Christine Obers is a realist artist working in pastel, colored pencils and oils.  She creates beautifully sensitive paintings of animals, people, landscapes and still life.  She likes to use photographs for her initial inspiration.  She then edits and enhances them to create pleasing compositions that create rich emotional connections with her subjects.

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.