Lisa Rico loves the immediacy of pastels and richness of the color possibilities achievable with them.   The face is her favorite subject — specifically, the faces of people from other cultures and countries encountered on her travels.  Rico also enjoys featuring local flora and fauna in colorful paintings as well as doing sanguine sketches and quick studies.

Kristin Federchuk a self-taught artist.   She practiced drawing by studying the works of artists she admired. She feels that her art career is what she was created to do.   She experiences great joy and excitement as she brings each painting to its ultimate fruition.  Federchuk’s subjects are varied, preferring to be free to explore and paint the beauty around her.

 Sharon Grubbs finds inspiration in people and places throughout North Carolina’s Piedmont region. Her paintings range from traditional rural landscapes and images of local farmers, representing the area’s strong agricultural roots, to works featuring members of the many ethnic groups who have introduced new cultures to the area, even as they become an integral part of it. 

Barbara Nuss is an award–winning oil painter of landscapes and still life scenes.  She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree Syracuse University, the Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore.  She began her art career at a graphic artist and illustrator. 

Nuss is the author of the book, Secrets to Composition.  She taught still life and landscape painting at her atelier from 1983 to 1996.  She continues to share her skills through plein air workshops and atelier teaching.

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.

Sharon Markwardt is a life-long artist with a Fine Art degree and a Biology minor.  She grew up in Texas, the daughter of an Artist and an Engineer, and now enjoys an artist's life in Santa Fe, NM. The colorful style for which she is known emerged in the last decade or so, and paralleled her entrance into horsemanship, with its associated injuries and challenges. She laughingly credits her mare with “throwing her into western art!" since her colorful style emerged after a fall. She had the courage to get back in the saddle, and eventually learned the value of calm assertiveness. A new boldness entered her art, and she moved from watercolor to oils.  Her color perception altered, as did her subject matter: stronger, brighter, more Western.  Sharon enjoys pushing her colors and designs while retaining realism and attention to detail, injecting humor whenever possible.

Elizabeth Rouland O'Dell earned her B.A. in art from the University of California, Santa Cruz, graduating with honors in 1991.  She worked with printmaking techniques including intaglio etching, drypoint, and monotypes during her college years. More recently, she has returned to focus on oil painting, and she is ever enthralled with the challenge of interpreting the world around her through color and texture. 

Rose Irelan is inspired by the diverse landscapes of the coast, desert, and mountains. Her paintings capture the energy and changing light of the natural world, using expressive brushwork and a deep appreciation for color. Whether painting the rugged shoreline, the quiet beauty of a desert morning, or towering mountains, she strives to convey the feeling of a moment rather than just a scene.

Lori Cusick loves to create art of the land.  Her style is colorful and stylized.  She received her Bachelors of Fine Art degree from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn,  New York.

Her process begins on location with oil paints and canvas in tow.  Leaving the studio behind and working in the great outdoors provides and endless source of inspiration. 

Lani Browning, an award winning plein air oil painter for over twenty– five years, is known for her distinctive skill with colors, and the quiet elegance and soft tonalism of her paintings. Her travels around the country and abroad, and her love of the land have contributed to her focus on the landscape. Her years of experience show in her confident and mature brushwork. 

Ashwini Bharathula (b.1984) is a representational fine artist specializing in oil painting based in Chandler, Arizona.  She paints primarily alla prima in oils and prefers to paint directly from life.  Her subjects span flowers, portraits, and landscapes. 

Art has been a lifetime passion for Tricia Bass. Her love of the great outdoors and particularly the Rocky Mountains, has led her to a career as a plein air painter.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I grew up in the heart of the Hiawatha National Forest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  The “UP” is surrounded by big water and gorgeous shorelines of the Great Lakes, forested lands, inland lakes and rivers.  It was only natural that I developed a love and fascination of the outdoors from a very young age.  I have wonderful memories of exploring the woods near my home, building forts, and letting my imagination run wild.  When I wasn’t running rampant through the woods, I was drawing.  Being creative was a joy I discovered early on and I loved being able to get my ideas out of my head and share them through drawing. 

Arriving in Mission Viejo California, Naomi developed her artistic skills by studying color theory and practicing drawing and painting techniques. Naomi’s art subjects focus on: Western themes, Equine, Still Life, and the Natural Scapes of land and sea. All of which contribute to the transfer of her artistic visions to the canvas and onwards to the keen eye of the art viewer.