spirit, emotion, and beauty of thought, pastel artist Virginia Kamhi paints painterly realistic paintings that convey the poetry, imaginative power, and rhythms of the natural wonders that surround her.

Daily, Beth finds a dozen potential paintings in her visual world, which is a great blessing.  The art of seeing and helping others to see and grasp the beauty of life’s small fleeting moments is the desire for her art work.

Whether it is sunlight glowing through a flower petal, golden backlight on a child at play or the soft glow of evening light coming through the trees on a mesa or mountain top, these captured moments and slices of life are the whispers of a higher power and what makes up life itself.  Through painting she hopes to evoke a memory or a feeling to the viewer and share the emotion of a slice of time.

Bets Cole sells and shows her artwork nationwide. Working primarily in the plein air tradition, she paints outside in the landscape with immediacy and openness. She welcomes the challenge of exploring and painting unfamiliar places. Her choice of medium – whether acrylic, watercolor, gouache or charcoal – is dictated by the subject matter, colors, and quality of light specific to each location.

 Sandy Applegate

Sandy’s artwork deals with shape, color and ideas, definitely with her own version of reality.  She works primarily in acrylic or watercolor with pen with ink. Another medium is oil-based ink in which she creates Monoprints on paper or canvas, a method learned from Shy Rabbit’s Michael Coffee – his reductive-ink process.  She often incorporates mixed media to create unusual effects.   She likes to have several series of different subject matter in the works at one time. This helps to keep her images and ideas fresh and lively.